City Lights Bookstore

The City Lights Bookstore, in the North Beach section of San Francisco, California, is an independent bookstore specializing in poetry and a small press publisher of fiction, essays, memoirs, translations, poetry, and books on social and political issues.

Related Topics:
North Beach - San Francisco, California - Independent bookstore - Poetry - Small press - Publisher

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The bookstore was founded in 1953 as the nation's first all-paperback bookstore, by Peter D. Martin and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It was established in the basement of a building constructed the year after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Related Topics:
1953 - Paperback - Lawrence Ferlinghetti - 1906 San Francisco earthquake

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Ferlinghetti became its sole owner in 1955, and started City Lights Publishers that same year in order to publish Beat poets. It published Howl as part of its City Lights Pocket Poets Series, prompting an obscenity charge that was fought off with the aid of the ACLU. In The Fall of America, Allen Ginsberg describes City Lights as "home."

Related Topics:
1955 - Beat - Howl - City Lights Pocket Poets Series - Obscenity - ACLU - The Fall of America - Allen Ginsberg

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The store gradually expanded, taking over space formerly occupied by an adjacent travel agency in the 1970s, and an upper-floor apartment in the 1990s.

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The San Francisco Board of Supervisors designated its building as Landmark No. 228, effective August 26, 2001, because of its "seminal role in the literary and cultural development of San Francisco and the nation, ... for championing First Amendment protections, and for publishing and giving voice to writers and artists everywhere."

Related Topics:
Board of Supervisors - August 26 - 2001 - First Amendment protections

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Books within the store are grouped into categories all but never seen in other bookshops. While City Lights has the typical sections for new releases, fiction, mystery, and reference, it also has sections for commodity aesthetics, stolen continents, muckraking, and class war.

Related Topics:
Commodity aesthetics - Stolen continents - Muckraking - Class war

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Like many independent bookstores, City Lights is a member of the American Booksellers Association.

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