North Beach

Residential and commercial section in the north of San Francisco, California. North Beach stands immediately north of Chinatown, southwest of Telegraph Hill, east of Russian Hill, and south of Fisherman's Wharf. From the 1950s onwards, the area became famous as a centre of the counterculture.

The area was named after a beach that once lay between Telegraph and Russian hills, before landfill operationsbegan in the 19th century. From the 1850s onwards, North Beach became home to waves of immigrants; up to World War II, Italians predominated in the ‘Little Italy’ district that grew up here. The area is now ethnically diverse. In the 1950s North Beach came to be known as a bohemian quarter, home to poets, writers, and followers of the ‘beat generation’, who congregated at the City Lights bookshop (founded 1953). The area also became a centre of the psychedelic hippy culture of the 1960s.