Tracing Jack Kerouac’s footsteps in San Francisco, Part 1

I decided to start at City Lights Bookstore, on Columbus Avenue in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. Kerouac was friends with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the owner of City Lights, which was a gathering place for a number of the Beat writers at the time.

One could say that Ferlinghetti figured prominently in the development of one of Kerouac's novels, because he let Kerouac stay at his cabin in Big Sur, where Kerouac wrote his book of the same name, Big Sur, which was published in 1962. At any rate, the picture at right shows City Lights Bookstore as it appears now and as it appeared back in the 1950s when Kerouac would have been around.

For a fan of Kerouac and the Beats, looking around the bookstore is fun ... they have a huge collection of original titles by Beat writers, as well as books on Beat-related topics and the history of The Beat Generation. They also have a number of large reproductions of vintage book covers hanging on the walls (see at right), such as this 1976 Corgi Books edition of William Burroughs' Naked Lunch and Len Deighton's cover for On The Road which was used for the British first edition of the book in 1958.

Considering Kerouac's penchant for drinking, it's not a huge surprise that one of his favorite San Francisco bars (Vesuvio) is next door to City Lights Bookstore. It's interesting to note that in 1988, Ferlinghetti wanted to honor Kerouac's history in San Francisco, and so he petitioned the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to transform the alleyway separating the bookstore from the bar and rename it "Jack Kerouac Alley," as seen in the picture of the street sign at the top of this post. A side note here - the "(Adler)" listed under Kerouac's name on the street sign refers to the original name of this alley that connects Columbus Avenue to Grant Avenue.