San Francisco - The Beat Generation

Today was our second staycation in San Francisco, as we work our way through the seven neighborhoods featured in Leslie Santarina's The 500 Hidden Secrets of San Francisco. In the Northeast section of SF is North Beach, cradle of the Beat Generation, the post-War poets and bards that spawned the hippies. I was particularly interested in visiting the Beat Museum because for my my senior thesis in college, I wrote a 25-page paper on Allen Ginsberg and Walt Whitman, centered on Ginsberg's poem, A Supermarket in California. (I guess I had a lot to say about a 200 word poem.) Ginsberg, a budding poet in 1955 when he wrote this poem, follows his muse Whitman down the aisles of a supermarket in Berkeley. It is, as you might imagine, my favorite Ginsberg poem. But what really got Ginsberg on the map was his poem Howl, also written in 1955. His publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books, was arrested for publishing it, the book banned as obscene. In 1957, when the case went to trial, you could argue that Ginsberg had became more famous than Walt Whitman. Everyone had to read this salacious poem, even military cadets. (If you look closely at the display above you'll see those cadets dutifully reading the Pocket Poet series No. 4 edition.)

The Beat Museum celebrates its 20th year in operation in 2023, and clearly it is a labor of love. It is mostly a bookstore, with hysterical pulp fiction from the 1950s, a bathtub of books (just $2 each, take your pick) and vintage Playboy magazines wrapped in plastic. For $8 you can go into the museum through a turnstile and see a replica of Jack Kerouac's Hudson car of On the Road fame, as well as my favorite, the single copy of Jesus was a Beatnik, pictured above. (I should pause here and say that Beatnik was not a term favored by the Beats, and was invited by a newspaperman, but became identified with this movement anyway.)

After purchasing my own personal copy of Howl and other Poems (don't worry, the ban was lifted in 1957), we walked across the street to the bookstore that started it all, City Lights Books. Its owner and publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, just died in 2021, at the extraordinary age of 101. Poetry and controversy apparently kept him young.

City Lights Books is both a bookstore and a publisher, with over 200 titles published currently. It has an alcove for Beat books, pictured here, as well a slightly dank basement with even more books. It was doing brisk business when we visited.

We also took a break down the street at the semi-famous Caffe Trieste, where Ginsberg and his pals drank coffee and also where Francis Ford Coppola penned The Godfather.

Today the cafe was celebrating its 67th birtday, with a band wedged in between seats crooning Italian favorites. The lattes were good too.