Dylan Thomas Walking Tour printable PDF to take with you.
93 MacDougal Street
(on the corner of Bleecker Street)
Turn right on MacDougal down to Bleecker. Carpo’s is on the north-west corner of MacDougal and Bleecker.
“We were killed in action, Manhattan Island, Spring 1952,Favourite Bars/Drinking
in a gallant battle against American generosity.
An American called Double Rye shot Caitlin to Death.
I was scalped by a Bourbon.”
~from a postcard sent by Dylan to Swansea composer Daniel Jones
After the preferred White Horse Tavern, San Remo was one of Dylan’s favourite bars in Manhattan. It was the desired hangout for a host of famous writers, artists, musicians and photographers, including Tennesee Williams, William Burroughs, the Beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, W.H. Auden, James Baldwin, Frank O’Hara, William Styron, James Agee, Jackson Pollock, Miles Davis, and Weegee. Village character Maxwell Bodenheim was also a regular. Gore Vidal once tried to pick up Jack Kerouac in the San Remo. It is the setting of John Clellon Holmes’s 1952 Beat novel Go, and it also appears as The Masque in Kerouac’s 1958 The Subterraneans.
Dylan met Allen Ginsberg in the Café. The Beat poet noted that Dylan played on his fame; and an invitation to him to visit Ginsberg’s attic at 206 East 7th Street was turned down after a friend reminded Dylan that Caitlin was waiting for them. Ginsberg left, sticking his tongue out playfully and later regretted that he had not made more of the encounter.
Note: Carpo’s Café is no longer open as we went to press 7/9/08.
