Instant Cities: San Francisco

San Francisco › Places and landmarks

City Lights

The bookshop of the Beat poets on Columbus Avenue, which published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl in 1956.

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Photo: Another Believer, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

City Lights opened in 1953 on Columbus Avenue at Broadway, started by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin. It was one of the first shops in the country to sell only paperbacks, and it stayed open late for the poets and writers of North Beach.

In 1956 Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl in his series of Pocket Poets. The police seized the book and arrested him for selling obscene writing, but in 1957 a judge ruled that the poem was not obscene. The trial made Howl, City Lights and the Beat writers famous.

The alley beside the shop is named after Jack Kerouac, and across it lies Vesuvio, the bar where the Beats drank. Ferlinghetti kept working in the shop until he was very old; he died in 2021, aged 101. Visit it in 3D ›

More in San Francisco

Transamerica PyramidThe white pyramid of the Financial District, 260 metres tall, the sign of San Francisco’s skyline since 1972. Ferry BuildingThe ferry terminal at the foot of Market Street, with its clock tower after the Giralda of Seville, now a food hall. Coit TowerThe slim concrete tower on top of Telegraph Hill, built in 1933 with the money of Lillie Hitchcock Coit. Dragon GateThe gate into Chinatown on Grant Avenue at Bush Street, with green tiled roofs, dragons and two stone lions. ChinatownThe oldest Chinatown in North America, along Grant Avenue and Stockton Street, with lanterns over the street. Union SquareThe square of the big shops and hotels, named after the rallies for the Union before the Civil War. Cable carsThe last cable cars in the world still running in city streets, pulled up the hills by a cable under the road. Washington SquareThe green heart of North Beach, the Italian quarter, before the white church of Saints Peter and Paul. Golden Gate BridgeThe orange suspension bridge across the mouth of the bay, about five kilometres west of the game’s map. Lombard StreetThe block of Lombard Street on Russian Hill with eight hairpin bends between flower beds, west of the game’s map. AlcatrazThe rocky island in the bay, a federal prison from 1934 to 1963, built so that no one could swim away. Sourdough breadThe sour, chewy bread of San Francisco, baked since the Gold Rush from a living dough.