The Buk Shop

With the birth of his “Notes of a Dirty Old Man” column in 1967, Charles Bukowski suddenly found his work sharing the same pages with counterculture writers and artists. Because he was in his late 40s at that point, Bukowski didn’t feel much camaraderie with the younger cultural movements, but he didn’t outright dislike them either. He viewed this new underground movement as well-meaning, but naïve in a world he had seen crush earlier generations.

One counter-culture artist that Bukowski had seen and appreciated was Robert Crumb. He most likely first saw Crumb’s work in Underground Digest, a magazine out of New York that published syndicated content from 31 newspapers and magazines that were members of the “Underground Press Syndicate”. Only two issues were produced, but both Bukowski and Crumb’s work appeared prominently in each. Read more.