"Down at 23rd and Welton a softball game was going on under floodlights which also illuminated the gas tank. A great eager crowd roared at every play. The strange young heroes of all kinds, white, colored, Mexican, pure Indian, were on the field, performing with heart-breaking seriousness. Just sandlot kids in uniform. Never in my life as an athlete had I ever permitted myself to perform like this in front of families and girl friends and kids of the neighborhood, at night, under lights; always it had been college, big-time, soberfaced; no boyish, human joy like this. Now it was too late. Near me sat an old Negro who apparently watched the games every night. Next to him was an old white bum, then a Mexican family, then some girls, some boys--all humanity, the lot. Oh, the sadness of the lights that night! The young pitcher looked just like Dean. A pretty blonde in the seats looked just like Marylou. It was the Denver Night; all I did was die."

Standing here, you're on the threshold of two historic Denver neighborhoods, Curtis Park and Five Points. The fourth stop of this auto tour will take you into the heart of Curtis Park, but if you were to drive four blocks north on Welton Street, you'd quickly find yourself at the heart of Five Points, Denver's historic African-American community, where Kerouac came chasing Cassady and Cassady came chasing jazz. At 27th and Welton Streets, you'll see the famous Rossonian Hotel, where jazz greats like Billie Holliday, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and many others played in the twenties, thirties and forties.

When you think of the linkages between jazz and the Beats, and Cassady's influence on Kerouac, Denver starts to have an even stronger role in the development of the Beat Generation. Cassady caught some of the last of the great jazz in the early forties, and Kerouac was introduced to the Denver clubs in the summer of '47 by Ed White and Hal Chase. In the first chapter of On The Road, Kerouac writes about his thoughts on the corner of 27th and Welton during the '49 visit. Kerouac's ethnic nomenclature dates him, big-time, but the passage documents a unique American middle-point between alienation and integration: it wasn't about ethnicity, but about lostness, beatitude, being Beat.

And although lunch may be had at Mighty Beat Car Tour Stop #5, you should know that there is supreme food to be had in Five Points: Brown Sugar's Burgers n' Bones at 24th and Welton Streets (across from the baseball field) provides massive rib/burger portions and the juke box has old Al Green singles. Ethel's House of Soul is sublime at 26th and Welton, and Zona's Tamales at 27th, across from the Rossonian, is the place for anything from tamales and ribs to that pig's ear sandwich that's had your name on it all these years. There's a sundries store on the east side of Welton, just up from Ethel's, and now and then, on bright, clear mornings, the owner turns the outside speakers on and the street is filled with jazz, and R&B classics.

DIRECTIONS TO THE NEXT STOP
If you're parked on 24th Street, continue west one block to Stout Street and take a right. Continue north for two blocks, taking a left on 26th Street for one short half-block.