City Lights, the Beat Generation's bookstore

In front of you is one of the most famous bookstores in the world. Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin founded it in 1953 as the first bookstore in the country devoted entirely to paperbacks. Ferlinghetti soon ran it on his own and, in 1955, launched a small poetry series.

1«Howl» on trial

In 1956, that series published Allen Ginsberg's «Howl and Other Poems», which the poet had first read in public the year before at a gallery in the city. In 1957, police arrested the store's manager, Shig Murao, for selling the book, and Ferlinghetti was tried for publishing obscene material. Judge Clayton Horn ruled that the poem was not obscene and had social value. That ruling opened the way for other banned books.

2From Beats to hippies

Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg and their friends made North Beach their neighborhood. A local columnist, Herb Caen, coined the word «beatnik» in 1958. A decade later the torch passed to Haight-Ashbury, about three kilometers west, which saw the so-called Summer of Love in 1967.

In 2001, City Lights became the first business, rather than a building, to be designated a city landmark.

Ferlinghetti died in 2021, at the age of 101.

3What to look for

• The sign and the windows, with posters and painted slogans.
• Jack Kerouac Alley, with writers' quotations set into the pavement.
• Vesuvio, across the alley, a favorite Beat hangout.