Oscar Schwartz

I meet Del Ray Cross – poet and founding editor of Shampoo – at a bar lounge in Downtown San Francisco, in the middle of afternoon rush hour. He orders us both a Blue Moon: an American beer served with a slice of orange. We sit at a table opposite the bar, and Cross tells me that he only started enjoying beer after a recent trip to Japan.

Earlier today, I visited City Lights bookstore. I get the sense that to be a poet in San Francisco is to be a poet in the centre of the world.