Beatniks at The Zodiac in San Diego 1959

August 21, 1959

The film label reads ‘Beatniks.’ Unfortunately, there is no script in the files. It’s likely it was shot for stock footage. It’s an incredible glimpse into the long-gone Zodiac Coffeehouse in San Diego. Here is a little info from a San Diego Reader article by Lou Curtiss: It was about 1957 when I first went into the Zodiac (a coffeehouse European) down at 11th and Broadway at street level below the old Pacific Ballroom. That night I heard a folksinger named Mickey Myers and met the owner, a guy named Dick Masterson who also owned a place called the Zen Coffee House and Motorcycle Repair Shop down at Broadway and India. The next week I saw Judy Henske and Fred Gerlach there. In the next couple of years I got around San Diego’s early coffeehouse scene fairly thoroughly. Each place (much like those today) had its specialty although then it was the Age of the Beatnik and the word coffeehouse was sort of suspect. The Zodiac proclaimed itself San Diego’s only Oriental-style coffee house (there was a large dragon mural on the wall).