City Lights Bookstore
Category: Bookstores [Edit]
Neighborhoods: North Beach/Telegraph Hill, Nob Hill261 Columbus Ave
(between Broadway St & Jack Kerouac Aly)
San Francisco, CA 94133 (415) 362-8193
- Hours:
Mon-Sun 10:00 a.m.-12:00 a.m. - Price Range: $$
- Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
- Parking: Street
- Wheelchair Accessible: No
28 reviews
Neighborhood: Hayes Valley
"Cool, small, bookstore! They have great prices, and great atmosphere. Its fun to just hang out and browse. Also, the clerk (I guess he is…" read more »
201 Reviews for City Lights Bookstore
There's a review from earlier in the year, rather succinct, where-in the gal who wrote it defined the staff at City Lights in one word: Heathens.
It's a nice space. The architecture is nice and the space is in a nice location, and there are naked boobies across the street. The perfect location, in fact, for the Heathens to don their Beatnik high hats and consider themselves culturally important to San Francisco, all the while updating MySpace profiles behind the counter. Any reasonable bibliophile must hate this place as much as I do. They only sell new and only in-print books at expensive more-than Borders prices.
I prefer Borders. Borders has a bathroom.
I feel smarter just being in this bookstore. What a wonderful, eclectic collection. Their window displays can't be beat...they draw me into the store like a siren song. Whoever is in charge of making the selections for the windows should get a cut of the profits! My kid loves going down the rickety stairs to the basement where the kids books, among many others, are located. We've found some really unusual books for her that I've never seen at Borders. This place is a gem.
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti:
I was surprised when your friends helped you stand up to the podium in discomfort after being huddled and rolled in a wheelchair. You could have been ailing when you relied on the wooden podium to keep you standing with your elbows but you continued on and on and on in mustered strength and paused in short intervals to catch your breath.
Your face seemed naked in retrospect. Then you put your thick red glasses on and began to read in a low voice that echoed the room in silence, attentive silence. You know, the silence that comes with concentration like focus, deep deep focus on a maverick in his blazer and jeans. His hairline below his ears with a full white beard. His hair bushier in front than in back. I still couldn't hear you.
Your audience was a loyal audience and represented your audience; the two generations after yours. Younger old people who read more than A Coney Island of the Mind. Youth from the 50s and 60s; the ones who didn't die from drug overdoses and who stayed in college and years later looked like typical university senior faculty members. It looked like an academic conference, only larger and as intimidating. Men and women with glasses from too much reading. Men with pressed blazers with and women with dyed reddish hair in slacks and shoes with thick heels.
I was 21-years-old on when I saw you read. I turned 21 one day before you turned 85. I photographed you. I photographed you being photographed. Now you're almost 90.
You, your bookstore, the Beats are entrenched within a historical period but that second floor room with poetry readings is a continuing homage to get writing out there. That's at least what your bookstore has taught me. The shelves upon shelves of stories about the Beats outnumber the stories by the Beats; and numerous editions of Ginsburg's Howl in a way that commemorates yourself is like a distinct museum exhibition from a time and place and who which re-reminds myself you are a museum now by means of historical landmark status.
That's as definitive and respectable to what a bookstore can aim to achieve and it's reached sort of a peculiar status with yours.
Published poetry may have always been obscure and yet not seemingly dead. Where do the poets exist if distributers and shelve spaces are dwindling? That's what I ask myself. There are places and you must know where to look because lots of writers solely abide to print. You know where the new books go and what's on the table or what's next to your feet. The empty seats upstairs are uncomfortable and they're there to familiarize. "Sit down and read a book" is intuitively given.
What can be taught when my sister found a $100 bill on the gutter near the Jack Kerouac alleyway? Simply that enriching things come to people who look for it.
Thank you.
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Great independent bookstore with incredible selection. And it is a literary landmark! I know that if I'm looking for any book on Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs and the gang, I can easily find it there. Also, the location is what really makes City Lights special, as you can go buy a book there and take it to Caff Trieste for a cappuccino while you read. City Lights very well could be my favorite bookstore in the entire country.
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What a cool bookstore. I'm not even a reader, but so many in the selection piqued my interest. If only there was a bookstore like this in Chicago............
If I lived around this area - I would have gone BANKRUPT because I love this bookstore!
Everytime I come here, usually with my out of town friend in tow, I always end up buying book(s) - usually Sociology/ Political Science books or a Czech novelist.
I always find their selection of international books overwhelming since I never know which book to buy. I stand there for hours perusing the shelf deciding which book I can lug home.
Great collection of books, with many floors. A great collection of literature from the Beat generation...and more. A maze of books to choose from.
Also located in a great location on Columbus Ave in North Beach, so you'll have delectable coffee to enjoy with your books. What more could you ask for?
