For 150 years, the demimonde has been a visible part of urban life. But media saturation and multicultural reality have dislocated “The Scene.” Bohemia is a state of mind.

“Do you know Herbert Huncke?” Allen Ginsberg asked. “He’s the oldest living junkie in New York, and an old sidekick of Burroughs and Kerouac”

“Kerouac and Mailer have long been literary brothers, even if under each other’s skin. Which one founded the Beat Generation and which one merely found it is just a matter of semantics”

"To me, he contains or at least suggests everything I would ever want of, or think to do in, a book. For, isn't it all about freedom finally anyway?"

"Nothing quite like the beat demimonde exists anymore, not with the same literary élan, the same desperate vitality. Being a poor New York writer or painter has become too expensive — or too crushing — to permit such animated congregation"