The Rebel Café: Sex, Race, and Politics in Cold War America’s Nightclub Underground

Subterranean nightspots in 1950s New York and San Francisco were social, cultural, and political hothouses for left-wing bohemians. The art and antics of rebellious figures in 1950s American nightlife—from the Beat Generation to eccentric jazz musicians and comedians—have long fascinated fans and scholars alike. In The Rebel Café, Stephen R. Duncan flips the frame, focusing on the New York and San Francisco bars, nightclubs, and coffeehouses from which these cultural icons emerged. Duncan shows that the sexy, smoky sites of bohemian Greenwich Village and North Beach offered not just entertainment but doorways to a new sociopolitical consciousness. This book is a collective biography of the places that harbored beatniks, blabbermouths, hipsters, playboys, and partisans who altered the shape of postwar liberal politics and culture. Throughout this period, Duncan argues, nightspots were crucial—albeit informal—institutions of the American democratic public sphere. Amid the Red Scare’s repressive politics, the urban underground of New York and San Francisco acted as both a fallout shelter for left-wingers and a laboratory for social experimentation. Touching on literary figures from Norman Mailer and Amiri Baraka to Susan Sontag as well as performers ranging from Dave Brubeck to Maya Angelou to Lenny Bruce, The Rebel Café profiles hot spots such as the Village Vanguard, the hungry i, the Black Cat Cafe, and the White Horse Tavern. Ultimately, the book provides a deeper view of 1950s America, not simply as the black-and-white precursor to the Technicolor flamboyance of the sixties but as a rich period of artistic expression and identity formation that blended cultural production and politics.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Maps of North Beach and Greenwich Village Introduction. Can You Show Me the Way to the Rebel Café? Chapter One. Blue Angels, Black Cats, and Reds: Cabaret and the Left-Wing Roots of the Rebel Café Chapter Two. Subterranean Aviators: Postwar America's Literary Underground Chapter Three. Bop Apocalypse, Freedom Now!: Jazz, Civil Rights, and the Politics of Cross-Racial Desire Chapter Four. Beatniks and Blabbermouths, Bartok and Bar Talk: New Bohemia and the Search for Community Chapter Five. Rise of the "Sickniks": Nightclubs, Humor, and the Public Sphere Chapter Six. The New Cabaret: Performance, Personal Politics, and the End of the Rebel Café Conclusion. Playboys and Partisans: American Culture, the New Left, and the Legacy of the Rebel Café Notes Index

About the Author :
Stephen R. Duncan is an assistant professor of history at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York.

Review :
An outstanding work of cultural history that is also one of cultural geography. Rarely has a book about a subculture revealed such an extraordinary sense of place. [Duncan] animates the Village for those who only heard it described as a bohemian utopia. The San Remo, the Village Vanguard, and the White Horse Tavern leap from names on the page to places in the memory, causing readers who know the territory to pause and remember a scene that is no more . . . Reaching the end of Duncan's remarkable book, I could not help but think of King Arthur's reflections in the final scene of the Broadway musical Camelot (1960): "For one brief shining hour" there was something known as Camelot. Such was Greenwich Village, as lovingly recreated by Duncan. —Bernard F. Dick, Fairleigh Dickinson University, H-Diplo