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The Holy Grail of independent bookstores. If it's been published and still in print, the staff at City Lights will find it for you. Odds are they have it in stock. Every time I go in, I end up buying more books than I intended. Such a cool collection. But if you're a bookworm like me, be prepared to leave with arms laden.
The finest bookstore on the west coast. Purveyors of radical leftist literature, art and political magazines, and a wide variety of new and old fiction and non-fiction books. City Lights is essentially San Franciscan and that comes from a third generation native
I feel bad giving this place a review that's not very good. But, I always found it to be pretentious. Yesterday, that point was driven home to me.
As soon as I walked in, the unpleasant gentleman at the cash register told me: "Put that down!" That was my cup of tea from Starbucks. I obliged. I then asked to see a book in the window. My request resulted in rolling of the eyes and a sigh. The book was slowly removed from the window and given to me as a big favor, obviously.
If you are looking for an obscure writer whose work is neither published nor read, this is a perfect place to find such stuff. If you are looking for angry words and writings that simply don't make any sense, you found the perfect store.
Everything else can be found in good independent book stores in the city with helpful, friendly staff and books that really give you goose bumps.
A conversation I had at City Lights this afternoon:
Me: Where would I find Malcolm Gladwell
Clerk: Malcolm Gladwell? I'm not familiar with him.
Me: He wrote Blink and The Tipping Point
Clerk: Oh, we don't carry him.
Me: Is there a reason why you don't carry him?
Clerk: Because we think he's full of shit.
That's fine. However, I come from this line of thinking where I think it's a good idea for people to evaluate ideas for themselves and not just be told which ones are acceptable and not. I happen to think Ann Coulter and Adolf Hitler are full of shit. However, I would still hope that people could find a copy of "How to Talk Liberal" or "Mein Kampf" on the shelves so they could actually evaluate their ideas for themselves. How conservative of me.
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Great bookstore. They have almost everything as well as local writers and publications. I can easily spend hours in here on a weekend. Sure, may be touristy, but the location suits it. You will surely find any good read in here.
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I get the goose bumps out of excitement that begin while I wait to cross the street to get into City Lights. All those shiny books in the windows begging me to read them can be too much for me to handle. So many choices, good thing they let you spend a very long time in here without pestering you to leave. The selection is unmatched anywhere else. The staff is amazing and I very rarely am disappointed if after an hour of solid book searching I take a staff pick and run with it. This is the type of place I can go and say "I'd like a good read on religion or social economics" and bam I find just what I was looking for, even though I was not sure when I started. It's a North Beach staple and I love it.
I love city lights....especially the Evidence section in the basement...
small section of books from medical curiosities to criminal masterminds....love it love it love it....this section....check out
"You Can't Win" by jack black...(not that jack black..) or is it frank black...either way it's a great criminal history....and some of it set
in san francisco....Ferlinghetti Bookghetto....Lawrence is actually
left of me....but "I heart my left in San Francisco"
Drink at Vesuvio's next door, vomit in Jack Kerouac Alley and then pick yourself up some reading material next door at City Lights.
Oh yeah, wear a black turtleneck, smoke Gitanes and bring your bongos 'cause man, it's like, heavy. A heavy, heavy scene.
Like, real gone man. *snaps fingers*
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I believe beatniks like Kerouac use to hangout here and then go to Vesuvio's after. Well I did it the other way around. On a drunken escapade, I was determined to buy a book.
The result? The Essential Neruda. How did I make it up those stairs? I do not know but I did stumble upon this treasure of which kept me accompanied on the BART ride home (and will keep me accompanied for many more days, I'm sure).
City Lights is amazing because they are open late and keep drunkards in search for a book happy.
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2 Stars Taryn G.?! Come on. So what if you were an English major. City Lights is a San Francisco landmark.. Granted many tourists from all over the world pay homage to the beat generation by setting foot in City lights, and maybe that's what irked you so. But who cares if they have pocket Ginsberg books?! At least they are willing to even read Ginsberg. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
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Oh sweet baby Jesus do I like this place! I have spent literally hours in this place after work, trying to lose myself in a good book. They have a great selection and the staff have guided me to books which I now love. I wish I could drink coffee in here, but, I guess I could go to Borders if I wanted to do that. I also like that they don't do a bunch of multi-media shit. I came to a bookstore to get a book, not a fucking Simpson's trivia game. Also, no screaming children which is a plus. Give them a try if you are in need of a good read.
This place was a huge let down for me. As an English major, I found it pretty disappointing that the majority of books in the store were novelty, tourists texts about "beat culture" and other vague social communities. As a publishing company, I would have expected less exploitation of hipsterness and more loyalty to the love of literature and poetry.
The people coming in and out of the store were preoccupied with pocket ginsberg books and bumper stickers and a lot of other shit that deflected from my expectations.
