City Lights Bookstore
City Lights is an independent bookstore-publisher combination in San Francisco, California that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. It also houses the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, which publishes selected titles related to San Francisco culture. It was founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin (who left two years later). Both the store and the publishers became widely known following the obscenity trial of Ferlinghetti for publishing Allen Ginsberg's influential poem Howl and Other Poems (City Lights, 1956). Nancy Peters started working there in 1971 and retired as executive director in 2007. In 2001, City Lights was made an official historic landmark. City Lights is located at 261 Columbus Avenue, on the nexus of North Beach and Chinatown in San Francisco.
Read more about City Lights Bookstore: History, Publishing, Howl
Famous quotes containing the words city, lights and/or bookstore:
“I’m darned if I understand you city folks. Always rushing, rushing. Always thinking about the future. No wonder you have stomach trouble.”
—James Poe (1921–1980)
“Thus while I sit and sigh the day
With all his borrow’d lights away,
Till night’s black wings do overtake me,
Thinking on thee, thy beauties then,
As sudden lights do sleepy men,
So they by their bright rays awake me.”
—Sir John Suckling (1609–1642)
“I went to the bookstore and God was not there.
Doctor Faustus was baby blue with a Knopf dog
on his spine. He was frayed and threadbare
with needing.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)