Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Bob Donlin, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Robert LaVigne, & Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
circa 1956, outside Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore.
3
) and according to the plaque at
top of this steep park, Coolbrith was
named the first Poet Laureate in the
country by the state legislature in
1919. Your hike up the many steps
to reach the plaque will be rewarded
with sweeping North Beach views.
@
15 min. Taylor & Vallejo sts.
5
Ina Coolbrith Park.
Josephine
Donna Smith, a niece of Mormon
founder Joseph Smith, arrived in San
Francisco in 1862 as a 21-year-old
divorcée and changed her name to
Ina Coolbrith. Already a published
poet, she joined a circle of writers
that included Mark Twain and
Ambrose Bierce and became librar-
ian of the Oakland Public Library in
1873, where she introduced a
young, poor Jack London to classic
literature and inspired him to write.
(He would eventually earn fame with
such stories as
Call of the Wild
and
White Fang.
) In 1899 she became the
only woman named honorary mem-
ber of the Bohemian Club (see bullet
6
★
Caffé Trieste.
The West
Coast's first espresso house, still
owned by the same family, was a
popular hangout of the beatniks,
whose photos fill the walls. Best for
a cappuccino or a thick pizza slice.
609 Vallejo St. (between Columbus &
Grant aves.).
y
415/392-6739.
Kerouac
& the
Beat Generation
The 1957 publication of
On the Road
established
Jack Kerouac
as one of the central figures of the Beat Generation, a counterculture
movement of writers, poets, and artists with its heart in San Fran-
cisco. The Beat movement—which valued freedom of artistic and
personal expression—was a reaction to the excessive conformity of
postwar America in the 1950s, and included Neal Cassady, William S.
Burroughs, Robert LaVigne, Allen Ginsberg, and Lawrence Fer-
linghetti. Kerouac unwittingly originated the term
Beat Generation
when he said “We are nothing but a beat generation,” but it was the
late
San Francisco Chronicle
columnist Herb Caen who coined the
term
beatnik
to describe the disheveled literati.
