As a San Francisan in the mid-fifties, I was part of the outlaw biker scene. We hung out in an upstairs pool hall at the corner of Seventh and Market.
While Herb Caen was responsible for many things San Francisco, I'd question his coining of the term Beatnik. The Beats were already fading in '58. His putting it in print may have lent credence to the term, brought out of the underground and into the polite lexicon.
As an addled octogenarian, I cannot swear to anything requiring perfect recall, but I think the term had its beginnings in '55 or '56--perhaps even earlier.
1
I came out for the summer of 1957 as a 23-yr-old. My ride from L.A. left me at Market at Montgomery, and I walked up to City Lights. Ferlinghetti was standing next to the counter talking to Mike McClure. I introduced myself and asked what composers in town were doing interesting things.
"Mort Subotnick for sure," McClure said.
I noted the name, and when I returned to stay in 1959 to study at the S.F. Conservatory, it wasn't too long before Mort and my paths crossed. Our electronic music collaborations lasted up until the Trips Festival centrifuge whirled me out of the city to a rural open-door commune. Fourteen years later I returned.
San Francisco has changed a lot, but still remains to my mind the best place for a young artist to try his wings because it's a wide-open town. It does not offer the financial patronage of L.A. and New York, which is why so often, after an artist is established, they move away. But some don't, having fallen in love with what remains as far west as a young person can go on dry land. I'm a lucky guy! Thanks, Larry, for everything!!
3
I went there on a brief business trip about 25 years ago. Besides being vigourously panhandled by a scary individual while I sat on a bus to go to the airport, and wondering at how brown and dried out local vegetation was, I only remember some wharf restaurant where a local colleague and I dined - don't remember what we ate. So this whole piece came to me as a sort of interesting expose of what I may have missed there, the book stores for instance, and the long cliched Kerouac stuff, and some interesting restaurants. The article almost interested me enough to go back, but not quite. I would rather visit, if I have the chance, the Grand Canyon, and the natural beauties of the Sonoran desert....
3
I was born in SF in 1951. Lived in the City most of my life. Rarely have read an article that made it seem as quaint as this one does. It’s many things. Been many things it’s not quaint. Zero out of ten.
1
Not everyone loved the Beats, even in wide-open San Francisco. The columnist Herb Caen, nonplused, invented the term “Beatnik” in 1958, which made the Beats sound like something you’d want to flick off, like fleas.-
WRONG. "Beatnik' is a derisive term relating to "Sputnik' which was the Russian rocket. It is supposed to link the beats to communism. As in the beats are a bunch of Commies
Is the The NY Times? or Yahoo?
2
Two of my Great great granduncles stepped off a whaling ship into San Francisco, in 1865 and The City has been a lodestone to our family ever since. One of those distant uncles, a natural storyteller, lived to nearly Mr. Ferlinghetti's present age and so my early childhood was livened by accounts of those early days. A century after his arrival, The City offered me experiences to continue the family saga of inspiration, love, and adventure, which I relate to my children, grandchildren, and grand nieces and nephews, many of whom are part of the today's tech revolution.
So, from whale oil and poetry to Artificial Intelligence, The City and we continue this journey into an unknown future. In that light, it is good to read, from my current home, a lifetime and a few mountain ranges to the east, that City of Lights and the Sam Wo Restaurant still grace The City.
6
The Strand, alas, is not what it used to be. But City Lights very much is. It's always my first stop in SF, better than any bookstore in NY for spending an hour or two to get a fix on all the most interesting current nonfiction (and fiction and poetry) in America. In other words, to catch the wave of the latest thought published in American English. Plus, it has simply the ideal ambience for a book store. My favorite on the planet. You can have a really terrific day in North Beach anchored by Mama's for the best breakfast in America, City Lights, Tony's Pizza (as good as Keste in Greenwich Village, meaning as good as the best of Napoli), and the cafes. Better than any comparably sized area of Greenwich Village, much less the Lower East Side, for the life of the mind, the belly, and drinking, if that's your thing. Add walking around Telegraph Hill, and it's hard to think of a better urban day on earth, unless fine art is paramount for you, and you'd rather be in the National Gallery in London, or the Louvre, or the Prado, or the Vatican. But for sheer joie de vivre, if I had only one day left, and I was still weirdly in fine health, I'd wander North Beach and environs for that last great shot of exuberance for all the senses, and the brain.
8
In the late 60’s, I was drafted by my local Selective Service board back East.
Having completed the customary shake-n-bake cursory training, I was sent to Oakland for “outbound processing”. This consisted of aimlessly waiting around for a couple days while one’s final orders for Vietnam were processed.
One day while waiting outside the processing center, a stranger drove up and asked me if I wanted to see her beautiful city. She must have been in her sixties, behind the wheel of 10-year old sedan, and appeared neither threatening nor alluring. I hopped in. She then drove me around SF and pointed out one highlight after another - from City Lights and Nob Hill to the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, and Chinatown.
At the end of the day, she dropped me off where she had picked me up. I asked her why she had given me such a tour. She said she felt sorry for the guys heading overseas, and just wanted them to have some good memories of her beautiful city to think back on.
Never saw her again. But my fond memory of San Francisco, and her generous citizens, will stay with me forever.
18
Good read. I’m a long way away but you took me there.
6
My father's sister came out to San Francisco in the 40's following some guy. Whatever became of him I have no idea but she eventually met and married the man who would become my uncle and raised two sons on Hernandez Avenue. So I've been coming out to the city just about every year since 1972 for a week or longer visits with relatives and old friends.
Yet I find myself every time taking the same ritualized tour. It always begins with a climb up the Filbert Steps to Coit Tower and a walk down the hill to North Beach and one of its many cafes for an espresso. Before I come home I will have usually made visits to Ina Coolbrith Park, Fort Point, Fort Mason, Marina Green, Crissy Beach, China Beach, Clement Street (for Burmese or Vietnamese food), the California Legion of Honor, Land's End Trail, Cliff House (I've seen 3 incarnations), Stow Lake, the DeYoung Museum, Alta Plaza Park, Yank Sing and the Ferry Building (ideally when there's the farmers market). This is San Francisco for me.
I can attest that San Francisco does endure.
7
Fortunately, I lived in San Francisco for ten years, from 1970 through 1980. I still believe that to have been a magical time - certainly for me. San Francisco has since changed. Too much money and too many homeless lining the streets. But, like with a person, once having fallen in love with the city, I will always love it. And I will always see it as being changed - sadly.
6
Add to your travel list: the wonderful, huge wall sculpture of Ferlinghetti's poem "Once Emerged From The New Night Fog" done in metal by artist Annie Vought in the lobby at 600 California Street (https://www.wescover.com/p/public-sculptures-by-annie-vought-at-600-california--PBkv7WZPaPmW). I came upon it by accident and was mesmerized. Ferlinghetti reminds us what the soul of SF really is amidst it's current upheaval of overdevelopment.
3
In 1959 my husband and I stopped in Dallas, Texas to visit a friend who had moved there from New York, on our way to honeymoon in Mexico. We hung around "The Interlude Coffee House" a pseudo-beatnik place which featured an all-black jazz band, with Jimmy Clay playing flute. Downstairs, was Lulubelle, a black woman from Albuquerque, who dressed in calypso costume and played the guitar. We became the resident portrait artists. The feature star was an 18 year old nubile blonde, "Sherry Riley, queen of the beatniks." She read poetry, while the band played jazz. The customers (all white, Dallas was segregated then) were mostly young men, who gleefully competed for her poem, which she threw out into the audience, like a stripper throwing a garter. Ferlinghetti was one of her favorite poets. Back in San Francisco, about 25 years later, I met Ferlinghetti at a party given by my poet friend, Kathy Goss. Jack Hirschman, Jack Micheline and I reminisced about growing up in the Bronx. Ferlinghetti liked a poem I read, so I decided to tell him about Sherry Riley and the Interlude. His reaction was "Wow! I wish I could have met her!"
1
My favorite area in SF, always head to Vesuvio first off. But I've "learned", or at least decided in my mind, that it's best to just get into the area...whichever area you are interested in...and then explore with your own mind and your own feet. Why let a place be defined just by others - who ate here or stayed there or whatever? - make it your own world, see it with your own eyes. My greatest enjoyment in exploring the North Shore was repeated walks and just looking and imagining...looking along and through the streets to the harbor, imagining what that was like 100 years ago. And only later finding out that perhaps some "famous" person had done the same. But I did it with my own eyes, my own mind, and especially my own imagination. SF is made for imagining. A wonderful place.
4
Off the topic of San Francisco and Ferlinghetti, and as we celebrate another St Paddy’s Day tomorrow, I think the one book that equals or surpasses Kerouac’s On The Road is Frank McCourt’s ‘Tis, his autobiography of trying to scape by tooth and nail as an immigrant to New York. Like Kerouac, he was also on the GI Bill, but who, as a grade school dropout, managed to con his way into having NYU accept him as an undergraduate student. He lived uncomfortably then in the Village amid all of the philosophical conversations about existentialism of which he self deprecatingly hadn’t a clue. In many ways, he was the ultimate beat who went on to writing a masterpiece late in life after a career as a NYC high school teacher.
6
What is missing here, as well as from most stories about our city, is a word about the neighborhoods in which we actually live; vibrant, diverse, and if not immune to change, changing slowly. Walk down Clement St in my neighborhood; hear five languages, eat at restaurants serving two dozen different types of food, save money at the Chinese markets, freeze your butt off in the cold wind blowing in from the ocean only a mile away. Oh, and visit Green Apple Books, truly the best bookstore in the City. And once inside, remember to look up.
14
Great to read.
Having lived here for over 25 years I still and probably always will have to pinch myself feeling that it’s so much more than just a destination living here. Each day I see for the first time the beauty that connects the past with the present and somehow transcends experience.
