North Beach — The checkable facts

Because there was one. A beach ran along the northern waterfront in the 1800s, and the city filled in the shoreline to make more buildable land. The water moved several blocks away and the beach ended up under the streets. The name outlived the thing it described by more than a century.

City Lights published Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems in November 1956. In June 1957 police raided the shop and arrested the manager, Shigeyoshi Murao, for selling an obscene book; Ferlinghetti was charged too. Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that a work with the slightest redeeming social importance is protected, and they won.

Yes, still independent, still at 261 Columbus Avenue, and still open late. It began in 1953 as the first all-paperback bookshop in the United States, at a time when paperbacks were considered cheap and disreputable — which was the point. The poetry room is upstairs.

Washington Square, with the twin spires of Saints Peter and Paul Church on its north side; Vesuvio Cafe next door to City Lights, separated by Jack Kerouac Alley with poetry set into the pavement; and Caffe Trieste, which claims to have brought espresso to the West Coast.

It is the historically Italian neighbourhood, settled from the late 1800s by immigrants from Genoa and later Sicily, and Joe DiMaggio grew up a few streets from Washington Square. The Italian character is thinner than it was, but the cafes, the church and the square still anchor it.