116 MacDougal

The true, inside, personal story of how a Greenwich Village coal-cellar turned coffee shop, "The Gaslight," and its owner--flamboyant con-man and womanizer, John Mitchell--nurtured and inspired unknown Folk musicians and Beat writers including Bob Dylan, Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary, Tom Paxton, Dave VanRonk, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac. Mitchell protected them from the police, the Mafia and City Hall, who wanted to stop them from performing in the village.. An elderly local priest accepts The Gaslight's message and confronts his own religion, his homosexuality, and the fear gripping the country over the Civil Rights Movement, the Red Scare and the Cuban Missile Crisis.