In his adopted city of San Francisco, the poet, publisher and painter Lawrence Ferlinghetti is venerated to levels nearing those of patron sainthood. In 1954, he co-founded the bookshop-cum-press City Lights on Columbus Avenue, which cleaves North Beach from Chinatown on the top right tip of the San Franciscan peninsula.
Lauded by the Los Angeles Times as the man ‘without whom the Beat generation might not have found its voice’, Ferlinghetti is perhaps best known for having published Allen Ginsberg’s generation-defining Howl (and subsequently being arrested for, then cleared of, obscenity charges). But he also published others, such as Gregory Corso and Jack Kerouac. His bookshop became a focal point for that rag-tag bunch which came to be known as the Beats, those black-clad bad boys of bepop and mezcal, a club with ‘no begetting of children’ and no small sampling of the death wish.
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