I am incredibly fortunate not just to reside here but to have accumulated enough life experiences to manage living here and to chart yet another adventure and career path, neither of which is predicated by a bankroll or for that matter bankruptcy.
Among the more memorable experiences in my stay was being a witness to the dot.com boom over twenty years ago. Whereas tech with the intervening years to be sure has prompted other changes, the late 90’s really hadn’t had or didn’t have a precedent. It was disheartening to say the least.
The other was 9/11. Overnight the treatment of open spaces formerly for public gatherings changed forever. Union Square is more antiseptic than and as utterly sterile as a no-name big box store. Why on Earth does anyone want to be near much less pass through it?
There are two aspects of living here, though by no means the only two, that need exacting attention and multilateral or multilevel tangible support- public transportation and affordable communal living. Both are being earnestly and productively addressed by the community, and I do mean at large.
Yes, rent control is vital. I would not be here without it. I dare say nor would Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
38
@Orbis Deo "Each day I see for the first time the beauty that connects the past with the present and somehow transcends experience." YES!
My father is a Landscape Architect, long retired, who had an office at 700 Montgomery next door to lawyer Melvin Beli.
About 35 years ago he bid on the renovation of union square with a wonderful design that preserved and enhanced the lush greenery of the original. I have never seen him so bummed when the antiseptic design won. And every time I visit Union Square, it saddens me.
10
Oh, Mr. Garner, now THIS is The City of my birth. You have recaptured its essence in so many ways. How discouraged I have been after reading recent pieces of the ways SF has changed, and, unfortunately, not for the better: Increasing homelessness, the unequal distribution of wealth, unaffordable housing, the new-comers, techies included, who have as of yet no appreciation for the richness of this City by The Bay's culture and soul. I not too long ago commented on a Times' piece as to whether The City can be "saved." I replied, "Of course it can." You see it will always live on, rejecting any attempt to modify who and what this fine metropolis is. To Mr. Ferlinghetti, "Happy Birthday, sir." And to him I dedicate Bob Dylan's classic, Forever Young, sung by the great Joan Baez.
36
It's a funny thing about a place that so many people love, you often hear (no matter when you get there) that its golden age has passed. Even when I first came to San Francisco in 1978 I heard a litany of all the classic "old City" places that had closed down, or moved, or lost their essence somehow. This article is an excellent reminder that nostalgia is part of the yearning that a unique place will summon in us. And it's a reminder that when you take the time to look, you find many classics still there, sometimes hidden. The Saloon on upper Grant, open since 1851; Cliff House on Ocean Beach, an art deco classic; Top of the Mark on Nob Hill, on and on. And some newer places capture the City spirit as well or better than many surviving classics. Mo's Grill on Grant is as good or better than many classic diners that have shut down (Though Louis' Diner out at Land's End is still going and still has the best view of any diner anywhere), and a new generation of cocktail places are worthy successors to places like the old Washington Square Bar and Grill ("Washbag"). Try 15 Romolo on a tiny alley behind the Beat Museum. You will always hear that the best days have passed for SF, Paris, Venice, etc.; don't you believe it. Just go, and see for yourself.
48
@Cal Prof. You forgot to mention the Beach House with the fabulous full figured WPA murals at the west end of Golden Gate Park. There are cultural highlights in that town from every decade, generation.
5
@SallyK- I considered mentioning the Beach House! If you throw in a visit to Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park, it makes a great outing. And if you like 30s murals, you probably know the Diego Rivera murals at Coit Tower and SF State....
4
To paraphrase Gavin Elster, in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” the things that spell San Francisco to me are changing fast but, in this wonderful love letter, you have brilliantly catalogued the ones that count and remain—chief among them, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and his one-of-a-kind City Lights Bookstore. You truly captured the “religious fervor” with which I and others browse its shelves and soak up its history and atmosphere, not to mention the seemingly paradoxical walkability of San Francisco’s imposing hills. As the sign in the City Lights window says, “Stash Your Sell Phone and Be Here Now”.
98
I grew up in San Francisco in the '60s. As someone not really old enough or educated enough to really understand it all, I loved the idea of the Beats, the poetry, the counterculture. It would take a move to NYC to study "On the Road" and "Howl" in high school. Having just a few days ago read the article about the IPOs of SF-based companies preparing the demise of anything like an affordable life in the Bay Area, I have to shed a tear for what was once a unique place to live or visit. Even Tadich, my perennial first-night-in-town restaurant, no longer has sourdough french bread. "The times they are a'changin" and like music, moving downward.
129
@alocksley I read the article too and it's fairly exaggerate. I have found that reporter to exaggerate almost everything she writes about the bay area.
Sure the housing problem in SF is a problem, but when has it not been? There is a good number of housing units in other cities built around The City, as well as in the suburbs of the Bay Area. My problem is the traffic on the peninsula.
5
@alocksley I ate at Tadich's a few weeks ago and did indeed, have some sour dough bread. You must have been there on an off night, perhaps?? However, you are correct about the City changing. All cities change, of course, but here we have become the city of young, six figure salaried people who seem to have no appreciation of the city they now inhabit. I was born here 87 years ago, so I do remember a lot of what these newbies don't know (or care) about.
24
@alocksley You'd be surprised as to how much of that magic still exists, if you know where to look.....The patina will never polish off completely.
14
On a wall of my study is a much cherished letter dated Oct. 9, 1970. It's from City Lights. The enclosed two-sentence letter simply states, "City Lights is not accepting any more manuscripts this year, The editor took off."
On a visit to City Lights many years after that rejection letter, I purchased tow books of poetry by Mr. Ferlinghetti. He took my money at the counter, then he cheerfully signed both.
I told him about that rejection many years before. He responded, "That was probably my loss." It wasn't.
Happy birthday, Lawrence.
218
In the late 90's I made two trips to SF. It's a beautiful city. And at that time, the people were open and friendly, but not in a pushy way.
I always loved the laid back atmosphere, food, and obviously the weather. I accidently, ( I swear it was accidental!), stumbled upon a nude beach, I believe it was Baker's Beach?? And I was like man, this is the life. I always planned to go back, but after everything that's changed there , I have little desire to do so. Sad.
6
Sigh... The story reads like and epitaph in a long-forgotten language: The places, the people all made ghosts by the inevitable forces of change. Indeed, Kerouac's pilgrims still come but for what? To look-up an old address where something once burned in the night? What burned in the night were human energies and human passions that gave San Francisco its Zeitgeist, its raisons d'être.
Yes, change is inevitable, but I didn't think it would go this way, so fast and so cold.
19
A few years ago I explored San Francisco to rediscover the old Beat haunts. I too made the pilgrimage to City of Lights Bookstore. However, I soon realized I was merely chasing ghosts, and any vestige of Beat-energy feeling in the air had long been snuffed out by the type of American capitalism-consumerism that tends to love cultural originality and uniqueness to death. The City of Lights Bookstore was nothing more than a Barnes & Noble, in my opinion. I did venture downstairs and snuck a peak behind some bookshelves at a dingy corner, the exposed brick lit by a single light bulb. I imagined Kerouac et al sneaking down here for a hit of "tea", as it were.
But, sadly, I was just chasing ghosts. A more authentic cultural experience in San Francisco would be wherever the 20-year olds are hanging out to express themselves and share their voice through their art.
11
San Francisco is the best provincial city in America.
It's only problem is that it's large industrious white upper middle class imagines it to be Milan. But wine and cheese does not a european culture make.
Everything good about San Francisco is genuine and sincere, so why this need on the part of it's property owners to compare itself with a distant old world wealth and gravitas that it does not possess?
My guess is it's because of the bad parts of the city, which this imagined image, a fantasy of sophistication can briefly eclipse. In reality San Francisco is a new world entity in the best and worst way.
The homeless ruin the place. They exist because of the same calvinist heritage that inspires the punitive models and selfishness on the east coast. Yet, every other person there claims to be a democratic socialist. They seem to think that socialism involves being very concerned — no San Francisco. Pay higher taxes, use it to build housing, expand rent control, push California into a single payer system — then you'll be a little bit more like Milan.
28
@Arthur Wow, this has nothing to do with the article.
6
Good point. I was chagrined when I lived there that every building’s doorway became a homeless person’s bed. I could not believe that such a classy place would be that way. And that the liberals in power would not do anything about it.
2
@Arthur
There is nothing provincial about San Francisco, except of course literally: it is not the capital of the USA.
4
Around 1994 I was having a beer in Vesuvio’s while visiting my sister in San Francisco. An old man in a hat passed our table and told us we should come to the poetry reading that evening at the bookstore across the street. Then he went on his way. My brother-in-law said, you know who that was, don’t you? That was Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A couple of hours later, after dinner, we passed by City Lights. There was a huge crowd to hear the poet. It was Allen Ginsberg.
47
@CPA, and you didn't take the advice of the first or stop walking by the second? what a waste.
7
From Chicago and L.A., I’ve spent many good years in the City, San Francisco, from the 1950s through the 70s, at sundry junctures in my life. It’s a place to go to refresh the mind, with thanks for enhancing that precious faculty to the owner, himself a fine editor, of City Lights, yes, a great publishing house and bookstore! There’s the City itself, with its tonic climate and beautiful views of itself and surroundings from so many corners, notably in North Beach, and it has been hospitable to misfits from elsewhere. Its faculty of refreshing the mind was already over a century old when the Beats showed up: think of Twain, for example. The Beats were literate, open to other cultures, but resistant to rampant U.S. commercialism. Will the City ever welcome new rebels again?
17
I grew up in SF and my dad, a poet and an organiser of poetry events, and Ferlinghetti were friends. I spent many hours in City Lights Bookstore, a favourite destination of my father's. My dad passed away the year before last at 95 years old. It's nice to know that Ferlinghetti is still with us. He and the other poets and innovative individuals have left us all a rich legacy that should always be appreciated and respected. Though San Francisco has changed in many dramatic ways in recent years, there thankfully remains a strong independent and creative spirit. Cheers to Ferlinghetti!
