City Lights Bookstore (Beat Generation landmark)

City Lights Bookstore, founded in 1953 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin, is located at 261 Columbus Avenue and became an international center for the Beat literary movement. The independent bookstore and publisher is noted for championing poets and radical literature and for its role in the 1957 obscenity trial over Allen Ginsberg's Howl. The storefront and adjoining reading room remain active as a bookshop and cultural space in North Beach.