“But while San Francisco appears to have gone either way up-market, or way down (Fisherman’s Wharf is as crass and full of cheap souvenirs as Coney Island), at least one place remains as a beacon to the way it all used to be.
City Lights Bookstore, which was founded by the poet Laurence Ferlinghetti in the 1950s, and became both the hangout and publisher of the Beat poets, is just the way it always was – books stacked floor to ceiling, with a creaking staircase leading up to a second-floor room full of poetry.
Along the walls as you climb the stairs are pictures of times long past. There’s Neal Cassady, the inspiration behind the main character in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road; Allen Ginsberg, looking wild-haired and wide-eyed as always (but certainly a lot younger), eating cornflakes out of a massive chipped bowl, the only piece of china he owned; and an almost “team” picture of many of the greats, looking youthful if not a bit spaced, standing around the tall, thin, bearded form of Ferlinghetti himself.”