What's more is that where there were literary texts was often times abandoned and messy (and I am not going to give it the benefit of the doubt by assuming customers come in often and turn disarray the shelves). This is consumerism at it's finest, which I would imagine works adversely to the original intentions of the beat movement...
also, f*ck tourists.
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It's taken me this long to write a City Lights review? A friend knows when to say when. So where were you, friend?
OK, I want to give this place four stars because, deep down, I feel like a tourist thinking this is the best bookstore in San Francisco. It's definitely not a daily bookstore. In fact, I have to gather my strength before going here. When I walk in, I hear a kind of shimmering, sheeny sound. You know the one. And then I spend an hour or so walking around, usually having picked out a book almost immediately. I then spend too much money on books, although that's kind of a blasphemous clause that is.
This is the best bookstore in San Francisco, and that's excluding the history of the place. Where have you seen such a complete poetry section? Where have you seen such a complete poetry section that could so easily have been someone's bedroom in some sad old Victorian somewhere? Where have you seen a basement that has books too good for a basement? Where have you been able to see, from the sidewalk above, people walking around in such a basement?
When people from out of town come to visit, I hate going to Fisherman's Wharf. I mildly dislike going to the Golden Gate Bridge, even though I love it. I hate having to explain why it's a hassle to take the cable cars from the Powell Street turnaround. But I love going to City Lights.
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Once I tried to see if the staff would lock me in overnight if I just hid out upstairs at closing time. A sleepover in Citylights would be the best night of my life. I daydream about trips back to SF for the sole purpose of coming back to my love.
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One of my all-time favorite places to spend time. I could browse here for hours - and have sometimes even been known to purchase a book.
Of course nothing can compare to Portland's Powell's Books.
But this was a pretty cool bookstore in a cool neighborhood. 3 floors of various books on all subjects. Its worth it to check this place out if you're a book lover.
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they redid their floors, which probably needed to be done, but ever since then, it seems to have lost a bit of charm for me. especially upstairs in the poetry room. y'know...
but i still like to go up there and sit by walt whitman.
Definitely my favorite bookstore of all time, with such a great wealth of material for people who think differently. I would kill for someplace like this in DC or VA.
City Lights is one of the main reasons I'm jealous of Bay Area locals. The history, the subversive atmosphere, the irreverence of it all. And the books. Well, I've spent hours, hours just scanning the basement, And paid many an excess baggage fee on my flight back home. You'll find books on Religion, Counterculture, Art, Local History, but most importantly - ever so often, you'll be blessed to find that random book that inspires new intellectual pursuits. Ha.
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Probably the most famous bookstore in this town, if not the country.
I kind of dig how they separate by author's nationality....it's an interesting way to do it.
There's so much to read in this store that a person can get lost for hours and forget that they only had 30 minutes on the parking meter that it took
10x around the block to snag.
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go to the top floor and look for ferlinghetti. his imprint is everywhere down to the fact that paperbacks are sold here, the very thing he at one time championed. excellent selection of books, of course. i love hanging out in the basement; reading whilst deciding what in the world to buy.
Okay, so I love bookstores. I seek them everywhere I go, and my favorite of all time in in Paris and I miss it every time I walk into a bookstore.
But then I was taken to City Lights. Just as small, just as packed, just as filled with great books, kind people, and plenty to do.
I love their location, in the midst of great cafes, and an awesome night life. The fact that City Lights is open late and caters to all crowds has helped it become a staple for everyone's North Beach visit. I haven't been there long enough to write extensively about their selection, but they seemed to have something for everyone, shelves packed with different genres, plus a fairly large magazine selection.
Not only is this the best bookstore in the Bay Area, but they also have a heart. The owners are very kind people who'll let anyone browse at will plus a lot more.
During the 60's this was my haven from the harsh reality of the outside world when I couldn't find a job and was so fucked-up emotionally from a nasty divorce I'd probably not been able to hold a McDonald's position. Yeah, I was that bad off...
I knew I could come in here and browse the sci-fi and sit, read and forget a real world existed for a few hours. I'd even read the original Rambo book here a couple of years before the movie came out. (the book was surprisingly a great page turner.)
Clean, quiet and well lit the owners encouraged you to treat the place like a library and enjoy their presence even if you didn't buy anything. I must admit a couple of times I was very hungry and desperate... stole a couple of books three or four times and resold them at the "other" bookstore a half a block away.
I never understood the cheery and generous payout until years later. Apparently Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti who both owned or had an interest in the two stores managed to feed themselves during the beat era by stealing books, themselves. While reading about the history of City Lights in an obscure gallery somewhere the truth came out...
They considered it payback and gladly bought each other's stolen books for years knowing how once themselves it was necessary to resort to petty thievery in order to eat. I've actually bought a few books here when my eyes were still good and have steered a lot of customers to the place when they were looking for a nice bookstore.
