An interviewer from WNYC set out in 1959 to comb Greenwich Village for Beats, though he found almost no one who would admit to being one. What he did manage to capture in the documentary were the ramblings of various residents and several anguished poetry recitations monitored at the Gaslight coffeehouse. The program narrator also tries to understand the Beats: their protest and quest for meaning, and interest in Eastern religions. The second half of the work gets into the history of Greenwich Village and its bohemian tradition. This is the complete program, thanks to the Peabody Archives at the University of Georgia.

The original WNYC Municipal Archive discs of this program are missing. The old catalog indicates there were 2 - 16" discs. The recording on CD 993 was taken from a Rhino Records reissue of an excerpt of the longer work. Municipal Archives # LT 9089

Based on the Peabody archive # this dates from February 8, 1959.

WNYC archives id: 12099