54
When my late wife Tina and I visited San Francisco about 18 years ago City Lights was where she wanted to go. I have a photograph of her in the front of the store. Sadly, we had just missed Mr. Feringhetti and she was disappointed. To her visiting the bookstore was like a visit to the Holy Grail. Me, I am not into poetry, but Tina had loved it her entire life and since we are from New York City had spent many days in the Village. One story Tina's father tells is that when she worked a summer in his office one of his coworkers came in and asked him if he knew what his daughter was reading. He said yes, and they added well you should have another talk with her. In her family not a big deal as they had been involved in the Ethical Culture Society in New York City and spent summers at the Farm. Tina was always a free spirit and she passed away in our bedroom that we had painted "mellow yellow" for her love of City Lights, poetry, Dylan, Donovan, and others. Unlike me Tina always saw the good in every person. She had gone to high school with a member of the Fuggs whose songs were radical in their day. Besides having books, the bookstore creates memories of those one loved and are no longer with us that last a lifetime. Jim Trautman
56
A really nice article, but one I wish I had had in 1965 so that I could have found all the neat places. I had read Ferlinghetti during the 1960s and visited City Lights in that same 1965 trip. I spend weeks and weeks there enjoying the city which was way different in feel than NYC, which at the time I lived near. This article was a great nostalgia piece for those of us young in the 1950s and 60s and traveling this great country.
65
Simple way to help:
Keep a wishlist on Amazon. Then buy those books in City Lights whenever you are close.
5
No one who actually lives in San Francisco would go to any of these bars or restaurants. Book stores, OK. As others have noted, Green Apple should have been visited.
But I glad articles such as this one are written. They serve to keep tourists out of our way. (Also, who doesn't know what Petrale sole is?)
2
Sadly, San Francisco is no longer the place to go if you want to drop-out and hang with artists, writers, and musicians. It's now the playground of wealthy young techies who, by their presence, push out those who came here to escape from materialism.
1967, We lived on Waller Street, near Buena Vista pk. The short walk to Masonic then down to Haight was always interesting. Captain Acid in his sailors cap, the Print Mint, Folks selling the San Francisco Oracle, there was always a bunch outside the Fog Horn fish n chops, great and tasty wrapped in news paper rolled into a cone. Strobe lights beamed, the Haight Street Palace had wondrous posters and music. Hippie hill was a pleasant walk from the corner of Haight and Stanyon.
I met David Peel when he asked me where the Haight Ashbury switch board (communication center) was. I would often join him on the street as he sang his songs, The idyllic scene passed away in a mysterious sudden flood of Amphetamine and Heroin. It brought terrible people into the area who seemed to be immune from the police.
We were ripped off by these bad people who had tombstones in their eyes. The marijuana and psychedelic people were rounded up. I can still see how the police assaulted captain acid brutally draggeing him off, even as the meth and heroin people were ignored to continue to prey on the innocent. This was during Ronald Reagan's reign as a vociferous "Flower Child" hating Governor.
This could have been a Government Co-intel pro destruction of the Haight's gentle flower scene. After the terrible flood of terrible "addicting" drugs, the gentle folks fled to other parts of the land, escaping the jack boots of Reagan.
2
@Getreal
Fog Horn Fish and Chips
From my NY Times email newsletter, California Today: “Dwight [Garner, author of the article] also visited the man himself, but Mr. Ferlinghetti wasn’t too keen to play tour guide.”
When I linked to the story, it clearly states the two never met, speaking only by phone in conversations where Mr. Ferlinghetti expressed his disdain for talking about “travel stuff.” And Garner, “a Times book critic,” was writing a piece for the travel section. Uh-oh. So he switched gears moving the conversation to books and writing and got a few good quotes about the old days. Then he went ahead and wrote a travel piece anyway using Ferlinghetti’s upcoming birthday as a hook.
What we have here reads like a restaurant advertorial for beat groupies who want a bit more than to sit in a window seat at Vesuvio sipping espresso. These folks want oysters, and they want to eat them at a place with historical literary significance.
Too bad Mr. Ferlinghetti wasn’t “keen to play tour guide.” Sounds cranky. Maybe it’s because he’s almost 100 yrs old and nearly blind?
Good to note that SF still supports independent bookstores — at least until the real estate they sit upon becomes too valuable and they’re forced out by developers.
Fortunately, City Lights is (apparently?) protected from this fate. It may not make much money selling books but as long as Beat Mythology thrives, (personally, I hope it does) businesses in North Beach will too.
But please...let’s not make it into some literary theme park.
2
Spec's? Green Apple Books??!
3
@FlyLiz, Loved Spec's. Especially the many post cards from the person who was "searching for the American Dream"
1
RE: When some needs to be saved such as the Gold Dust Lounge, where Janis Joplin and Tony Bennett hung out, and which once upon a time was a burlesque bar.
How laughable. Saving a bar that junkie frequented?
Tony Bennett is a nice man and a good entertainer but even his presence does not make a bar worth saving.
What about the mention of Green Apple Books on Clement Street?
1
Your readers who are familiar with the beat/hippie SF era, or who would like to be, might really enjoy the Magic Bus Tours that start from downtown SF. (I have no connection to them, just loved the tours.) From the 60s music to drop-down screens with videos of the era, to riding by many of the locations you mention, it is great fun! Brought back many memories of my decades in The City I called my longest love affair. Not so much anymore: American greed has taken over; a prime example: the phallic SalesForce building erected (pun intended) in recent years. I moved to SF when none of the skyscrapers existed; the sheer density is a blight. But Mother Nature still shows herself at Her most beautiful for any cityscape in the scenery around the Bay.
There's a reason that it will soon be the most expensive city ever to live in: It is magical!
1
I was here for the Summer of Love, (1969), was graduated from Berkeley and loved living in San Francisco and the Bay Area til I moved to New York in 1977.
It was super congested in those days, and the best way to get around and park was an old BMW motorcycle. It was fun to walk around the City, under Melvin Beli's "shingle". We used to hang out with Margo St. James and her COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) movement at The Hookers Ball. The Cliff House, Chez Panisse, Fat Albert's, Trader Vic's, Taditch Grill, Top of The Mark, Dipti Nivahs, and of course the world famous San Francisco Sourdough Bread and Walter Landau's office boat were all favorites.
Santa Cruz (home of the famous Catalyst Bar) was a sleepy beach town, and Highway 1 was very inviting and accessible for a weekend getaway at the Aladdin Motel, overlooking Steamer's Lane.
We protested against the war, against investments in South Africa, for womens' rights and the First Earth Day. We played pong.
Now it seems to be even more congested: populated with rich automatons without a shred of craziness which made it famous.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti was the soul of the city...and very friendly and approachable in those days.
6
When, about 20 years ago, I told my friend Diana that I'd written to Ferlinghetti, she exclaimed, "You can't do that!" Maybe so, I replied, but I had anyway. When I told her that he'd written me back, she exclaimed, "But he's dead!" Apparently not.
May this magnificent man, who knows a lot about light, keep beating the odds.
4
Because I had so associated the book with New Orleans, I was surprised to find Interview with a Vampire starting off on Divisadero Street, where Anne Rice said she invented the character.
2
I have my own San Francisco memories, which the world will little note nor long remember. But just to add, Armistead Maupin, barely three-quarters Ferlinghetti's age, carried on the great tradition of the Beats with "Tales of the City." It was made into a splendid TV miniseries in which San Francisco was as much a character as any of the actors.
8
If I had it to do over again, I’d grow up to be a centenarian poet! I did move to San Francisco as a young hippie in ‘72, I had read Kerouac and was a bit of a student of the Beats, drank the cappuccinos at the Trieste and Specs. I drove a cab there for 7 years, who didn’t, and then became a lawyer where I learned the REAL story of everything. I lived and loved that town for 30 years, and I approve of this article...but really, it ought be published in the “Time Travel” section.
16
My favorite is "Poetry as Insurgent Art." A quote for our times:
" Wake up, the world's on fire!
Have a nice day."
7
I missed any reference to Co-Existence Bagel shop on Grant Avenue up the street from City Lights. As for Sam Wo, the old location was a real rat trap beloved by Beats and poor college students alike.
Hail, Ferlinghetti, on your 100th!
6
Anyone interested in the history, architecture, and culture of SF should check out the free volunteer-led City Guides walking tours. They are fascinating and take you from one end of the city to the other.
5
Ferlinghetti's San Francisco is all over the world and has been for quite some time. Somehow, when my father was in Catholic high school back when "Pictures of the Gone World" came out, he ended up getting a copy, and when he was busted for reading it in class, he said that the priest teacher looked at it, read a verse, then handed it back and said, "that's cool". Decades later I lived in SF for a bit and made sure to stop by City Lights regularly for purchases. Long Live Ferlinghetti!
7
Michael McClure is also in the Last Waltz. He recites the introduction to Canterbury Tales.
3
This time-travelogue captured the City in its hipster heyday with perfect authenticity, referencing all the right luminaries, eateries, bookstores, and promenades, save for one fatal flaw: the Lyft ride. Ugh. To do it right, you would've taken a Veterans cab.
5
@Koohan Paik -- Veteran's cab! I had a charge account with them in the 70s and 80s. I'd call my favorite driver, Sam, at home the night before I needed a ride to the airport. He's pick me up -- and bring me a doughnut and coffee for the ride. (I was a big tipper.)
I’ve been to City Lights, Moe’s Books, and Strand. And I’m a former bookseller myself. None
of these stores are as well-stocked
for genersl readers as is Seminary
Co-op bookstore on Woodlawn Ave. in Chicago, IL. It’s not a
store for seminarians. It was originally located in the basement
of a seminary building on the campus of the University of Chicago. It has a sister store called
57th Street Books.
