Browsing San Francisco's Beatnik Past at City Lights Bookstore
A creaky triangle, refusing to yield to the boxy skyscrapers and shops of North Beach, City Lights is a literary monument to San Francisco’s beatnik past. Work your way through the densely packed labyrinth of shelves to find obscure, left-leaning works of fiction, history, politics, spirituality, and more, but the soul of the store is revealed in the upstairs poetry room. City Lights contains every American poet imaginable, an extraordinary selection of international works from far-flung countries, and an unparalleled collection of the beat poets that the historic store harbored, nurtured, and even published when no one else would.
If you could take just one photo:
City Lights Bookstore
You may find yourself driven to connect with the beatnik era when in San Francisco. The remnants of peace loving philosophies waving in the wind like tattered flags after a hard won war and the still lingering sense of independent thought somehow built into the city’s infrastructure may cause you a wanderlust that leads down an inexplicable path right to The City lights bookstore. You are certain to find them there, the ghosts of legends past. The originators of discontent with normalcy. They are still shuffling around the familiar and mysterious building that creeks and yawns, inspiring you to buy a book or read a poem that causes your daily worries to seem at once foolish and unnecessary.
Densely packed shelves, warm lighting and that inviting sign that has enthralled bibliophiles for years. Any trip to San Francisco would not be complete without a visit to the legendary independent bookstore City Lights. Since 1953, it has been a landmark of free thinking, radical publications and great deals on hard to find books. Anyone with a passion for literature will lose themselves for hours amongst the stacked poetry anthologies, old wooden stairways and hidden nooks brimming with history here. Spend a rainy, quiet afternoon catching up on the fiction you've missed over the years; or sit in a worn but inviting second floor chair, looking out over foggy gray rooftops and imagine you're back with Ferlinghetti planning the coming intellectual revolution.
Nothing captures San Francisco’s radical spirit and colorful history like the City Lights Bookstore. This unique triangular shaped building sits at the cultural crossroads of San Francisco’s Chinatown and Little Italy (North Beach) – perhaps a fitting parallel denoting the plethora of books this store carries. Anyone who loves books should consider setting aside a day to explore the nooks and crannies of this historical landmark in San Francisco. Of course, if you want to pick up a book of poetry by the legendary Lawrence Ferlinghetti, this is the right place to do so. And, if you ask nicely, you can get it autographed too!
On a hill in North Beach, between Telegraph Hill and Chinatown, lies a bastion of free thought and a monument to American literary history. But City Lights is no dusty archive full of roped-off tomes and shushing old librarians. It is a thriving bookstore, a flourishing independent publisher, and a celebration of the poetic legacy of San Francisco and the Beat movement that took fire there. Peruse the shelves of new and old fiction, philosophy, and graphic novels. Then head upstairs and bask in what may be the largest room dedicated to poetry of any bookstore in the country. Listen closely: you may just hear the spirits of the Beats howling to you.
A creaky triangle, refusing to yield to the boxy skyscrapers and shops of North Beach, City Lights is a literary monument to San Francisco’s beatnik past. Work your way through the densely packed labyrinth of shelves to find obscure, left-leaning works of fiction, history, politics, spirituality, and more, but the soul of the store is revealed in the upstairs poetry room. City Lights contains every American poet imaginable, an extraordinary selection of international works from far-flung countries, and an unparalleled collection of the beat poets that the historic store harbored, nurtured, and even published when no one else would.
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