In a travel piece headlined "Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Enduring San Francisco," the New York Times reported that the upcoming 100th birthday celebration for the legendary poet, publisher, artist, social activist and City Lights bookstore founder "is the perfect reason to take a tour of old-school San Francisco."
Any reader's trip to the city by the Bay "should start with a visit to City Lights," the Times wrote. "Pound for pound, City Lights is almost certainly the best bookstore in the United States. It's not as sprawling as the Strand, in Manhattan, or Moe's Books, in Berkeley. But it's so dense with serious world literature of every stripe, and so absent trinkets and elaborate bookmarks and candles and other foofaraw, that it's a Platonic ideal. It can inspire, even in jaded bookstore-goers, something close to religious awe."
Noting that City Lights "is far from the only bookstore in town," the Times visited Dog Eared Books ("perfectly cluttered"), Borderlands Books ("a geek paradise"), the 826 Pirate Supply Store ("We'd have loved the pirate supply store if we'd been 7 years old again"), Moe's Books ("You can get lost for an entire day in Moe's") and Pegasus Books ("smaller, but expertly curated").