I thank them for their compassion!
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This is heaven for book nerds. The quirky featured titles and wide-ranging selection. It was a great little oasis from the tourist madness of Chinatown around the corner. I tried to walk out without buying, and failed miserably. I also left with a medium-sized reading list to start on when I got home to Chicago.
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Everyone has said it before, but it really is a treat to come here. The books alone would have been enough (catch that religious reference), but there's the history, the atmosphere, the whole North Beach-ness of it all. Whatever ails you slips away about 5 seconds after entering. It reminds me of that moment in college, at 3 a.m. with all your new friends, when you first recognize viscerally that you have no curfew and no care in the world, and you sense great knowledge in your immediate future. It's like that (which I guess is a grand feeling of possibility). Only a lot more literary (because even if you feel literary at that 3 a.m. moment in college, probably you're not so much).
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The first time I went to City Lights I probably spent about an hour scanning the shelves, walking up and down the creaking stairs, and salivating over the books. This is the kind of place where you want to explore every little nook and cranny. They had everything I was looking for - even some lit theory books that are usually hard to find at larger chain stores. There's also a great spot on the top floor dedicated to all the beat writers - definitely worth checking out.
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I won't lie, this was a pretty impressive bookstore. Clearly a non-corporate joint... they pushed sales on some of the more homely type of publications.
This it the first place I heard about McSweeney's.
Autographed copies of books were available at the registers. I liked the basement style plethora of books. I wish I lived in town so I could really explore the deep, dark corners of this bookstore.
Check 'em out.
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I'm glad they are here. The history of this place helps make San Francisco the unique place that it is.
Good selection of certain genres of books. Countercultural, underground, social commentary, classics.
If you want a mega-bookstore with tons of books in lots of categories, this is not it.
If you want to visit a bookstore that is actually more of a museum piece and an integral institution in San Francisco's Beat Timeline, you must go here.
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There is no way to say differently what has been said hundreds of times before. This bookstore is in a class by itself, there is no comparison. My particular interests are philosophy and music and you get nothing but the same thing at the big places and a bunch of religious philosophy crap at smaller places. At City Lights, however, I ALWAYS find a philosophy book that I have never seen before. They also leave the Eric Clapton biographies to Borders so they can stock the good punk rock books. This place is so good that i cannot go there as often as i like because i would be broke! I have NEVER left this bookstore without spending $50. You can also read in the store as long as you wish cuz they're cool like that. I have not read any other reviews of this place but if anybody gave it less than 5 stars they should be ashamed of their ignorance. Best bookstore ever.
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i love this place. the history, the attitude. the selection. It may sacreligious to say so, but ferlingetti always seemed a bit of a hack poetically to me, but he deserves undying praise for city lights. This is my one must stop whenever i visit san francisco.
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Best book store ever period. WTF is wrong with Yelp. This is in North Beach, not Nobb Hill! I've only been to SF 3 times, but even I know that.
This the store to go when you don't have a book in mind and you just want some life changing manifesto that's small enough to fit in your purse. Every time I go to this store I find some new revelation. First time it was a volume of Jack Keruac's poetry, published by the store's own label. I was a big fan of his prose in my grungy college years, but this volume of poetry really stands out, as being above his prose.
Also I remember that I was in the basement of the store on this trip and there was a hole in the ceiling and it was being patched with a garbage can and a piece of two by four. At the time, I took it to have some kind of cosmic significance. Perhaps, but since then it has stood out in mind as being emblematic of the differences between great independent bookstores and corporate chain places.
The second time I went I bought Frank Ohara's lunch poems, also in the City Lights label. Another revelation. All hail lunch. The best meal there is.
This last visit I bought a lot of books, but sure enough I found another little manifesto: "The Pirates and their Adventures with Scientists" which has become, not just a book but a w ay of life for me.
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City Lights is probably the only literary tourist attraction, but that is a good enough reason to go if you're in the area. Be advised, the only nearby street parking I could find was 30 minutes only. Sure didn't leave much time to "sit down and read a book".
We perused the books quickly - and while I was upstairs in the poetry area, I moved aside the curtain in the window to get a peek at the apartments across the way. The person living directly across from this window was using all the balcony space available as a clothes dryer. Clothes to include a pair of large tighty whitey undies. I wasn't sure if it was a joke, or if it was for real, so I had to take a photo.
Next time you're in the poetry section, check and see if the laundry is still out there..
"Have a Seat and Read a Book" - can't think of a better theme for a bookstore! I went into City Lights looking for a particular journal and ended up losing a few hours reading random books. They really do have an excellent selection of books on philosophy (political and otherwise), local SF issues, and even the other S.F. I won't deny that Amazon/Borders/etc have their place, but the world is a richer and more thoughtful place with bookstores like City Lights.
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