Founded as an all-paperback bookstore by Peter D. Martin in 1952, the name City Lights is an homage to the Charlie Chaplin film of the same name. Martin also used the name for a magazine he was publishing in San Francisco at the same time.

In 1953, the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti was walking by the storefront and noticed Martin hanging up a sign. Ferlinghetti told Martin he had written for his magazine, and that he had always wanted to own a bookstore. They both invested $500 and became partners in the store.

In 1955, Ferlinghetti heard Allen Ginsberg reciting Howl at the Six Gallery and offered to publish it. The poem was published in 1956, and the resulting obscenity trial was not entirely unexpected given the prevailing attitude towards drug use and homosexuality at the time.

The presiding judge at the obscenity trial declared that Howl was not obscene and that a book with “the slightest redeeming social importance” was guaranteed First Amendment protection.

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In 2003, the Ciminios transformed their bookstore into the Beat Museum. Three years later, they moved to this two-story location in North Beach.

The Beat Museum now features several donated artifacts of the Beat era and its characters: Jack Kerouac's jacket, Neal Cassidy's referee shirt from his Ken Kesey bus-driving days, the 1949 Hudson- the same make and model that was driven in On the Road- used in the film version of that book and donated by creators of the film.

In addition, the museum features more than 1,000 photos, rare books, paintings, records, and posters to show the Beats rejection of conformity, resistance to cold war mentality, and love of personal freedom.

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This is a single-family, 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom home located in the Lower Pacific Heights neighborhood where there's a heart and a hand to hold onto.

Doobah da bah ba dow.

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From 1966 to 1968, Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead lived at this Victorian house in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco.

In the Summer of Love of 1967, the Dead were busted for drug possession. The bust was detailed in the first issue of Rolling Stone.

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Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of publishing magnate (and Citizen Kane inspiration) William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her Berkeley apartment by the Symbionese Liberation Army on February 4, 1974.

The Symbionese Liberation Army, or SLA, drew their name from the word "symbiosis", and based their manifesto on leftist urban guerilla propaganda.

Hearst participated in a bank robbery at 1450 Noriega Street in San Francisco on April 15, 1974. She was photographed wielding an M1 carbine at the Sunset District branch of the Hibernia Bank.

Patty was shuttled between many safe houses by the SLA until her eventual arrest in September of 1975. This house in Haight-Ashbury is one of them.

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