If you like Beats, anarchism, and
communism, City Lights might intrigue you. Moe’s has a lot of
overpriced used editions, but you
can also stop in Amoeba records
across the street, which is worth
the trip.
4
When I came to San Francisco in the late 70s I tumbled around the edges of a poetry movement, attended readings in old warehouses, bookstores and Victorian shotgun flats. I was a spectator, my boyfriend was the poet, but I loved seeing the creativity and youth burning brightly, feeling the heat. And the words were beautiful. But all the poets started moving out of the City as rents went up and up in the 80s, first to Oakland lofts, then scattered across the country. I can't imagine a young writer coming here now, it's just too darn expensive. I applaud Lawrence Ferlinghetti for all he did and for still being here. But when I go to the old Beat haunts, it's not the scene of lives being lived anymore, it's for tourists like I've become, hoping to find a little of what was lost, or what they dreamed.
5
Fantastic photography by Jason Henry, it really evokes the mystery of the city.
When I lived in North Beach, I often took long walks in the late day and evening toward Chinatown, stopping in at City Lights, maybe getting a beer at Vesuvio, and then down to the water, back up to Coit Tower, all around really, just letting the streets reveal themselves and create my path. It was not hard to imagine what has inspired so many poets and writers, the palpable history but also the sense of possibility, a kind of quiet, somewhat sad romance, of lives lived and to be lived. Perhaps this has contributed to LF's longevity.
It's sweet to be reminded of this special city and person. Thanks.
8
Wow! Great Article! Thanks! Both my parents grew up in SF and I was born there, and came back to live in The City as a quasi-hippie (employed, no drug use.but full counterculture attitude) in the 70's and 80's. I still get a huge blast of nostalgia when I read an article like this.
Tadich Grill was my dad's favorite restaurant. He ate there at least once a week, and I'd often meet him for a plate of sand dabs swimming in butter. A 1967 photo of Tadich's from the SF Chronicle in 1967 during a busy lunch hour includes my dad (unidentified), the first customer at the counter.
7
@VGraz, "Quasi"?... or "pseudo"?
@Buckaroo
There was actually a term for that which completely escapes me now. But in reality, not all hippies used drugs, at least hard drugs, or didn’t have a job. Many were attending University and were very serious about educating themselves. (There was actually a slightly pejorative ‘perpetual student’ adage that you never hear applied anymore.). Today it seems like half of the people now that weren’t hippies then are strung out on opioids or heroin.
I visited City Lights in 2014 after my wife had passed away. I was a little out of my mind with grief, but what a great bookstore and a great city, what I saw of it. Not as great as NYC but fun to visit. Would love to do a rock and roll tour of it, assuming there are still things to see. So many choices you can make of where to live in this life.
@Eugene Debs, Really sorry to hear about your wife's passing. But SF, "Not as great as NYC..."? I, and many others on this thread would beg to differ.
1
@Eugene Debs
Actually Denver features heavily in Keroac’s On The Road as a sort of party central for beats drifting through. The main character, Dean Moriarty, was raised there by a long lost Larimer Skid Row denizen of a father whom he is always on the hunt for. I’ve actually thought about visiting Denver after recently rereading that book. Sorry for your loss.
On a trip to Northern California in 2007, my sister and I stayed in San Francisco for four days. She died on February 2nd, but I have that trip and many more to remember her by.
San Francisco was fabulous: sharing the time with my sis, seeing the mist over the Bridge, eating dim sum, photographing sea lions in the bay, and visiting City Lights.
Tacked on the wall in my home office is a black bumper sticker with white letters that reads: HOWL IF YOU (HEART) CITY LIGHTS BOOKS.
Okay, I will, and I do.
6
Every year I bring flowers to my local independent bookstore on Ferlinghetti’s birthday to celebrate City Lights’ being the first all-paperback bookstore in the U.S. - a great victory for the democracy of reading.
6
Sad for me to find no mention in this article of Beat poet Gregory Corso who is indivisible from San Francisco's early Beat scene. He, his young son Max and wife Lisa, whose mother Ruth Brinker founded Meals On Wheels, returned to live in San Francisco for a brief few years in the early 1980s which was when he and I reconnected. My own acquaintance with Gregory Corso goes back to 1970s Chelsea Hotel days when his vitality and spirit was a frequent presence inside those iconic walls. In spite of his omission by the author of this article, Gregory Corso was the real deal whose beat goes on in San Francisco and for me in my memories.
6
@Rose Okragly
Not for nuthin, Corso was a New Yorker born in bred in what then was an Italian neighborhood, Greenwich Village, (and still is to some extent). Bob Dylan didn’t go to San Francisco when he dropped out of the Univ. of Minn. Hello, the world doesn’t revolve around SF. (Mock tizzy fit here!)
San Francisco is the stuff of dreams even today for young people, though it's way too expensive. Like NY, they crowd into apartments and revel in the sense of adventure and history that The City (never San Fran or any other moniker!) embodies. City Lights is a national treasure, as is Ferlinghetti. Happy birthday to him!
Thanks for the story.
3
After walking across the Golden Gate, the author should have hiked down to Sausalito through Fort Baker and taken the ferry bake to San Francisco. In the 70's, before my wife and I had a car, we used to make a day excursion of taking the Muni out to the Presidio entrance to the bridge, hiking across the bridge and continuing into Sausalito. Once there we would get some bread, wine and cheese and have our dinner along the waterfront rocks and then get the ferry home to San Francisco. Those we truly memorable evenings, especially when the moon would shine across the water.
9
On a trip to Northern California in 2007, my sister and I stayed in San Francisco for four days. She died on February 2nd, but I have that trip and many more to remember her by.
San Francisco was fabulous: sharing the time with my sis, seeing the mist over the Bridge, eating dim sum, photographing sea lions in the bay, and visiting City Lights.
Tacked on the wall in my home office is a black bumper sticker with white letters that reads: HOWL IF YOU (HEART) CITY LIGHTS BOOKS.
Okay, I will, and I do.
1
I left San Francisco in 2002 after another dot.com I worked at bombed. I remember selling my remaining belongings in front of our shared flat in Russian Hill by Polk Street. After perusing my pictures, lamps, and books they asked sadly “Aww, you are leaving? ... where are you moving to?”
I answered “New York!” They perked up and told me to have a great adventure. I have.
9
Yup! If there’s one city I’d gladly give up San Francisco for, it’s NYC
1
Towards the end of the 60s, Nancy Peters, co-owner of City Lights Press and wife of poet Philip Lamantia, briefly worked where I did at the Library of Congress. Fleeing Subject Cataloging, l could not resist looking her up in San francisco and being treated to the sight of Allen Ginsburg's unmade bed! My poems have remained unmade as well!
15
That city is no longer there.
15
@will i just spend two weeks in SF, emptying my storage unit. i live in Napoli, Italy. my daughter lives in the Mission and works for Google. she said “ San Francisci is done. In fact, it’s getting creepy”.
3
@Carmen
There are places in the world that responsible tourists (would that be all of them) are told to stay away from: the Cinque Terre, Venice, Dubrovnik...I wonder if San Fran is on that list.
This is a welcoming piece. But there's a real interview with Ferlinghetti in the current number of The Paris Review. Worth seeking out.
16
FYI, Ginsberg performed only Part I of “Howl” at the October 1955 Six Gallery reading—the poem would not be finished for several months. He was living in Berkeley then, and continued to work on the poem at his cottage on Milvia Street & at Berkeley’s Café Med for several months, performing Part I and bits of the remaining sections at several venues on the west coast. The completed poem was performed for the first time on March 18, 1956, at the Town Hall Theater on the NE corner of Shattuck & Stuart, Berkeley, with several of the same poets who were present at the October 1955 Six Gallery reading. The theater was “festooned with Chinese ink brush orgy drawings by Robert LaVigne.” Ginsberg wrote about this in the notes to his recording anthology “Holy Soul Jelly Roll,” which documents the Berkeley performance. In recent years the late Walter Lehrman’s photographs from the event were rediscovered and restored by the writer and photographer John Suiter.
16
A good article, but I cannot believe you missed Green Apple Books in the Richmond District. Moe's absolutely pales in comparison.
22
What will happen to City Lights when Mr. Ferlinghetti is gone?
9
I spent 23 years in San Francisco, 1990 2013 and I loved every moment. A city that offered a genuine freedom to dream to fly to invent and starve to death if you weren't careful. San Francisco was never warm or cold but a sort of in between that meant you had to wear a sweater every day. The food was and is amazing and even neighborhood greasy spoons were a delight. But what mattered and still does is that San Francisco was the place to be weird or crazy. Strange people fleeing mean towns could come to The City and bloom become famous or fade and vanish in the fog. San Francisco is America's conscience and City Lights is the nerve center of The City.
32
Why would anyone care that after reading Jack Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti I too took a bus from the East Coast to San Francisco in 1960 and played and wrote and read and joined the protest against the House Unamerican Actvities Commitee ( it sure was ) that took place in and near near City Hall where I was almost stomped by the carelessly- ridden police horses while others were washed down the steps by fire hoses and before and after had good breakfasts and dinners on weekdays at the residence club just east of Van Ness and then on Sundays dinner for a quarter on the other side. And, of course, I want to join the crowd of those of us who tear a little or a little more when we remember those early, ear-ly days.
26
@Jeff Shapiro
There was a police riot in the early eighties in the East Village where I live. Well, the only thing I can say is, “Thank God I was out of town!”. Ain’t doin’ no police riots, no thank you.
1
Such a great article about an institution within an institution in an institution. Makes me even more proud to call this place the city of my birth. —Great job, Dwight!
5
Another great Indy bookstore, for those in/near the FiDi (Financial District, not to be confused with DiFi, the Senator) is Alexander Books, on Second just a few steps off Market.
