“Everything is its own reward”: Chasing ghosts in North Beach, San Francisco.

“The next sign is in Frisco itself where after a night of perfect sleep in an old skid row hotel room I go to see Monsanto at his City Lights bookstore and he’s smiling and glad to see me.”

– Jack Kerouac, Big Sur

You know any place that has a street called Jack Kerouac Alley is bound to be a good one.

Two weeks ago today, I found myself exploring such a place – a little neighborhood in San Francisco known as North Beach.

But unlike most of my travels, this time I wasn’t alone.

In preparation for the Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference (which I promise to one day stop talking about…maybe), I signed up for a pre-conference writing workshop with Don George.

It seemed like a good way to get to know Don and a other attendees before the craziness of the conference kicked up, but little did I know what magic was in store for us.

While the day was technically called a workshop, in reality it was more of an in-the-field adventure with one of travel writing’s best alongside us, offering his insights and advice on how he approaches a new place.

How is your mind functioning?

How do you absorb a place’s essence?

How do we go about “getting” North Beach?

All of which is to say, it was awesome.

Not only did North Beach have such a funky vibe to it – there was more street art and murals and installations than I’m sure I noticed – but wandering its streets with Don and fellow writers and photographers like Natalie, Chris and Lily was pretty epic, too.

For an hour or so before lunch, we were sent out on our own to get our “North Beach story” (no pressure, right?). While some of us cozied up with locals at nearby cafés or went in search of map stores, I decided to do a little ghost-chasing.

Chasing ghosts has long been one of my favorite travel pastimes. Whether it’s tracking down Hemingway’s and Fitzgerald’s flats in Paris or sitting on a bench outside Virginia Woolf’s home in Gordon Square, there’s a certain thrill in seeking out the former haunts of my literary heroes.

There’s something about it that gives my journey context, and meaning.

So when I learned that Francis Ford Coppola wrote The Godfather in North Beach’s Caffe Trieste, and that one of my biggest heroes, Jack Kerouac, used to give readings in the City Lights Bookstore, it didn’t take long to figure out what my “story” for the day would be.

Two weeks on, it’s still hard to say what exactly made the day so cool. Maybe it was the convergence of so much travel writing awesomeness in one place. Maybe it was seeing my favorite phrase, be here now, on a sign in City Lights’ window, and then another variation, read here now, upstairs in their Beat literature department.

Or maybe, like the title of a book I saw in City Lights, it was that “everything is its own reward,” and I couldn’t help thinking about all the little moments that had led us to North Beach, and where all of our paths would lead us after.

Do you ever do any “ghost chasing” of your own when you travel?