One of San Francisco’s most famous bookstores, City Lights is much more than a bookseller – it’s a publishing house, an official historic landmark and cultural icon, as well as a tourist attraction.
The independent bookstore has been around since 1953, when Peter D. Martin and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened the first all-paperback bookstore in the country. Two years later, the duo added a publishing company that began with poetry collections and later expanded to publish selected works of all kinds, most famously the works of the Beat writers like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. The publishing house has made a name for itself by giving a megaphone to progressive voices. Its most famous collection, Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg (1956) made headlines after it faced obscenity charges and went to court to defend their rights to free speech. The publication was ultimately cleared, marking an important moment for publishing rights and establishing City Lights as an important part of the literary world for generations to come.
City Lights is located at the edge of Chinatown and Little Italy’s main thoroughfare, Columbus Avenue. Alongside the building is a narrow alley now named after Jack Kerouac, and just across the alley is the notorious bar, Vesuvio, which was a popular hangout for writers of the Beat generation and other figures of the counterculture movement. It’s also in direct view of the Beat Museum down Broadway, which hosts a collection of artifacts and information about the movement and its key players, with a comprehensive history of the same.
The bookstore is part of San Francisco’s arts and culture scene. As a cultural landmark, it has also become a tourist attraction drawing Kerouac and Ginsberg fans and tourists to the store to pick up a copy of Howl or a poetry collection from local authors.
My first impressions of City Lights are that it’s undeniably cute and everything you could want in a bookstore: tiny rooms with black-and-white checkered floors, arched doorways; there’s character everywhere you look. Browsing the shelves in quiet reverence, it feels like a library with a carefully curated collection. These aren’t just your typical best sellers and pulp fiction. Instead, you’ll find books on politics and philosophy, gender studies, a foreign language (mainly Spanish) section, as well as fiction, with plenty of classics. They have graphic novels and some rare finds. City Lights is notable for its magazine collections, which include literary journals. There’s certainly a political slant to the works found at City Lights that’s in line with what you’d expect from the publisher that played such a role in defining the counterculture movement in San Francisco.
There are three floors of books, with chairs tucked away here and there to sit and peruse them. Past the register, a staircase leads to the basement, where there’s a small section of children’s books and some non-fiction.
On the main floor, through the small room that showcases locally published poetry collections, is a doorway that leads to a staircase. “Poetry Room” is painted on one of the stair risers on the way up, and that is exactly what you’ll find at the top of the stairs. The upper level is devoted entirely to poetry, including some of the Beat Poets who defined the generation. There’s a wooden rocking chair with “Poet’s Chair” painted on it, next to a sign that reads “Have a seat and read a book.”
After browsing through the many shelves of Kerouac and Ginsberg and all the rest, heading back down stairs, you’ll pass under a hand-painted sign that says “Where the streets of the world meet the avenues of the mind.” These slogans are painted on signs and straight on the walls all over this bookstore, along with posters from many literary events. One of them reads “Welcome to City Lights – a literary meeting place since 1953.”
At the base of those stairs, a cork board is covered in post-its with book recommendations and community event flyers paper the wall along the stairs down to the basement. City Lights hosts an assortment of events, especially readings by the authors.
The employees at City Lights, for the most part, are not known for being friendly or helpful. Those who have been working during my visits were cold but polite, and came off as elitist and sometimes judgmental, which I suppose is part of the charm of a place like this.
Though there were quite a few customers, the store was very quiet, and felt more like a library than most bookstores.
City Lights is not the cheapest place to buy some of these books, but what it lacks in economy it makes up for with its unique selection and ambiance, and I imagine some of the employees can be helpful when it comes to recommendations.
City Lights is all the things that paper-book holdouts love about books – the romantic setting, the scent of old books, and antique furniture – all in a historic venue.
General Info
Address: 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133
Phone: (415) 362-8193
Hours: Daily – 10 am to midnight