9
I still miss Carol Doda, what a pioneer!
11
@Susan Rose
Love it! Right next to what is now the Beat Museum, IIRC.
Nice homage. The City was my home for 8+ years, and I am sure I will be back often.
But, I think the writer took liberties with facts that would make the Beats proud. Where oh where are these wonderfully named places like Mark Twain Plaza, Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial, or Robert Frost Plaza?
Ramble long and far, searching for these bookish landmarks. Even if you don't find them, you'll enjoy the journey!
5
Nice article. Until the City's high prices drove me away 3 years ago, I lived about a block down the street (Francisco St) from him. He was very much a neighborhood person coming to the July 4th block party when it existed. Over the years, he dined at a lot of the places. One that is still there that Mr. Frelinghetti has frequented (although in a new location) is U.S. Restaurant on Columbus Street. It has a long north beach history. Sadly, you overlooked Ferlinghetti's skills as a painter.
17
I thought "Joy Luck Club" was set mainly around the Irving corridor of the Outer Sunset? Anyway, the city is still great, but moreso on the fringes than in the historically popular areas. City Lights is iconic and a must visit, but I'd also Recommend BARTing over to Bird and Beckett in Glen Park on a Friday evening for a more intimate bookstore experience and some Jazz. Green Apple is another great bookstore that is right in the middle of the excellent Richmond neighborhood restaurant scene. They attract a lot of literary heavy hitters so check the schedule.
14
I love City Lights but, in all honesty, Mr. Ferlinghetti's best act has been his peddling of an inflated history between the Beats and his San Francisco. As the article acknowledges, most of those associated with the Beats were from elsewhere, and who did the bulk of their writing somewhere else. While they may have left a few breadcrumbs in SF along the way, Mr. Ferlinghetti has done well for himself suggesting otherwise. Despite this less than accurate narrative, I say good for him. We should all be so lucky to live our lives surrounding by literature.
4
Three photos of Café Vesuvio and none of the Trieste? I too had my first cappuccino there sometime in the early 1970s, and many times thereafter, and no espresso drink I’ve had in New York or any other US city has been half as good. The family used to serenade customers with Italian opera arias each Sunday. I feel so very fortunate to have grown up in and around The City …
17
I learned to love walking a city growing up in New York; now I get to wallow in the architectural beauty that is San Francisco. It is an amazing magical city to explore. North Beach is of course one of the best neighborhoods for that, and if you go up to Coit Tower from there you can walk down the Filbert or Greenwich garden steps to the Embarcadero. A superb view of the bay and the lush and beautiful plantings of the residents of Telegraph Hill are your reward. The view from the Lyon Street steps by the Presidio is similarly amazing. When I'm not walking and photographing the city I'm reading one of the many interesting books on the history of San Francisco. Very informative was a book about crimping which involves kidnapping men to send to sea to man the ships abandoned by sailors who had headed inland to the gold country.
8
Ah, good journalism, fine travel writing, wonderful photography, a dollop of nostalgia. Great article.
I’ve been to SF a few times, and like it. Blasphemy, to not love it? Sorry, I’m a Sixties child and never much liked the Beats. Yet I value them. How great is it that Ferlinghetti has lived to 100? I wish John Lennon had.
Never thought of Steinbeck (still my favorite) as a San Francisco writer, but glad to see him get a mention.
I once rode my bicycle over the Triboro Bridge here in NYC, and couldn’t enjoy it. So I related to the snippet of walking across the Golden Gate.
Speaking of, I’ve never seen any human-made object, not Pisa’s tower, not Eiffel’s tower, not the original World Trade Center, to rival its sublime beauty.
Loved the article. Great writing.
14
Here are some alternative photos to illustrate the article from my archive. I happened to have a photo of a customer reading TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY at one of the bookstores mentioned, and that inspired me to pull them together for a post.
https://medium.com/@mark_20745/lawrence-ferlinghettis-enduring-san-francisco-696caa078a0b
17
@Mark Coggins Thanks for the pics.
3
Now this is the city I fell in love with, and often drove up from Los Angeles. There was (emphasis on 'was') a wonderful mishmash of character, personality... and food! And, even with its iconic landmarks, you could still see the sky.
11
Great reminiscence. The San Francisco I grew up bugging my parents to visit on our way home to L.A., from visiting Montana relatives. A high school mate turned me on to On The Road. Later, I wallowed in its richness through university in the '60s. Missing for me are mentions of the Hungry i and Purple Onion clubs, but otherwise a great piece. It's Garner's own reminiscence. Get over the criticism.
7
Still, you can't speak of San Francisco culture without mentioning a highlight of SF, if suburban: Gertrude Stein, whose upbringing was in Oakland. None of the talented Beats could hold a candle to Ms Stein (in the gallery of cultural pioneers).
8
I love City Lights, and it's a must stop on every visit to San Francisco (most of the time I actually stay in Berkeley and hop the BART to downtown SF).
Nice article, with lots of familiar themes, but I'm disappointed the 2nd paragraph only mentioned Moe's and the Strand; Powell's in Portland is at least as important as those two in the book world.
9
A few years ago I spent three full days wandering the streets of SF on foot while my wife attended a convention. It’s a magical place, especially when the weather is perfect, as it was during our visit; I drank coffee at Caffe Trieste every day, visited City Lights, and just generally ambled around trying to see what could be seen. Were the cost of living not astronomical, I wouldn’t hesitate to relocate there.
20
I lived at Clay and Leavenworth around 1971-ish. I was in my early 20s. The rent on my 3rd floor walk-up studio apartment was a staggering $140. a month -- a lot of money for the sales "girl" I was back then. It was four blocks down the hill to China Town where I could buy 18 eggs wrapped in newspaper for $2. Cafe Trieste was a regular haunt of mine. I wonder what became of the Spaghetti Factory?
15
No mention of Spec's, the best bar in North Beach, third best in the city?
11
@Peter, I was reading to see if anyone else was offended by the omission of Spec’s. Thank you. It continues to have the feel of 1957 and you might expect to see Mr. Cassidy holding forth at the end of the bar....
7
@Buckaroo
It ain't the same since Specs passed away several years ago and it wasn't the same once Bob Kaufman died almost 40 years ago. Back then a buck could get you a short beer at Specs and a pack of Marlboros at Vesuvio where the cigarette machine did not demand a nickel in addition to a quarter. Always enjoyed the men ogling the gals working upstairs at Garden of Eden when they came down to use the restroom between acts.
2
@Peter
So maybe it should be a secret?
1
I've been reading all the comments that bemoan changes in San Francisco. Why? What entitles you to demand the city stay the way you remember it? It doesn't belong to you, it belongs to everyone. Find a new San Francisco.
8
@Gerald Everyone who has ever lived in and loved San Francisco believes theirs was the 'last best times'. Mine were 1976 to 1988....late nights at Enrico's, friends at City Lights, the Stanford Court Hotel, Washington Square Bar & Grill, Peter Macharinni, Jeanette's TOSCA, Broadway, Mabuhay Gardens, dancing at the IBeam....a 3 bedroom flat in the Mission for 595.00....it was the best time in the best place for me.....I hope the 'new' San Franciscans feel the same.
13
@julibelle
I think today's residents do enjoy it every bit as much as you did. It may cost more to live there, but the San Francisco of previous times was a function of its particular history up to that time, something that can never remain static.
There are other places to live, grow, thrive, should people choose.
As much as I admire Ferlinghetti, he has no more right than you or I to dictate what the city should be now or going forward.
1
my fave bar was the Buddha Bar, corner grant and washington. I mean where else? Maybe there's a jesus bar somewhere, but my guess is ....why? if so , it'd prolly be a wine bar....(ripple:)
4
Too bad the FB image shows 18th Street .... nothing to do with North Beach ...
1
"Pound for pound, City Lights is almost certainly the best bookstore in the United States. It’s not as sprawling as the Strand, in Manhattan, or Moe’s Books, in Berkeley."
Uh, have you ever been to Powell's in Portland???
And Michael McClure did speak in "The Last Waltz", to wit, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2opjCeVhQ7I
8
Dear old San F'cisco, the only American city other than NY worthy of being called "The City." And for you travel-writing Backeasters: you don't drink "Anchor Steam," it's just "steam beer."
13
@S
In every metro area in the country, the main city is referred to as "the city."
2
@S, We always used to call it a "creamy steamy"... which may sound x-rated but it's just a description of the beauty of the beer... :-D
@S, I prefer the phrase, “a creamy steamy”.
I am a poet and fiction writer who used to live in San Francisco - as did some tens or hundreds of thousands of others - and we were all pushed out first by the .com boom and then by the tech boom. Sad, sad town it has become.
44
I can't believe he's still alive. I also can't believe that I first read his poetry over 50 years ago when he was in his late forties (and I thought he was ancient then). Good for him! Many more happy birthdays I hope.
31
Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs and company (and later followers like Kesey) were all about improv, experimentation, breaking rules and making new ways of thinking. They'd be rolling their eyes at this nostalgia gallery of greatest Beat hits. San Francisco is still a unique place of innovation and change. Look forward not back!
5
@sprinter. When someone reaches 100, it's worth a look back, regardless of where you're going.
18
What a fabulous piece -- and love the name of this series, Footprints. I have been saddened that San Francisco is no longer the vibrant welcoming place for artists and activists of social conscience of many stripes -- and indeed I myself had to skedaddle when rents became insane.
11
We moved to The City in 1980 and lived on the Great Highway...lots of old hippies, Brother Bruno, Donna and her Sax, local boxing hero, Bill Hickey and his surf boards.
North Beach was a destination for us as each district of SF has it's own flavor and folks.
One special moment: we were driving back from Reno on the 4th of July. Got to the middle of the Golden Gate bridge and the fire works started. All the cars on the bridge stopped, everyone got out and watched the fire works. When they finishes, we all got in our cars and drove off the bridge.
