Editing Beat Generation (section)

==="Beatniks"===
{{Main|Beatnik}}
The term "[[beatnik]]" was coined by [[Herb Caen]] of the ''[[San Francisco Chronicle]]'' on April 2, 1958, blending the name of the recent Russian satellite [[Sputnik]] and Beat Generation. This suggested that beatniks were (1) "far out of the mainstream of society" and (2) "possibly pro-Communist."<ref>{{Cite web| title=Pocketful of Notes | author=Herb Caen | work=[[San Francisco Chronicle]] | url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/1997/02/06/MN18715.DTL | publisher=sfgate.com | date=February 6, 1997 | access-date=2010-01-30}}

"...''[[Look (American magazine)|Look]]'' magazine, preparing a picture spread on S.F.'s Beat Generation (oh, no, not AGAIN!), hosted a party in a No. Beach house for 50 Beatniks, and by the time word got around the sour grapevine, over 250 bearded cats and kits were on hand, slopping up Mike Cowles' free booze. They're only Beat, know, when it comes to work&nbsp;..."</ref> Caen's term stuck and became the popular label associated with a new stereotype—the man with a [[goatee]] and [[beret]] reciting nonsensical poetry and playing [[bongo drum]]s while [[wikt:free spirit|free-spirited]] women wearing black [[leotard]]s dance.{{Citation needed|date= February 2018}}

An early example of the "beatnik stereotype" occurred in [[Vesuvio Cafe|Vesuvio's]] (a bar in [[North Beach, San Francisco|North Beach]], San Francisco) which employed the artist [[Wally Hedrick]] to sit in the window dressed in full beard, turtleneck, and sandals, creating improvisational drawings and paintings. By 1958 tourists who came to San Francisco could take bus tours to view the North Beach Beat scene, prophetically anticipating similar tours of the [[Haight-Ashbury]] district ten years later.<ref>William T. Lawlor (ed.), ''Beat Culture: Lifestyles, Icons and Impact,'' p. 309.</ref>

A variety of other small businesses also sprang up exploiting (and/or satirizing) the new craze. In 1959, Fred McDarrah started a "Rent-a-Beatnik" service in New York, taking out ads in ''[[The Village Voice]]'' and sending [[Ted Joans]] and friends out on calls to read poetry.<ref>Arthur and Kit Knight (ed.), ''The Beat Vision,'' New York: Paragon House, 1987, p. 281.</ref>

"Beatniks" appeared in many cartoons, movies, and TV shows of the time, perhaps the most famous being the character [[Maynard G. Krebs]] in ''[[The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis]]'' (1959–1963).

While some of the original Beats embraced the beatniks, or at least found the parodies humorous (Ginsberg, for example, appreciated the parody in the comic strip ''[[Pogo (comic strip)|Pogo]]''<ref>Ginsberg, ''Howl: Original Draft Facsimile''.</ref>) others criticized the beatniks as inauthentic [[poseur]]s. [[Jack Kerouac]] feared that the spiritual aspect of his message had been lost and that many were using the Beat Generation as an excuse to be senselessly wild.<ref>"Tracing his definition of the term ''Beat'' to the fulfillments offered by ''beatitude'', Kerouac scorned sensationalistic phrases like 'Beat mutiny' and 'Beat insurrection,' which were being repeated ''ad nauseam'' in media accounts. 'Being a Catholic,' he told conservative journalist William F. Buckley, Jr. in a late-sixties television appearance, 'I believe in order, tenderness, and piety,'" David Sterritt, ''Screening the Beats: media culture and the Beat sensibility'', 2004, p. 25, {{ISBN|0-8093-2563-2}}, {{ISBN|978-0-8093-2563-4}}.</ref>