City Lights Bookstore (Article and Photos by Roderick Stent)
City Lights Bookstore
Article and Photos by Roderick Stent
Leanne and I found ourselves in San Francisco for a long weekend. We made the journey to City Lights Bookstore. I had read about it back in High School being a fan of Jack Kerouac.
City Lights is situated between Chinatown and North Beach along Columbus Avenue. The three walls making the triangular structure is just down the street from the iconic TransAmerica Building and across the street from the “Red Lights” of yesteryear. It’s a melting pot of neighborhoods and cultures.
The store itself is divided up into more intimate spaces. The entry is quite small and cramped. Two or maybe three steps up and to the right leads to the main room of fiction. I saved the main room for last. My intrigue was the basement. This is the space where the Beat biggies came to hang out. I wondered through the Film Noir section thumbing through a few books, made my way over to Psychology and back to Philosophy. What did they talk about down here? Or did they just sit and read much like we were doing?
Back at ground level, through the main room, and through a second side room was yet another set of stairs with the words “Poetry Room.” Oh yeah! The upstairs Poetry Room felt like a shrine to the Beats with several posters, photographs and a whole section dedicated to the movement.
As I was wandering and wondering what I would purchase, Leanne had already secured a small library of goodies all while talking up the owner. She learned the store was focussed on words. No picture books here. This was a space for the written word. She also learned the bookstore was doing well albeit grateful for the patronage as the online sellers certainly were encroaching on profits.
What will be the future of these little gems we call bookstores? I cannot even begin to have a guess. I do know that I want to fully enjoy them while they are around. Inspiration comes from a variety of mediums. City Lights was a treat.
"Founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin, City Lights is one of the few truly great independent bookstores in the United States, a place where booklovers from across the country and around the world come to browse, read, and just soak in the ambiance of alternative culture’s only “Literary Landmark.” Although it has been more than sixty years since tour buses with passengers eager to sight “beatniks” began pulling up in front of City Lights, the Beats’ legacy of anti-authoritarian politics and unconstrained intellectual curiosity continues to be a strong influence in the store, most evident in the selection of titles." - From the City of Lights Website.
https://citylights.com/bookstore/
Recommended reading.
Photographs by Roderick Stent. ©