City Lights Booksellers & Publishers: San Francisco Travel Guide

Three floors, one argument about books

City Lights sits where Columbus Avenue cuts past Broadway, right where North Beach meets Chinatown. Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin opened it in 1953 as a paperback-only shop. Ferlinghetti’s press, next to the counter, went on to publish Allen Ginsberg’s Howl in 1956 in the Pocket Poets Series. The 1957 obscenity trial that followed ended in acquittal, and the city made the shop an official landmark in 2001.

The layout covers art, poetry and mainstream titles across three levels:

• Main floor: new fiction, the house’s own City Lights imprint, staff picks and literary magazines.
• Upstairs: the poetry room, the heart of the Beat legacy, with chairs for reading.
• Basement: politics, history, philosophy and other nonfiction, arranged by subject.

Handwritten signs around the store ask you to sit and read. People take them at their word.

Browsing it right

This is a working bookshop, not a museum, so how you behave in it matters.

• Buy something. City Lights is independent, and the Pocket Poets paperbacks are small, cheap to carry and printed by the house itself. Prices are marked on each book.
• Pay how you like. Cards and contactless work at the register, as they do in most San Francisco shops.
• Keep photos brief. Snapping the storefront is normal. Filming in the narrow aisles while people read is not.
• Ask the staff. Booksellers can point you to local poets and small presses you won’t find in chain stores.
• Check for readings. Author events and launches are listed on the City Lights website. Look before you go, since popular ones fill the floor.

Timing and getting there

The store is open 10am to 10pm, seven days a week. That makes it one of the few places in the city where you can browse late after dinner. Weekdays are the easy choice, because foot traffic stays calm from 10am to 10pm. On weekends, try not to arrive between 12pm and 9pm: that is when the aisles fill and the poetry room loses its seats.

The nearest rail stop is Chinatown–Rose Pak station on Muni’s T Third line, a short walk uphill along Stockton and then over to Columbus. The Financial District is walkable from here too, though the blocks get steep. Parking in North Beach is scarce on weekend evenings, so take transit or a rideshare. Plan 45 minutes for a browse, or longer if you settle upstairs.

The block around it

Jack Kerouac Alley runs right alongside the shop. Its paving is set with lines of poetry, and murals cover the walls. Vesuvio Cafe, the Beat-era bar, sits on the other side of the alley. The Beat Museum is a short walk along Broadway.

Walk up Columbus and North Beach’s Italian side begins. Caffe Trieste has served espresso on Vallejo Street since 1956. Washington Square and the twin spires of Saints Peter and Paul Church are a few blocks further on. From there, Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill is a steep climb that takes about 15 minutes. Chinatown’s Grant Avenue runs parallel one block east, so it’s easy to fit both neighbourhoods into one afternoon.