Perhaps you need to be of a certain age to recognize City Lights Bookstore as the Holy Grail of the free speech movement. Well, at least one of them at any rate. Founded in 1953 by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti as a literary meeting place, today it offers three floors of books, with lots of chairs scattered around and signs inviting you to sit and read. City Lights was one of the touchstones of the Beat Generation. These decidedly anti-authoritarian folks were frequently well-educated, often military veterans, left-leaning free speech advocates. Two years after the bookstore opened, Ferlinghetti started City Lights Publishing. Authors such as Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and others found a home here. In 1956, City Lights published the Allen Ginsberg poem “Howl.” It contained the line “I saw the best minds
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