"It might seem strange that a gigantic, staggeringly good new Cecily Brown work has emerged in a former flophouse where Jack Kerouac hacked out his scrolls..."

"... on the same block as Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios—though it’s been established that Hendrix is very much a Cecily Brown muse. The work usually comes to, say, Paula Cooper Gallery, where there’s a long line of buyers, collectors who otherwise have to shell out millions for her paintings at auction. And yet Brown herself could not be more pleased. She’s a scholar of the restaurant mural: paintings that enhance the space without completely overwhelming it, and seem like they’ve been there forever. Her favorites: the Maxfield Parrish at the St. Regis’s King Cole Bar, where Dalí and Duchamp used to carouse. The Howard Chandler Christy series in the restaurant at Hotel des Artistes, where Norman Rockwell lived. And, of course, the murals of Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel...."

From "Cecily Brown on the 'Unsexy' Art Market and Her New Restaurant Mural: “It Can’t be Moved. It’s Not for Sale'/Chez Nous at the Marlton Hotel has a new mural by one of the world’s great painters—whose works sell for millions at auction—and it’s already in a league with the famous wall paintings at Bemelmans Bar" (Vanity Fair)(click through to see the busy, cheerful mural).

The article has a link on Jack Kerouac that goes to another Vanity Fair article, one that begins with this Jack Kerouac quote: "As far as I’m concerned the only thing to do is sit in a room and get drunk."

Was Jack talking about rooms like that fancy-schmancy Chez Nous at the Marlton Hotel? And was he really an indoorsy guy? Challenged, I sought out the context of that quote, which appears on a lot of "famous quotes" page. But it's in something from 1960 called "The Vanishing American Hobo." No hobos Chez Nous, I suppose. Here's Jack:

There's something strange going on, you cant even be alone any more in the primitive wilderness... there's always a helicopter comes and snoops around, you need camouflage. -- Then they begin to demand that you observe strange aircraft for Civil Defense as though you knew the difference between regular strange aircraft and any kind of strange aircraft. -- As far as I'm concerned the only thing to do is sit in a room and get drunk and give up your hoboing and your camping ambitions because there aint a sheriff or fire warden in any of the new fifty states who will let you cook a little meal over some burning sticks in the tule brake or the hidden valley or anyplace any more because he has nothing to do but pick on what he sees out there on the landscape moving independently of the gasoline power army police station. -- I have no ax to grind: I'm simply going to another world.

Ray Rademacher, a fellow staying at the Mission in the Bowery, said recently, "I wish things was like they was when my father was known as Johnny the Walker of the White Mountains. -- He once straightened out a young boy's bones after an accident, for a meal, and left. The French people around there called him 'Le Passant' (He who passes through.)

The hobos of America who can still travel in a healthy way are still in good shape, they can go hide in cemeteries and drink wine under cemetery groves of trees and micturate and sleep on cardboards and smash bottles on the tombstones and not care and not be scared of the dead but serious and humorous in the cop-avoiding night and even amused and leave litters of their picnic between the grizzled slabs of Imagined Death, cussing what they think are real days, but Oh the poor bum of the skid row! There he sleeps in the doorway, back to wall, head down, with his right hand palm-up as if to receive from the night, the other hand hanging, strong, firm, like Joe Louis hands, pathetic, made tragic by unavoidable circumstance -- the hand like a beggar's upheld with the fingers forming a suggestion of what he deserves and desires to receive, shaping the alms, thumb almost touching finger tips, as though on the tip of the tongue he's about to say in sleep and with that gesture what he couldnt say awake: "Why have you taken this away from me, that I cant draw my breath in the peace and sweetness of my own bed but here in these dull and nameless rags on this humbling stoop I have to sit waiting for the wheels of the city to roll," and further, "I dont want to show my hand but in sleep I'm helpless to straighten it, yet take this opportunity to see my plea, I'm alone, I'm sick, I'm dying -- see my hand up-tipped, learn the secret of my human heart, give me the thing, give me your hand, take me to the emerald mountains beyond the city, take me to the safe place, be kind, be nice, smile -- I'm too tired now of everything else, I've had enough, I give up, I quit, I want to go home, take me home O brother in the night -- take me home, lock me in safe, take me to where all is peace and amity, to the family of life, my mother, my father, my sister, my wife and you my brother and you my friend -- but no hope, no hope, no hope, I wake up and I'd give a million dollars to be in my own bed -- O Lord save me --" In evil roads behind gas tanks where murderous dogs snarl from behind wire fences cruisers suddenly leap out like getaway cars but from a crime more secret, more baneful than words can tell.

The woods are full of wardens.