A City Walk

The iconic City Lights Book Store

Despite its name, the North Beach neighborhood where I am staying in San Francisco is an urban one with the beach long gone. Historically, it has been home to the city's large Italian population and still contains the city's Little Italy. On my last full day in the city, I went on a walk, including a pilgrimage to City Lights Bookstore.



City Lights is one of the great book stores in the United States. It encouraged the Beat culture of Jack Kerouac, the predecessor of the movements of the 60's


I love bookstores, and could spend hours browsing in them. At City Lights, I bought the "Selected and Last Poems 1931-2004," by the great Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz and a couple of postcards. 



 The French philosopher and writer, Albert Camus. I think he looks like my Uncle Joe.


Truth.


Milosz spent many years as a professor of Slavic languages and literature at the University of California at Berkeley. Here is a passage from "The Notebooks."

I did not choose California. It was given to me.
What can the wet north say to this scorched emptiness?
Grayish clay, dried-up creek beds,
Hills the color of straw and the rocks assembled
Like Jurassic reptiles: for me this is
The spirit of the place.
And the fog from the ocean creeping over it all,
Incubating the green in the arroyos
And the prickly oak and the thistles

Where is it written that we deserve the earth for a bride,
That we plunge in her deep, clear waters
And swim, carried by generous currents?



Up a steep hill I climbed.


To see one of the city's modern monuments, The Transamerica Building.


When I first saw a few people wearing Santa costumes, I thought it was just a company having a clever holiday party.


But then they were everywhere. I asked someone about it and they said it was an annual tradition called santacon. Its a giant pub crawl through San Francisco. Everyone looked like they were having fun.


Here they are in Chinatown.


Which was my next stop.


Chinatown is adjacent to North Beach. Above is a grocery store.



A mosaic cross on a building wall.

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