Happy Birthday City Lights
Harry Edwards
hedwards@gstype.com
Thu, 5 Jun 2003 12:38:32 -0500
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It's strange to walk down Columbus Avenue in 2003. The traffic poles
still have green, white and red bands painted on them, and the smell
of pasta still hangs in the air like an aria. But the Condor, Carol
Doda's notorious strip club, a sports bar? And there's a sign over
Little Joe's -- it's moving to Van Ness. Beat poet and playwright
Michael McClure lives in Oakland.
Kitty-corner across Columbus from the Condor, what has replaced that
leftist bookstore where the Beats and angel-headed hipsters hung out?
Prime location, right on Columbus -- must be a Barnes & Noble there
now, maybe with a nice little Starbucks offering Frappuccinos on the
second floor.
But, no, there it is, City Lights Bookstore, with a fresh coat of
creamy paint, San Francisco's dream of itself ever since Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, its poet owner, was tried on obscenity charges in 1957
for publishing Allen Ginsberg's "Howl."
Fifty years have passed since it opened, during which North Beach has
seen the flight and return of artists and writers as rents fluctuate.
But the bookstore has stayed right there, a mecca for the
dispossessed and the disenchanted, the poets and the pilgrims.
Like any 50-year-old with a rebellious past and a revolutionary
future, City Lights is of a mind to throw itself a party when the big
birthday comes along. Events are scattered all through June, starting
tonight. The revolutionaries are catching planes, jumping in their
cars or fighting crosstown traffic from the Mission and the
Excelsior. The public is invited to everything, and everything is
free (except Friday's Poetry Dance, which is a fund-raiser).
Tonight the composer David Amram, who was close friends with Jack
Kerouac, will be at the store, jamming and singing with Herb Gold.
McClure will cross the Great Waters to be there. Friday night is the
Poetry Dance at the Italian Athletic Club on Washington Square. There
will be dancing to the Marcus Shelby Orchestra, a silent auction and
dramatic readings, some by firebrands from Youth Speaks, those teens
who hang out at the Box Factory on Folsom.
And exactly what are they celebrating?
"City Lights" sounds like a lamp store -- until you remember that the
lights are the poets and playwrights and writers who crowd into town
to scribble verse and try to keep us from nodding off on our chilled
cucumber soup. Ferlinghetti and a sociology teacher from San
Francisco State, Peter D. Martin, started the store in 1953, the
first all-paperback store in the country. Ferlinghetti says garbage
men would roar up on the truck and run in to get their Italian
anarchist newspapers. It's still the only store of its kind anywhere,
even if it does sell hardbacks when the paperback is not available.
Signs on the display window outside say, "Not in Our Name!" "Stash
Your Sell Phone and Be Here Now." Inside, it looks like a used
bookstore from 1953, with the same torn checkerboard linoleum,
shelves of books by troublemakers and chairs with readers cobwebbed
to them. At the checkout, where Pottery Barn might have "Summer
Jazz," there is a CD for sale: Noam Chomsky's "Propaganda and Control
of the Public Mind."
A descent down the narrow steps to the basement reveals the usual
mild categories: muckraking, anarchism, class war and one called
"stolen continents" that's about U.S. imperialism.
Many of the books were published here. The 15 employees of the
bookstore also help out with the publishing arm. City Lights
Publishing has brought out everything from Ginsberg's "Howl" to works
by Charles Bukowski, Paul Bowles, Gary Snyder and William Burroughs.
Alejandro Murguia's "This War Called Love" won an American Book
Award. The store has held benefits for the United Farm Workers,
sit-ins and protest marches -- fighting the banks and the war makers.
In 1988, it got 12 streets in North Beach named after San Francisco
writers and six years later an alley renamed Via Ferlinghetti --
breaking tradition to name a street after a living writer.
The store expanded sideways and up over the years as space became available.
Nancy Peters, who arrived on the scene in 1971 and is now a co-owner
with Ferlinghetti (she's married to poet Philip Lamantia), bought the
building with him in 1999. They also established the City Lights
Foundation, which among other projects pays to publish San
Francisco's poet laureates -- we're on our third. The first was
Ferlinghetti. A year later, the store was named city landmark No. 228.
Upstairs in the warren of offices behind the beat and poetry
sections, a trim and smiling Peters says, "When you're both an icon
and iconoclastic, it's a balancing act." The store is a kind of
museum. "People like it because it's nostalgic. When we retrofitted
in 2000, people said don't get rid of the bench that's always been in
the basement, so we didn't."
On Sunday most of the lanes of traffic in front of the store will be
closed off for a street party. Expect lots of local literati,
including Ferlinghetti, Andrei Codrescu, Kevin Starr, Dave Eggers,
Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) and so on. BYORM (Bring Your Own Red
Mountain).
City Lights will announce the winners of its essay contest on "How a
Book Changed Your Life." A quick scan of the 300 entries reveals a
range: "A Confederacy of Dunces," "Dark Elk Trilogy," "Under the
Tonto Rim" by Zane Grey and one by an angry 10-year-old who liked
"Charlotte's Web" but is not happy that the spider dies in the end.
"Just because of that small incident I gave it a 5." A rebel in the
making.
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--></style><title>Happy Birthday City Lights</title></head><body>
<div><font size="+2">It's strange to walk down Columbus Avenue in
2003. The traffic poles still have green, white and red bands painted
on them, and the smell of pasta still hangs in the air like an aria.
