Best SF Neighborhood Bookstores

Readers and literary pilgrims can use this guide to San Francisco's independent bookstores, each one rooted in its own neighborhood: North Beach, the Richmond, the Upper Haight, the Mission, Noe Valley, Glen Park and Fillmore Street. City Lights, founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the publisher of Ginsberg's Howl, spreads over three floors with an upstairs poetry room. Green Apple Books is a creaky, multi-room maze of new and used titles with handwritten staff picks. Omnivore Books on Food stocks new, vintage and antiquarian cookbooks, and Bird & Beckett, named for Charlie Parker and Samuel Beckett, hosts jazz among the stacks.

The Booksmith is known for big-name readings and signings, so check its events calendar before you go. After City Lights, step outside into Jack Kerouac Alley.