City Lights Bookstore
The store where a clerk was arrested over a book of poems, and the court sided with poetry
The story
Before you is City Lights Bookstore in North Beach. The poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin opened it in 1953. The store sold paperbacks, inexpensive and open to everyone. In 1955 it started its own publishing house with the Pocket Poets series. In November 1956 the series brought out Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems. The poem spoke about things people kept quiet about then, and the police found it obscene. In June 1957 officers bought the book in this store and arrested the clerk, Shigeyoshi Murao. Ferlinghetti, as the publisher, was charged too. The trial ran through the summer and early fall of 1957. Judge Clayton Horn ruled that the book was not obscene and acquitted both men. The case became an important victory for free speech in the United States. The store turned into a meeting place for the Beat poets, young writers who rebelled against the dull life of the fifties. In 2001 the city named City Lights a landmark, the first time a business, not a building, received that status. Ferlinghetti lived past one hundred and died in San Francisco in 2021.
Visiting
261 Columbus Avenue, North Beach. Free to enter. Opening hours are best checked at citylights.com.
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) — City Lights Bookstore
- Wikipedia (EN) — Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- Wikipedia (EN) — Shig Murao
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