San Francisco
North Beach
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City Lights bookstore, Vesuvio bar, Coit Tower, and the best espresso in SF — the Beat Generation still haunts these streets.
North Beach is San Francisco's Italian-American neighbourhood and Beat Generation literary hub — the two identities coexist in a single compact grid of streets between Broadway and the waterfront. City Lights Bookstore (261 Columbus Ave), where Lawrence Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg's Howl and refused to capitulate to censorship in 1957, is still independently owned and one of the great literary destinations in the world. The espresso bars and cannoli of the Italian community survive alongside the coffee and record shops of modern SF, and the neighbourhood's position between Chinatown, Fisherman's Wharf, and Telegraph Hill makes it one of the most central and walkable in the city.
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What you gain
- ↑City Lights Bookstore and Vesuvio bar (directly across Jack Kerouac Alley) form the spiritual centre of American literary bohemianism — the alley itself is paved with quotes and the bookstore's upstairs poetry room is one of the most atmospheric reading spaces in the US. Worth an hour minimum.
- ↑The Italian dining on Columbus Avenue and Green Street — Sotto Mare (lobster cioppino), Tony's Pizza Napoletana, Trattoria Contadina — represents some of the city's most established and well-executed restaurant culture. These are not tourist traps but multi-generational operations that have survived because the food is actually excellent.
- ↑Coit Tower and the Filbert Street Steps are among the city's finest surprises: 360-degree bay views from Coit Tower (built 1933, covered in Depression-era murals) reached via a wooden staircase flanked by wild parrots and private gardens clinging to the side of Telegraph Hill. The whole walk from Washington Square takes 20 minutes and is one of SF's unmissable experiences.
What you sacrifice
- ↓North Beach is heavily visited — the Broadway strip in particular can be rowdy on weekend nights, and the concentration of tourist restaurants near Fisherman's Wharf means the boundary between authentic neighbourhood and tourist infrastructure is thin on the northern side.
- ↓Accommodation options are more limited than in Union Square or the Marina — mostly boutique hotels and B&Bs rather than large hotel inventory, meaning prices can be high relative to the options available.
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