See that triangular building on the corner? That's City Lights Bookstore — the first all-paperback bookstore in the United States, which in the early fifties was like opening a restaurant that only serves food critics consider trash.
The co-founder was a poet named Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Born in Yonkers, landed at Normandy on D-Day, got a literature degree from the Sorbonne on the G-I Bill, moved to San Francisco, and opened a bookstore because apparently the man hadn't done enough interesting things yet.
A couple years after the store opened, a poet named Allen Ginsberg read a new poem called Howl for the very first time in a gallery on Fillmore Street. The gallery had a dirt floor and about a hundred people showed up while Jack Kerouac passed jugs of wine through the crowd and cheered.
Ferlinghetti published it. Five hundred and twenty copies were printed in England and shipped to San Francisco, and U-S Customs seized all of them. An undercover officer walked into City Lights, bou
ght a copy, and Ferlinghetti was arrested for obscenity. When the police came for him, Ferlinghetti reportedly walked into the station carrying a fresh copy and asked the booking officer: would you like me to sign it?
Here's what makes the trial incredible. The judge — Clayton W. Horn — was a Republican who taught Sunday school Bible class on weekends. This Sunday school teacher was asked to deci