We now live in Hawaii and miss lots of things in The City - The Legion of Honor, Golden Gate Park, etc. but not the fog!
Cheers
8
Oh, it's not all that impossible to meet Ferlinghetti. At least until quite recently, he could still be found wandering out of his office on the top floor of City Lights on occasion to check what customers were reading, especially in the upstairs poetry room. One thing that journalists, including this one, invariably fail to do is to look beyond the beat reputation to realize that Ferlinghetti is in fact a sharp and clever businessman. He owns the property that City Lights sits on, and reputedly quite a bit else in North Beach as well. That's why City Lights has survived all these years.
19
I came from New York City in the 60's, fresh as a youngster from criss-crossing snowy days in Central Park to see the dinosaurs in the Museum of Natural History and worlds collide in the adjacent Planetarium, and later in college saturated with science and literature and jazz and salsa via an intermediate halt in graduate school, followed by a 55' Chevrolet ramble across the country to a place where I finally and deliciously did not fit in! Where else would the destination sign on a street car read "Nowhere in particular?" Stop and smell the coffee was a reality here. And surprise, you could do meaningful and useful work all the while.
The place keeps morphing--much of the "film noir" mystique has passed on and any flower children are now the seeds of the seeds of those dancing buttercups, yet even though much time has passed, I still walk everywhere (knock on wood) in this eminently walkable place--where being a fawned on celebrity is a character defect and techie coders are still, more or less, unconcious human detritus, big big bucks notwithstanding--across the bridge to a Sausalito coffee house; ferry return most times. The Palace of Fine Arts all aglow at night with its shimmering lagoon--exquisite. If you want to make a Parisian smile, tell them you're from San Francisco--seal of approval of the global culturati.
35
@A.S.
Such a stream of well-written consciousness.
8
Up until the early 80's there was another level atop Citylights Bookstore.I lived there in the late 60's and early 70's.It was an incredible room with an outside deck stuffed with plants.It was heated by a coal burning stove. I paid monthly rent to another North Beach character.....Henri Lenoir. Henri was the founder of Vesuvios and,as far as I know, owned that building as well as the Citylights building.He lived in an incredible apartment above Vesuvios filled with Tiffany lamps,Beat paintings and other priceless objects which he'd collected over the years.He told me that he'd moved to the US from Switzerland and traveled across the US in the 20's selling loungerie to women.He always had a couple of young "interns" working for him.Definitely a North Beach icon.
I still live in North Beach part of the time.I think of San Francisco as changing quite dramatically to reflect the times.In the 50's it was Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio ,Lenny Bruce and the Beatnik movement.In the 60's it was the 60's.From the middle 80's it has become the Silicon Valley culture.These movements are magnified because the city is actually so small compared to other major cities. But,as others have said,it is still a very unique place......still the most magical city in the US.From Fort Baker,at the base of the northern end of the Golden Gate,it is still the "Shimmering City on the Hill."
36
There are more interesting books in City Lights than all the bookstores in all the mega-malls combined.
15
Oh, wow! No idea the visionary whose books are on my shelves was still alive! Many happy returns!
7
City Council of San Francisco - do SOMETHING! Do not let the upcoming IPO millionaires move in ...segregation of the fairest kind...
17
"The columnist Herb Caen, nonplused, invented the term 'Beatnik' in 1958, which made the Beats sound like something you’d want to flick off, like fleas." The insinuation was far more insidious than that. "Beatnik" called to mind the specter of Communism, rhyming with words like Bolshevik, Menshevik, and apparatchik. Thus conservatives like Caen represented the Beatniks and all they stood for as another aspect of the Red Menace.
16
@BloUrHausDwn
Herb Caen, whom I worked for many years, may not have dug the Beats, but he was hardly a Red-baiting conservative. He was an FDR liberal, and coined the term 'beatnik' while riffing on the word Sputnik.
43
@Jesse Hamlin. Thanks so much for that thoughtful correction. Herb Caen was a real gentleman with a really funny sense of humor!!
18
@Jesse Hamlin In 1958, Sputnik was the latest and most frightening aspect of the "Red Menace" and the hysterical fear of Communist domination (not just of earth, but space). Ginsberg and the Beats were repeated labeled Communists. Caen was just going with the flow when he cleverly (and not affectionately) called them "Beatniks."
Great article, but: "Pound for pound, City Lights is almost certainly the best bookstore in the United States. " You've obviously never been to Seminary Co-op.
6
@Joan P Politics & Prose in Washington, DC is another great bookstore.
1
An article about Ferlinghetti without more of a sampling of his poetry--what a shame.
15
Thank you for mentioning August Klienzahler. “Earthquake Weather.”
6
Two thoughts:
(1) Boy, I wish I could visit San Francisco! I've never even been in California. My loss!
And I'll be frank. Pushing seventy as I am--a little too heavy--and with various health issues--
--I am still greedy. I am ashamed to admit this--but your description of oysters washed down with--I forget what but boy! it sounded good.
(2) Here I get to sound a little dour. Sorry about that.
I am struck by authors I have read--and I am not much into "beat" literature and Jack Kerouac and Mr. Ferlinghetti's poetry and so on--though I have dipped into these guys from time to time. One thing hits me:
Those writers that "try it all." That immerse themselves in the "anything goes" philosophy. Running (as it were) from sexual partner to sexual partner--cruising (as it were) those Himalayan peaks of ecstasy and self-fulfillment--
--my! How that philosophy lets them down in old age.
I recall the advice given by Allen Ginsberg to the up-and-coming generation:
"Get used to emptiness--'cause that's what's you're gonna get."
Or that really dreadful poem The New York Times Book Review published soon after his death. "Gone--gone--gone." A cry of horror as he contemplated death. That final emptiness! That ultimate nothingness!
Or Mr. Ferlinghetti's remarks about himself--his own "lonely companion." Or--
--but this is getting grim. Time to stop. And he's got thirty years on me.
Happy birthday, Mr. Ferlinghetti!
I wish you the best!
50
You forgot to visit Green Apple Books on Clement St.
69
@Susan M The BEST bookstore in the city.
2
Correct! Big omission.
2
@Susan M: Thanks for saving me the effort of having to make the comment ;-) !
3
Nostalgia to be sure, but not reality. I am in the City often. A relative of mine was days ago assaulted by a homeless person. She hit her with a bag and pushed her against a car. She wanted what you have. My relative ran. Earlier another relative was struck in the back of the head by another homeless person just wondering down a main street. You might have read about the poo map. Places to avoid because of a high concentration of homeless people relieving themselves. SF is doing essentially nothing to resolve this calamity and SF does have the money. These homeless people can be housed and ministered to, but , as said, very little is being done by SF. This is the city that had as mayor the now governor of CA and in the past Senator Feinstein was mayor. SF can not even blame Republicans for the calamity. SF did it to itself, but it is not too late. Forget nostalgia: take care of the homeless.
72
Thank you for this great love letter to Ferlinghetti and San Francisco. I am so sick of all the negative carping about what is happening to our beautiful city ... a place that to me is still as wonderful as it was when I first arrived 50 years ago. So thank you for reminding us of the treasures the city holds. And even if you did find the walk across the Golden Gate noisy and cold, you have to admit the sight of it rising majestically through the fog always brings a catch to your throat and a smile to your face.
52
Wow, Tadich, Swan's & Vesuvio's & Moe's are still around. No more Mike's Pool Hall, I guess, or Enrico's.
I even remember when they finally allowed women to ride standing on the outside of the cable cars.
16
@inframan
Ah, fresh sea air, the clanging bell, the bay 500 ft below, hanging on to the chrome pole for dear life, up and down the near-verticals hills and careening around corners. What Maslow would call a peak experience.
If those goofy little cars ever stop running, we’ll know The City is lost to us at last.
11
And they broke into my vehicle right outside Tommy's Joint, in broad daylight, just popped the window. I hear it happens many times per day in that same spot.
Excellent article. "We will leave our neck ties hanging on lamp posts and take up the full beard of walking anarchy".
Maybe the critics didn't love him, but he is a fine poet.
I believe Michael McClure does appear in The Last Waltz, reading in Gaelic or early English from the Canterbury Tales, I believe.
7
And what a time it was! A true Coney Island of the Mind! But we are still waiting. Happy Birthday, Lawrence!
8
Jack Kerouac Alley is a can't miss feature of the story but the writer missed the alley named after none other than Ferlinghetti himself. Maybe because it is a dead end with no addresses, and hard to find off of Columbus.
It was originally proposed in the 1990s as replacing Jansen St., further down Columbus, but the residents, mostly elderly Chinese, were unanimous in objecting. John P. Mattos, the illustrator, lived there and explained that it was named after a early merchant in North Beach who had been attacked by a gang that would set fire to the front of a store, then rush in to steal when the owners fled out the back. Jansen was hospitalized fending them off but climbed out of bed to defend the gang from corporal punishment. They were hanged anyway.
About 1995, John showed a friend and I where the Ferlinghetti name change was moved to, and as we were standing on Columbus in the morning light discussing the merits of saving 'Jansen St.', ambling down the street behind him, and passing us by as if to punctuate the theme, came ... Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Only in San Francisco.
19
@Finest
The street is Via Ferlinghetti, between Stockton and Jasper, off of Union.
8
@Finest You mean 'a friend and me' but let's not quibble, loved your anecdote.
Wow, so Ferlinghetti's still alive? A measured Beat! Lost track the past few decades. I read Howl and On the Road back in the 80's; the real names and places like Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassidy, Corso, Ferlinghetti and City Lights seemed mythical with a bohemian freedom and glamour. The zeitgeist's anchor still holds! There was a Beat humanity and morality there that he represents.
