Quick answer
City Lights Bookstore opened on Columbus Avenue in 1953, founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin as the first all-paperback bookstore in the United States. In 1956 it published Allen Ginsberg's Howl; the obscenity prosecution that followed ended in 1957 when Judge Clayton Horn ruled that a work carrying any redeeming social importance cannot be obscene.
Full transcript
The Bookstore
Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin opened City Lights in 1953. It was the first all-paperback bookstore in the United States. The name was borrowed from the Charlie Chaplin film, and the idea was to create a literary meeting place — a room where you could sit and read without being asked to buy. The store is two buildings. The main floor on Columbus Avenue is general interest, organized by staff recommendation rather than alphabet. The basement is poetry. The second building, up Jack Kerouac Alley, is the Beat literature room — Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs, Ferlinghetti himself.
The Trial
In 1956 Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" — a long, furious poem about madness, drugs, sexuality, and America. Customs officials seized the British printing. The San Francisco police arrested Ferlinghetti and the store manager on obscenity charges. The trial lasted through the summer of 1957. The judge, Clayton Horn, ruled that a book could not be obscene if it had "the slightest redeeming social importance." Howl, he decided, had that. The verdict established the legal precedent that protected Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, and every controversial book published in America since.
The Alley
Walk out the back door into Jack Kerouac Alley. The pavement is inlaid with quotes — Kerouac, Li Po, Octavio Paz, Maya Angelou. It connects City Lights to Vesuvio Cafe, the bar where Kerouac drank and argued. The two establishments — one for reading, one for drinking — have been in conversation since the 1950s. Both are still open. Check that both are still independent.
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