Nico Smith ran a gallery in the Lower East Side in the early 1960s . Jan Kerouac was one of the regulars. She was thirteen at the time and would turn up with her boyfriend Frank Shifreen, who knew Nico.

It was only after Jan had visited the gallery a few times that someone said "Hey, you know who that is? That's Jan Kerouac, Jack's daughter"

"No kidding?" said Nico, "Geez, you coulda fooled me".

Meeting Nico was a nice bit of synchronicity. I had spent a few hours filming in Tompkins Park, where Jan used to play as a child. Just pickups. Nico was walking towards me, dressed as he is in this photo, with a small green Chinese diary in his hands. On the off-chance I asked him if he knew a person named Jan Kerouac, who was Jack Kerouac's daughter. Not only did he know Jan, he knew one of her teenage lovers, Frank Shifreen. He gave us Frank's number and we went drove off to talk with him.