A Walking Tour of North Beach

Beyond the aroma of cappuccino and focaccia, the café tables spilling onto the sidewalk, and the convivial air, North Beach is alive with the spirit of the Beatniks, those revolutionary artists who electrified San Francisco and shocked the country in the 1950s and '60s. Listen for the rhythm of Beat poetry, of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, which still pulses in the city's Italian neighborhood.

City Lights Books: The Heart of the Beats

At City Lights, wander three stories of books but linger by the poetry, where you're bound to see at least one serious, budding Ginsberg or Ferlinghetti (or even Ferlinghetti himself). Along the store runs Jack Kerouac Alley, inlaid with the words of Kerouac, Maya Angelou, and Confucius. You'll also find poetry crawling right up the muraled walls, on Vesuvio, the art-splashed saloon. Peruse the Beat relics, order a Kerouac, and picture that night in 1960 when the On the Road author blew off an invitation from Arthur Miller, lingering here instead. The poetry continues across Broadway, where a flock of books flutters in the air, and words such as "soar over" and "of whoop" engrave the sidewalk below.

The Beat Museum, Ginsberg's Digs, and Lenny Bruce's Dive

On bawdy Broadway, pass the strip joints and today's relocated and x-rated version of the hungry i nightclub. Back in the day, Beat comic genius Lenny Bruce rocked the house, occasionally landing in jail for obscenity. He also landed on the pavement, naked, after falling (or jumping) from the second floor of the Swiss American Hotel; look for the mural of neighborhood life on the building's Romolo Place side. Around front, duck into theBeat Museum. Browse bookshelves and clothing racks—$20 Beat beret, anyone?—on your way to the exhibit space. You probably won't find a Jack Kerouac bobble-head anywhere else, even in San Francisco. Another block down Broadway brings you to Montgomery; Allen Ginsberg wrote "Howl" while living at no. 1010.

The Classic Coffee and Bagels

Continue down Montgomery and turn left on Vallejo for the venerable, still-boho Caffè Trieste, favorite perch of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Charles Bukowski. Head north up Grant to no. 1398, where the Co-Existence Bagel Shop served as the living room of the Beat generation in the days when cops arrested kids for sandal-wearing. Today Grant Avenue's excellent boutiques sell edgy couture and vintage botanical prints. Photo op: shoot south down Grant for the culture collision of North Beach with Chinatown.

Beyond North Beach

True Beats will make the pilgrimage a mile west to 29 Russell Street, where Kerouac wrote part of On the Road while staying with his friends the Cassadys. Another mile west, at the long-defunct Six Gallery (3119 Fillmore), Kerouac shouted encouragement during Ginsberg's first reading of "Howl," in 1955; he later called it "The night of the birth of the San Francisco poetry renaissance."