But the Condor, Carol Doda's notorious strip club, a sports bar? And
there's a sign over Little Joe's -- it's moving to Van Ness. Beat poet
and playwright Michael McClure lives in Oakland.<br>
<br>
Kitty-corner across Columbus from the Condor, what has replaced that
leftist bookstore where the Beats and angel-headed hipsters hung out?
Prime location, right on Columbus -- must be a Barnes & Noble
there now, maybe with a nice little Starbucks offering Frappuccinos on
the second floor.<br>
<br>
But, no, there it is, City Lights Bookstore, with a fresh coat of
creamy paint, San Francisco's dream of itself ever since Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, its poet owner, was tried on obscenity charges in 1957
for publishing Allen Ginsberg's "Howl."<br>
<br>
Fifty years have passed since it opened, during which North Beach has
seen the flight and return of artists and writers as rents fluctuate.
But the bookstore has stayed right there, a mecca for the dispossessed
and the disenchanted, the poets and the pilgrims.<br>
<br>
Like any 50-year-old with a rebellious past and a revolutionary
future, City Lights is of a mind to throw itself a party when the big
birthday comes along. Events are scattered all through June, starting
tonight. The revolutionaries are catching planes, jumping in their
cars or fighting crosstown traffic from the Mission and the Excelsior.
The public is invited to everything, and everything is free (except
Friday's Poetry Dance, which is a fund-raiser).<br>
<br>
Tonight the composer David Amram, who was close friends with Jack
Kerouac, will be at the store, jamming and singing with Herb Gold.
McClure will cross the Great Waters to be there. Friday night is
the<br>
<br>
Poetry Dance at the Italian Athletic Club on Washington Square. There
will be dancing to the Marcus Shelby Orchestra, a silent auction and
dramatic readings, some by firebrands from Youth Speaks, those teens
who hang out at the Box Factory on Folsom.<br>
<br>
And exactly what are they celebrating?<br>
<br>
"City Lights" sounds like a lamp store -- until you remember
that the lights are the poets and playwrights and writers who crowd
into town to scribble verse and try to keep us from nodding off on our
chilled cucumber soup. Ferlinghetti and a sociology teacher from San
Francisco State, Peter D. Martin, started the store in 1953, the first
all-paperback store in the country. Ferlinghetti says garbage men
would roar up on the truck and run in to get their Italian anarchist
newspapers. It's still the only store of its kind anywhere, even if it
does sell hardbacks when the paperback is not available.<br>
<br>
Signs on the display window outside say, "Not in Our Name!"
"Stash Your Sell Phone and Be Here Now." Inside, it looks
like a used bookstore from 1953, with the same torn checkerboard
linoleum, shelves of books by troublemakers and chairs with readers
cobwebbed to them. At the checkout, where Pottery Barn might have
"Summer Jazz," there is a CD for sale: Noam Chomsky's
"Propaganda and Control of the Public Mind."<br>
<br>
A descent down the narrow steps to the basement reveals the usual mild
categories: muckraking, anarchism, class war and one called
"stolen continents" that's about U.S. imperialism.<br>
<br>
Many of the books were published here. The 15 employees of the
bookstore also help out with the publishing arm. City Lights
Publishing has brought out everything from Ginsberg's "Howl"
to works by Charles Bukowski, Paul Bowles, Gary Snyder and William
Burroughs. Alejandro Murguia's "This War Called Love" won an
American Book Award. The store has held benefits for the United Farm
Workers, sit-ins and protest marches -- fighting the banks and the war
makers. In 1988, it got 12 streets in North Beach named after San
Francisco writers and six years later an alley renamed Via
Ferlinghetti -- breaking tradition to name a street after a living
writer.</font></div>
<div><font size="+2"><br>
The store expanded sideways and up over the years as space became
available.<br>
<br>
Nancy Peters, who arrived on the scene in 1971 and is now a co-owner
with Ferlinghetti (she's married to poet Philip Lamantia), bought the
building with him in 1999. They also established the City Lights
Foundation, which among other projects pays to publish San Francisco's
poet laureates -- we're on our third. The first was Ferlinghetti. A
year later, the store was named city landmark No. 228.<br>
<br>
Upstairs in the warren of offices behind the beat and poetry sections,
a trim and smiling Peters says, "When you're both an icon and
iconoclastic, it's a balancing act." The store is a kind of
museum. "People like it because it's nostalgic. When we
retrofitted in 2000, people said don't get rid of the bench that's
always been in the basement, so we didn't."<br>
<br>
On Sunday most of the lanes of traffic in front of the store will be
closed off for a street party. Expect lots of local literati,
including Ferlinghetti, Andrei Codrescu, Kevin Starr, Dave Eggers,
Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) and so on. BYORM (Bring Your Own Red
Mountain).<br>
<br>
City Lights will announce the winners of its essay contest on
"How a Book Changed Your Life." A quick scan of the 300
entries reveals a range: "A Confederacy of Dunces,"
"Dark Elk Trilogy," "Under the Tonto Rim" by Zane
Grey and one by an angry 10-year-old who liked "Charlotte's Web"
but is not happy that the spider dies in the end. "Just because
of that small incident I gave it a 5." A rebel in the
making.</font></div>
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