MMB On The Road: Happy Hour at Bird & Beckett San Francisco

Well, where do you begin - in today's fast paced, newly-AI-driven world, there remain respites and reminders of what tethers us as humans to what really matters. Books, jazz, great friends, community, history - a good start? I was recently celebrating a milestone birthday with a zero on the end and was so fortunate to gather my besties for a night out in my favorite city, San Francisco.

Since it was my day, I got to choose the starting point & with a clean slate of possibilities on a Friday night, off we went to one of SF's great treasures, Bird & Beckett in Glen Park for some jazz, books and to check in at one of my favorite spots in the world.

We happened upon the last installment (after decades of legacy) of the Friday night Happy Hour show with the Scott Foster Combo at B&B - Scott, Bay area legend/guitarist, has been hosting the B&B Happy Hour since 2002. Joining him to round out the quartet was a group of top notch, seasoned jazz pros, on trumpet, Henry Hung, Charles Thomas on bass and Mark Lee on drums.

Click below to view the show, forward to ~4 mins in for the beginning:

We basked for 1.5 hours while the quartet playing multiple Charlie Parker tunes alongside other standards and some originals. During intermission we had long talks with Scott and Henry and look forward to interviewing them on Mateo's Magic Bus soon!

Bird & Beckett has been been serving up literary and music events since 1999 in their independent neighborhood bookshop, with just two missed Fridays since late 2002 - now up to 200+ events a year, under the of the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project since 2008. The book collection and selection is second to none, we all walked away with multiple great finds and treasures now adorning our bookshelves and coffee tables.

When in the Bay Area, make it a point to stop into Glen Park for this incredible experience, it's a small, relatively unknown hamlet in the city with great restaurants, hiking in Glen Park Canyon and they have their own BART stop. Or, just stop by their website as all shows are live streamed: https://birdbeckett.com/

Long live Bird & Beckett, and thanks to Founder and Proprietor, Eric Whittington for your vision and taking care of us on that night, can't wait for our next visit!

Rock on,

DJ Mateo