North Beach’s Beat Museum has been hitting the “MSM” this weekend due to the strange metallic space debris they’ve been showing off on Broadway for months. The museum, nestled between strip clubs and the remains of Enrico’s is chock full of Beat emphemera, but the strangest item by far is the chunk of the infamous “Sputnik 1”

pic: Jerry Cimino … proud Beat Museum Curator

links & more info below the belt…

The New York Times printed the story on Sunday February 18th of the possibility SF’s Beat Museum has inherited the lost remains of Soviet satellite Sputnik 1, launched in 1957, the very incident which lead Herb Caen to coining the term “Beatnk”.

see it yourself online
Link to Sputnik Tale: http://www.thebeatmuseum.org/sputnik.htm

or in person @
The Beat Museum
540 Broadway (at Columbus)
San Francisco, CA 94133
1-800-KER-OUAC
http://www.kerouac.com

The story is fast spreading around the world! Dozens of newspapers and websites in the US picked up the story Sunday morning and in the evening it was picked up by UPI so it is fast spreading “furthur” around the world - India, Russia - it’s still going…

Just like Neal Cassady

Here’s a link to the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/us/18sputnik.html

Here’s a lnk to the Houston Chronicle:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/space/4562341.html

Here’s a link to UPI:
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Quirks/20070218-050356-5698r/

Ion the interest of meeting demand for info, The Beat Museum’s curator Jerry Cimino will be having an actual “PRESS CONFERENCE” with Sputnik donor Bob Morgan this coming Friday, February 23rd at 11 AM. If you know anyone in the news business, they’d love ‘em to come by or call!