101 Music

North Beach & Chinatown


You'll have to bend over those earthquake-defying bins to let DJs and hard-core collectors pass (hey, wasn't that Tom Waits?!), but among the $5–25 discs are obscure releases (Songs for Greek Lovers) and original recordings by Nina Simone, Janis Joplin and San Francisco's own Dead Kennedys. Don't knock your head on vintage Les Pauls.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby North Beach & Chinatown attractions

1. Bob Kaufman Alley

0.1 MILES

What's that – your hometown doesn’t have a street named after an African American Catholic-Jewish-voodoo anarchist street poet? Revered in France as the…

2. Mule Gallery

0.1 MILES

Upstart San Francisco artists buck art-world trends and kick out brave new work at the backstreet Mule Gallery. Recent shows have featured artworks by Bay…

3. Beat Museum

0.15 MILES

The closest you can get to the complete Beat experience without breaking a law. The 1000-plus artifacts in this museum's literary-ephemera collection…

4. Good Luck Parking Garage

0.15 MILES

Each parking spot at this garage comes with fortune-cookie wisdom stenciled onto the asphalt: 'The time is right to make new friends' or 'Stop searching…

5. Washington Square

0.16 MILES

Wild parrots, tai chi masters, and nonagenarian churchgoing nonnas (grandmothers) are the local company you'll keep on this lively patch of lawn. This was…

6. City Lights Books

0.16 MILES

No one could have predicted the cultural force City Lights would become when it first opened in 1953. Sure, it had a proletarian ethos suggested by its…

7. Jack Kerouac Alley

0.17 MILES

'The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great…' This ode by the On the Road and Dharma Bums author is embedded in his…

8. Coit Tower

0.2 MILES

If you want to really see San Francisco, head to Coit Tower, a 1933 art deco beaut designed by Arthur Brown, Jr. and Henry Howard that sits high up on…