Pictures of a Not-So-Gone World:
Ferlinghetti's North Beach
A Pictorial by Paul Iorio
A Pictorial by Paul Iorio
North Beach, as seen from inside City Lights at night.
[photo credit: Paul Iorio, July 8, 2015.]
Ground zero for Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who died today, was always his City Lights bookstore and publishing house and its North Beach neighborhood. Or at least it had been since he and Peter D. Martin founded the shop in 1953, two years before it also became a publisher -- and the epicenter of a cultural and literary earthquake. That epicenter also included other nearby landmarks -- like the Vesuvio Café, where Allen Ginsberg and other poets used to drink; and Tosca, another Ferlinghetti hangout -- that are still where they were at the heyday of the Beat era.
Over the past two decades, this reporter has shot countless original photos and videos of the North Beach landscape that has been indelibly associated with Ferlinghetti since the fifties. Here are several.
video footage of Ferlinghetti's 100th birthday party outside City Lights, March 24, 2019.
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A violinist playing for change in front of City Lights, in the shadow of Tosca Cafe.
[photo credit: Paul Iorio, 2015]
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A display in the window of City Lights from 2005.
[photo credit: Paul Iorio]
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Here's what the publishing house's 50th anniversary looked like in 2005.
[photo credit: Paul Iorio]
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Its 60th anniversary was similarly celebrated in 2015. [photo credit: Paul Iorio]
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The 1955 San Francisco telephone book listing for "Lawrence Ferlinghetti."
[Photo credit: Paul Iorio]
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The yellow pages ad for City Lights in the 1955 San Francisco telephone book.
[photo credit: Paul Iorio]
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The author of this piece on Via Ferlinghetti in San Francisco, 2019.
[photo by Paul Iorio]
