It’s up against the Hammett Tour I’m doing this coming Sunday with Dashiel (and the ghost of Dashiell, I guess), but what the hell — City Lights Bookstore making it to 60 years on the mean streets is worth a mention.
They’re throwing a party from 2 to 5 if you want to check it out. My bet is that it’ll be a mob scene, like the signing a few weeks back for the new book on The Cacophony Society, where they had major spillover into Jack Kerouac alley on the side. Back in the 80s I caught a few signings in City Lights, meeting William S. Burroughs — I dropped by one for Allen Ginsberg but the place was so packed I didn’t even try to get inside, just looked at Ginsberg through the window, thinking that the floor of the one hundred year old building might well collapse from the throngs packed in.
Seems like City Lights has been around for a cool century, too — only 40 more years to go.
