Ernest Beyl
Photo: Fred Lyon
Ernest Beyl was a San Francisco writer who had long been fascinated by the history of his city and the characters who have made it buzz with excitement. He wrote not only about San Francisco history, but also about food, restaurants, jazz, fly fishing and whatever else struck his fancy. His monthly column for San Francisco’s Marina Times gave him the idea for this book of Sketches from a North Beach Journal.
As a kid he was fascinated by the writer Richard Halliburton, a romantic loner who spent his life on what he called The Royal Road to Romance—title of his first book. Wishing to travel that royal road himself Beyl joined the marines at eighteen which seemed the most practical way to see the world. Following peacetime service in Asia and the Pacific he attended Stanford University and that set him up for a career in journalism. He became a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Mateo Times and later a free-lancer for magazines and newspapers. He did a stint as a Hollywood press agent which led him to Sun Valley, the Idaho ski resort, where he served as publicity manager and where he met an early idol, Ernest Hemingway. He passed April 11, 2018.
Books
San Franciscans from the Gold Rush of 1849 to yesterday have had a fascination with larger-than-life characters—from heroes and heroines to scoundrels—who have added a sense of vigor and panache to the city. Many of the prominent figures in this book have lived, worked, or just hung out in North Beach. The result is a vibrant, cultural hodge-podge—a San Francisco treasure, an exciting place to live or—if you’re a visitor—to dine, shop or just stroll the streets. These sketches present some of the distinctive contributors to the laid back, laissez faire atmosphere and attitudes of the old San Francisco neighborhood.
ISBN: 978-0983926467
San Francisco Appetites and Afterthoughts is Ernie Beyl’s second book published by Grizzly Peak Press. His first, Sketches from a North Beach Journal, traced the city’s history with profiles of larger-than-life characters who have added so much panache and excitement to the old neighborhood. San Francisco Appetites and Afterthoughts is an opinionated book by an opinionated guy. It hits the reader right between the ears. Open this book to any page and it hooks you: Levi Strauss and the copper rivets on his jeans and why they were removed from the crotch, Agnes von Kurowsky’s Dear John letter to Ernest Hemingway relates to Ernie’s Dear John letter after taking his girlfriend to the top of the Mark before he shipped out with the Marine Corps, The Haphazard Gourmet who gives Ernie his recipe for cassoulet because he knows a seduction depends on it. The book feature’s Ernie’s passions—his appetites for fascinating characters he’s known over the years in San Francisco—from poets to bartenders, from saloons to jazz. It’s the author’s life in the provocative city by the Golden Gate.
ISBN: 978-0983926498
Ernie Beyl is the author of Sketches From a North Beach Journal, San Francisco Appetites and Afterthoughts and now is releasing Stops Along the Royal Road. The book is filled with some amazing pictures from his travels including an unbelievable moment with Hemingway tossing olives into the mouth of none other than Gary Cooper!
Stops Along the Royal Road is a brilliant account of one man’s journey around the world with vibrant accounts of his many stops along the way. Ernie never ceases to find himself in the middle of a moment demanding to be recorded, allowing the rest of us to embrace charming scenarios as if we had witnessed them ourselves.
ISBN: 978-0-9988310-2-2
