Foster’s Cafeteria on Polk Street in San Francisco was a popular gathering place for artists and poets. It was located beneath the Wentley Hotel, where poet John Wieners wrote his seminal book, The Hotel Wentley Poems, in 1958. H. D. Moe, another poet who resided in the hotel, remembered Barton as “kind of the philosophical mentor” of a group that spent time in the café below.
Rick Barton (1928–1992)
Untitled [Seated man in Foster’s Cafeteria], 1962
Pen and ink
Rick Barton papers (Collection 2374), UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles