The Queerest Places

San Francisco, Calif.

City Lights Books

261 Columbia Avenue

The legendary City Lights Books in San Francisco, which was founded in 1953 and remains a literary landmark, has just been named bookseller of the year by trade magazine Publishers Weekly. City Lights was an informal center for the Beat poets in the 1950s.

City Lights’ publishing arm was founded in 1955 and has a distinguished history of publishing cutting-edge and queer work. In the most famous example, the co-founder of the bookstore/publisher, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was present at Allen Ginsberg’s first reading of “Howl” in 1956, and asked if he could publish the poem. The following year, after copies of Howl were seized by customs officials, Ferlinghetti was arrested for publishing and selling the book, which was deemed “obscene.” In his subsequent trial, the ACLU defended Ferlinghetti, and the judge ruled that Ginsberg’s work was not obscene. “‘Howl’ knocked the sides out of things,” Ferlinghetti later said. Kudos to City Lights for its long history of championing queer voices.