Vintage Photos From The Heyday Of Beat Culture In New York

When people hear the word "Beatnik" they immediately think about berets, striped shirts, bongos, bad poetry and goatees, and the Beatnik subculture is still most commonly associated with the 1960s.

But the heyday for Beats like Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso and Alan Ginsberg was actually the late 1940s through the 50s, because that's when they were busy inspiring a literary movement and subculture at the same time.

The original Beats who inspired the trendy Beatniks in the 60s could be seen hanging out in jazz clubs and coffee shops around Greenwich Village, New York, where they would read poems, dig the tunes or just get dixie fried.

So if you wanted to meet those real gone cats collectively known as the Beat Generation you had to hang at places like the Gaslight Cafe or the Seven Arts Cafe, where every night was a gas and the java flowed all night long.

See 35 Photographs That Capture The Beatniks' Heyday In New York City here