He did see the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness, and a whole country too, how else to explain Trumpism and all it represents, the antithesis of the Beats and freedom. Let's hope Ferlinghetti remains spry and lives a decade or two into his 2nd century.
31
I hitched to SF in the early 80's and made a film, SF HITCH. Here's a snippet of the narration:
All those beautiful colorful tiles on the storefronts blowing my mind. Never seen anything like that before. Used to the never-ending brick house of Chicago. Even the bums were good looking in San Francisco.
I stopped to ask directions to a park and ended up hanging out with the man, Nathan, and his friend David for a few days. Nathan was a valet at the North Beach Restaurant and lived right across the street from it in the building that came to a point at Columbus and Stockton.
He took me to Vesuvio’s later that night and I got introduced to Ferlinghetti, and wild haired Gregory Corso. I couldn’t believe I was here, being introduced to all these writers, just like that.
Bob Kaufman was sitting quietly in the corner at the bar. I remember passing him a few times on the street; he was emanating the feel of a golden Buddha, not a smiling fat bellied one, more like an equanimus samurai.
I went to City Lights the next day and got the shiny silver book “Seeing The Light” by James Broughton. This book had more effect on my vision for making films than any ever.
A snippet of the film and full narration is here: http://www.odoka.org/sf-hitch
19
Here is one of my favorite Ferlinghetti poems and replicated as it appears in "A Coney Island of the Mind". The end line may be expressive of his feelings as he greets his 100th birthday:
The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where I first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum
Outside the leaves were falling as they died
A wind had blown away the sun
A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room
Outside the leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!
("A Coney Island of the Mind," Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, New Directions Publishing, 1958, fortieth printing)
41
Vanishing New York. Vanishing San Francisco. But The Tadich Grill lives on. Go there.
12
My heart dropped when I got to the bottom of the article and there was still no mention of Green Apple Books, a book lovers institution far worthier of the spotlight than 826 Pirate Supply Store.
48
@NormanChomsky
And the Chinese food on Clement Street is much better than the tourist traps in Chinatown itself.
12
Buying a book at City Lights on a foggy day, then sitting upstairs at Vesuvio and reading over a beer (exactly as the photo in the article) is about as nice a day as one can have
63
@velo Yes, brought back many lovely memories of San Francisco!
5
Chinatown has almost completely swallowed up Little Italy and where City Lights is.
6
For millions of us, San Francisco is the place we would have chosen to live, if wishes were horses and beggars could ride. Thank you for this lovely explanation of why that is so. Yes, the IPO people will to a great extent still have the smashing scenery, but their very success will quickly exterminate the spirit of place that so encouraged us to think better of the human race.
22
@Claire Green
I don’t know. As a lifelong New Yorker, I think the only reason I’d ever want to live there is that the winters aren’t as cold.
Excellent article. But I believe that Michael McClure was also seen in The Last Waltz (in addition to Ferlinghetti).
McClure recited from, I believe, The Canterbury Tales. I've got a copy of the film around here somewhere and this is as good a reason as any to view it again.
8
@Joe Nowlan
It was from the Prolouge to the Canterbury Tales that he recited in Middle or Old English, whichever they were speaking back in the 14th Century, I believe Middle.
Great memories...actually my favorite way to visit SF is to stay in Tiburon, rude the ferry, buy a three-day transit pass at Walgreens. You must see the art in Coit Tower, socialism before the Beats. And while Herb may not have been a fan, it would have been Beatnits...and the last time I was at Tadich Grill they had wonderful dark baked sourdough...would such a shame. All sour dough is under baked, although that can be fixed.
That said, still the best afternoon lunch, same menu, no crowds...and not a long walk with your pass!
And, of course, a new heart was created in SF when they rediscovered their Ferry Building...acme, cow girl, the best picnic on the planet!if you happen to be there when the Farmer’s Market is open...you are in heaven!
15
San Francisco is the city I chose to go to in order to do an MFA in poetry at the University of San Francisco. Broke at the time, I’ve always coveted a photo then for sale at City Lights, a black and white of Bob Dylan, Michael McClure, and Allen Ginsberg hanging out in the alley, smoking. Gorgeous, cool men, making poetry just standing there.
During my MFA I had the privilege of working with Diane do Prima and Doug (D.A., not D.H.) Powell, who is also a professor at USF. (Unless your writer was conflating him with D.H. Lawrence, which would be a very interesting concoction. Boroughs would have approved.)
10
" On The Road " ... but alas, that road is gone.
4
Oh, such memories! Growing up in the Bay Area in the 50's and 60's, trips to City Lights were frequent, as were poetry readings by Allen Ginsberg bending minds and pushing limits of sexuality, hanging out in dives playing hearts and taking in the sounds and sights now long gone. So much taken for granted, so much missed.
19
@Alan Brainerd what a lovely comment!
Peace.
5
I loved
Reading
Ferlinghetti in
My high school days
I thought he died years ago.
8
Most of the shots for Joy Luck Club were shot in Oakland's China Town which is more authentic and has v few tourist.
5
@Dolly Patterson What do you mean by "authentic"?
3
Having lived in North Beach in the days of “wow”, “far out” and “heavy”, I feel the death. “Wow” is now “bow wow”, “far out” is a star that keeps going further out and “heavy” gone from “heavy water” to “heavy metal” and now is no more than “meh”. The mind is a Coney Island but who wants to be there? Only those whose inner innards have suffered through and gone deep and gone.
5
I lived in The City and Berkeley for 20 years, went to school (SFSU), was married, had a kid, worked as cabbie/musician when that was a possible gig, and lived quite well. The City was the city of my youthful dreams, with music and poetry all around me all those years. This article brought a lot of that back for me, thanks. Now, I live in the foothills of the Sierra, where I grew up. I can jump in the car, and in three hours I'm back. It's always good to visit, but it isn't the same by a long shot, and not just because I'm an old man now. An artist, a writer, a musician can't live in San Francisco anymore. My old haunts are just that, haunted, by the ghosts of fellow artists who had to flee to more affordable places. The young ones coming up now will have to create their own scenes in funkier climes.
62
I recently reread On The Road which is about a WWII veteran, Sal Paradise, on the GI Bill who took a 1947 road trip and a few others after that. The “Beat” moniker shifts in meaning through out the book, but it was not initially complimentary to be described that way. It was initially about an alienated young generation that had utterly no future after the war. Someone who was beat was literally that, beat, running on empty, down and out, but trying to experience living nonetheless. The meaning seems to shift to being someone immersed in jazz and poetry but only because the jazz men and poets were just as beat as they were.
15
@Patrick
I haven’t read On the Road for a while (my 50 yr old paperback probably wouldn’t survive the strain)... But one meaning Kerouac applied to “beat” was as short for “beatitude”, or “state of grace”.
After Keroauc’s death Ginsburg wrote a dedication in one of Jack’s early biographies. He called his friend, “America’s lonely prose trumpeter of Drunken Buddha Sacred Heart”.
That’s the meaning of “beat” that has stuck with me.
8
@Gurbie
He did describe a beat that way toward the end, but I think that was a little fanciful. As I mentioned, there was a shift in meaning. On one of his road trips, Sal describes how he bought a loaf of bread and pound of salami and made sandwiches for his trip back to New York. He ended up giving half of them away and half of the rest went bd before he could eat them. Now that is what I think he really meant by “beat”.
2
@Gurbie
Oddly enough, I have had a theory that great enduring cultural change and progression have emerged from the direst of social and political circumstance. The Vietnam War creating the hippies and the peace movement for example. Unfortunately, not seeing that or any sign of under Putin’s complete victory over our country through his puppet at 1600. Probably going to die before the worst happens, so buena surrte!
City Lights is indeed a fabulous bookstore, as is Moe's across the Bay in Berkeley. But, really, the very best bookstore I have been in is Powell's in Portland. You can literally stay there for days and find new treasures each day. I'm confident the Beats would have made there way up there had they known of it, or maybe they did and they just wanted to keep it secret.
8
@LGAccording to the mural outside of the Vesuvio Cafe, across Jack Kerouac Alley from City Lights, everybody is just itching to get away from Portland.
Reading this is a what's what of places I haunted as a kid. On the table in front of me are drawings, poems, and a painting Gregory Corso made for my aunt, who died in January. Back in the day it was a moveable feast, but that city is gone now. Mere echoes remain.
14
My sister and a small group of friends visited City Lights in the early 1970's during a university break, and a couple with them was more focused on each other than the wealth of books at hand. Mr. Ferlinghetti caught the woman's eye and said, "Hang onto that stud!" The fact that the story is being repeated decades later underlines the extraordinary frankness of his discourse at that time. When I fear for the political balance on the planet, I am reminded of my favorite Ferlinghetti poem, which has only become more relevant over time: "The World is a Beautiful Place." Google it. You will see why he is still revered after all these years. Happy Birthday!
12
As a kid growing up in the City I was always more drawn to North Beach than the Haight. I bought most all of my underground Comix at City Lights. Had my first Cappacinno at Cafe Tresist and I was insulted like everybody else at San Wo's. The one thing I would point out as a native is. Before you travel to San Francisco it to watch the Hitchcock movie Vertigo 1957. Much of the City look the same, except for the colors. When I was a child seems all the house were painted white or grey, now it's all the colors of the Rainbow and I'm not talking about just the Castro.
10
@Edwin Cohen I am honored to say that I too have witnessed Edsel Ford Fong at his best, but since his attentions were directed towards my spouse I venture to say my memory is more golden than yours might be.
1
City Lights is simply the best bookstore around these parts. Thanks to Ferlinghetti!
