10 Counterculture Landmarks in San Francisco
10 landmarks with verified facts and stories
Alcatraz Island
View from Pier 33, The Embarcadero, San Francisco
That island sitting out there in the bay — it looks bleak, right? Cold concrete, guard towers, razor wire.
Balmy Alley Murals
Balmy Alley (between 24th and 25th Streets), San Francisco
Walk into this alley and every surface screams at you.
Castro Camera
575 Castro Street, San Francisco
Five seventy-five Castro Street.
City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco
This bookstore changed American literature, and it did it by getting raided by the police.
Coit Tower
1 Telegraph Hill Boulevard, San Francisco
This tower exists because of a woman who crashed a firemen's funeral when she was fifteen years old — and that was the most normal thing Lillie Hitchcock Coit ever did.
Compton's Cafeteria Riot Site
101 Taylor Street (corner of Turk), San Francisco
There's nothing here now that marks what happened on this corner.
Grateful Dead House
710 Ashbury Street, San Francisco
Seven ten Ashbury Street.
Jack Kerouac Alley
Jack Kerouac Alley (between Columbus Ave and Grant Ave), San Francisco
This narrow alley connecting Chinatown to North Beach used to be a nameless service lane where garbage trucks turned around.
Specs' Twelve Adler Museum Cafe
12 William Saroyan Place, San Francisco
This tiny bar across from Vesuvio and City Lights has had more lives than any drinking establishment in San Francisco, and that's saying something for a city that takes its bars very seriously.
Vaillancourt Fountain
Justin Herman Plaza, The Embarcadero, San Francisco
That massive concrete structure in the plaza — the one that looks like someone stacked brutalist building blocks during an earthquake — is the Vaillancourt Fountain, and it has been making people angry since the day it was unveiled in nineteen seventy-one.
Explore counterculture in San Francisco
GPS-guided narration at every landmark. Tap a spot on the map, hear the story. Every fact verified.