“I’m having a huge fifteen cent beer in a bar off the waterfront but a brown businessman’s bar and at the hem of the financial district with Emil-like feathers and men drinking at long bar—I say ‘brown’ bar not in jest, red neons or pink ones too shine in the smoke and reflect off dark browned panels, the beer is brown, tabletops, the lights are white but embrowned, the tile floor too . . .”

—Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.