City Lights Booksellers & Publishers

City Lights was founded in 1953 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin and operates as both an independent bookstore and a small press. The publisher released Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems in 1956; the book's sale led to a 1957 obscenity trial that became a landmark First Amendment case. The shop has long served as a gathering place for San Francisco's literary and countercultural communities.