10
I have always been a fan of the Tadich Grill but I find Sam's Grill on Bush Street a less frequented tourist destination serving well made cocktails and equally fresh seafood. Another local watering hole is the Buena Vista, especially if you like to start your morning with a very respectable Irish Coffee. On the Chinese side, I've always enjoyed R&G Lounge for their salt and pepper Dungeness crab. Twenty five years ago after leaving Sawn's Oyster Depot, my wife and I were wandering around SF when we found this wonderful little tea shop. We purchased a beautiful hand crafted (but simple) tea pot made by hand in Thailand. This weekend, like many, I filled it with Assam tea and brewed a nice warm pot to go with breakfast. Every time that pot comes out of the cabinet we think about San Francisco and the great times we've shared there. It's a great city.
20
@Jay Amberg So glad you mentioned Sam's Grill. I was a regular there in the 70s and 80s. Early on one of the waiters, Larry, suggested since I ate there so often I open a charge account with the restaurant. I did, and it always impressed the many clients I brought there that I simply signed the check at the end of the meal.
Sam's was always packed with stock brokers at lunchtime. I was one of the few women you'd see there. Loved the little booths in the back with curtains you could draw and buttons you could push to call a waiter. Waiters at Sam's were professional, something you don't see much of anymore.
I was back a few years ago on a trip up the coast. The food is still excellent. It would be my first stop if I ever get to go again.
2
Wonderful and evocative; Ferlinghetti is a true national treasure.
11
Best birthday wishes to the great Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
100 awesome years!
8
Sam Wo's has moved? Oh no! No entrance into the kitchen and up the winding stairs to the third floor where Edsel Ford Wong held sway, announcing as my wife squeezed by, "Skinny, but nice?" May City Lights always remain as it was in the 60s and may the glassware continue to shake at Cafe Trieste as it did on my return to Upper Grant Street during the World Series Earthquake in 89. And may there indeed be a rebirth of wonder in honor of Lawrence and the rest.
14
@Randal Samstag
Edsel Ford Wong, best waiter ever!
3
Nicely done, Dwight. You’ve captured the spirit of the city (and an era) in a ways that reprise old memories and call old visitors to return. Bravo.
12
He's not the only 100-year-old poet from San Francisco. Naomi Replansky, the well-known poet who turned 100 last May, lived in San Francisco for a number of years in the 1950s and early '60s, more or less, where she and Ferlinghetti were well-acquainted enough.
7
Odd that you describe a walking tour without mentioning the hills. Walking San Francisco is a unique experience- where else do the sidewalks have stairs cut into them?
25
@John
The Bronx has step streets.
Ferlinghetti has a compatriot turning 100 here in the Bay Area, eminent art historian and patriarch of the West Coast art scene Peter Selz. They are friends too.
Peter was born on March 27, so only 3 days between them, and several generations of artists out here supported by both.
The Times outta take a look at Selz too.
16
A lovely article, but perhaps nostalgic to the point of being untruthful. There is no way that Mr. Garner would've done this walking tour of San Francisco's Beat landmarks without noting the crushing inequality and homelessness that characterizes so much of the city. The Beats were drifters and anti-establishment types that we celebrate now that they are safely past, but we continue to treat with cruel indifference the displaced and the placeless of the present.
21
I always thought San Francisco a very walkable city. My younger sister, Anna, lived there for a number of years, about 3 or 4 doors north of Golden Gate. When my wife and I visited, we would take a bus downtown and walk everywhere, even back to her house a few times. Coit Tower. Lombard St. Chinatown. Golden Gate Park. Haight/Ashbury. Walked them all. Didn't walk across the Golden Gate bridge, but I did run across it, during the San Francisco Marathon in '91, two days before my wife became my lovely bride on the balcony of the City Hall rotunda. Linda, my other younger sister and between Anna and me, played Mendelssohn's Trumpet Voluntary on her viola from the balcony above and across the rotunda as the JP was finishing administering the vows. Linda got an ovation from some of the other couples being married and assorted visitors to City Hall. The AIDS quilt collection was on display in the rotunda, too. I guess my family made a small contribution to San Francisco's weirdness.
I do not recall ever visiting City Lights, but that may be just a faulty, overwhelmed memory cell. It is the kind of place she normally took pains to make sure we visited whenever we were in town.
7
I was fortunate to live in North Beach, and went to the Cafe Trieste regularly. San Francisco has changed a lot since, especially South of Market, so I am relieved to read from this article that most of the old haunts are still there - makes me yearn to go back and visit!
11
In the middle of my life 1964 to 1969 between NYC & LA I spent 5 glorious years in San Francisco living in the Haight and the Mission.North beach was always the best adventure for me and City Lights was at the center...Always a beatnick at hearth.Still high from a night at Fillmore and The Airplane
16
Thoroughly enjoyed your article about San Francisco our beautiful neighbor to the south! Can’t wait to return!
Happy birthday to Mr. Ferlinghetti!
6
"But it’s so dense with serious world literature of every stripe, and so absent trinkets and elaborate bookmarks and candles and other foofaraw, that it’s a Platonic ideal."
Too, true.
7
I attended a panel discussion in the seventies held at UC Berkeley and by hosted Ferlinghetti, Alan Watts, and Allen Ginsberg. It expanded my literary horizons exponentially.
8
The San Francisco that the wonderful Mr. Ferlinghetti treasures is just about gone having all but given way to a deadening tech culture that shares none of the values that made the city the interesting, vibrant and diverse place it once was. Jack Kerouac could probably not afford to live here and once he "got" here, and would soon discover that "the joy . . .kicks . . . something burning in the night” isn't anymore. It is a less and less "strange" place. The resulting homogeneity is "weird" all right, but not the kind of weird the poet is referring to. Creepy is more apt.
I wonder how Mr. Ferlinghetti felt when he found out the article was for the travel section after all . . .
11
Though I loved the article and admire Ferlinghetti, I am not of literary persuasion, being more the musician and craftsman. However, I was fortunate that during the Vietnam war, the Army preferred to send me to San Francisco. I spent a giggling nine months there before being sent on a redundant mission to Frankfurt AM. I haven't been back in years but the reports from Babylon are saddening. Portland does well to expend every effort to not fall into The City's trap.
7
The saloon just up the way from city lights is my favorite bar in the world and I’ve been to a few. The entire north beach neighborhood isn’t the same as in my youth but then again nothing is static. I miss the dionosaurs and Johnny nitro
7
"We stayed in the Hotel Nikko (clean, hip, teeny-tiny rooms) in Union Square, not far from the Hotel Union Square, where Dashiell Hammett wrote many of his hard-boiled detective novels. On our first day in the city, we walked the mile or so to City Lights, moving past, in the light rain, the stately mansions of Nob Hill." The Nikko is about as "Union Square" as it is "The Tenderloin," and its walking route to City Lights is gravitational, down across the lower axis of Union Square to Kearny and then north. Although there are costly townhouses on Nob Hill, the only remaining stately mansion is 1000 California, the former James Flood house. Still, this can't be the writer's last visit to San Francisco. Plenty of time to get it right.
8
Good piece. And I commend your bravery quoting Kipling!
Though I wonder, as you walked this city now personifying Dickens' 1775 Paris, how did you not ask Ferlinghetti about his city's new status?
The off-beat artists who made San Francisco great (not by smugly hating the working class but by living in the same buildings) have long since been chased out.
All that's left are pretenders and posers. Rich in tech wealth but deficient in everything that matters, desperate for a little of that "gritty" magic to wear off on them so they can be interesting for an hour at a party.
...but the food still looks good!
138
@Arturo
Right, & I'd love to see the prices on the menus at Swan's & Tadiches today (yoicks!). Still, I'm glad to know they're still around.
3
@Arturo, "all that's left are pretenders and posers" is a remarkably broad statement and as such, is also exceedingly untrue. As a recent transplant from VA myself, I am grateful for the daily diversity of my new city.,and can assure you there's more real life here than I know what to do with.
23
@Arturo
Yes - the city is now infested with cookie-cutter tech types and the homeless underfoot everywhere. San Francisco is soaking in false wealth with everyone desperately trying to catch a whiff of the fumes of a more honest and equitable time.
11
Spent 11 great years in San Francisco. Landed there on a Wednesday in 2004 and had a beautiful rent-controlled apartment on Nob Hill on Friday. Try that stunt now.
Regrettably the city is all about money now. It is a mere shadow of its former self. Glad to be away from it but will always remember the early years.
81
@Plennie Wingo Ironically, the reason San Francisco is all about money these days is because preservationists have blocked construction projects that would bring housing costs down and allow a more diverse population to thrive. You have to be a rich techie to afford to live there today. Even the restaurants are closing because their workers can't afford to live with in driving distance. All of SF doesn't have to be torn down to make space for massive apartment and condo projects - but some of it will have to be sacrificed. San Francisco prioritizes the past over the present - and is becoming unlivable as a result. It needs to find a better balance.
@Plennie Wingo I too found a great rent controlled place in North Beach in 2004 and stayed for five wonderful years. So thankful I was able to experience the city when it was still affordable!
4
@Plennie Wingo
as a lifelong resident of the area....things have changed....not all for the best
1
Ah! a fine article: conjures up, for me, memories of my visits to San Francisco in the '70's. And reminded me to reread Ferlighetti.
29
This is a good blending of travelogue and historical literary survey albeit the wide-screen, Technicolor images, in particular, emphasize the former more than the latter. This makes me think Ferlinghetti's initial reaction to the journalist's call was apt.
Think, how often does a surviving literary figure associated with the 1950s literary renaissance appear in the "By the Book" feature of the Sunday Book Review?
When will By the Book query Diane di Prima on her favourite book of all time? Or Pulitzer Prize-winning Gary Snyder? Or Michael McClure, or author and critic Dan Wakefield who is still active and demonstrated a perceptive, early sympathy for the best Beat writing?
The avatars still living are not getting any younger. The time to acknowledge them in a meaningful way is nigh.
83
I sent poetry to Mr. Ferlinghetti and read his works and that of other Beat poets with great joy. This is a wonderful return to my youth. Great article. Many thanks.
38