Beat Museum

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  • Address
    540 Broadway, North Beach
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  • Phone
    1 800 537 6822 (1 80
  • Website
  • Transport
    bus: 15, 30, 41, 45

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Lonely Planet review

The Beat goes on, and on - OK, so it rambles a little - at this truly obsessive collection of SF literary scene ephemera c 1950-1969. The banned edition of Allen Ginsberg's Howl is the ultimate free-speech trophy, and the 1961 check Jack Kerouac wrote to a liquor store has a certain dark humor, but some items are head-shakers: did those Kerouac bobbles and yo-yos ever really go into mass production?

The space is split evenly into a store and museum, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - the store sells poetry chapbooks and limited-run editions of obscure Beat titles you won't find elsewhere, and entry to this part is free.