San Francisco’s Little Italy

North Beach is changing fast, but the West Coast’s most storied Little Italy “can still deliver a moment the way Frank Sinatra delivered

‘My Way,’” said Christopher Reynolds in the

Los Angeles Times. The neighborhood, near Fisherman’s Wharf, filled with Italian fishermen in the late 1800s, gained an art school in the 1920s, and drew beat writers like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in the 1950s. Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, now 100, still owns the neighborhood’s beloved City Lights bookstore. You can also drink where Kerouac drank, at the Vesuvio Café, buy ceramics from Perugia at Biordi Art Imports, and chat with bohemians young and old while ordering a cappuccino at Caffe Trieste. And though many local Italian restaurants have closed recently, “there is no shortage.” You’ll likely find a line out the door at Golden Boy Pizza or at Sotto Mare, where everyone orders the cioppino, a seafood stew.