North Beach is a neighborhood that has been significantly shaped by its changing residents throughout the years.  In the mid 1800's the area was known as the Barbary Coast and was home to a colorful assortment of criminals.

By the turn of the century the area had quieted down a bit and new residents were arriving.   In 1906 one of the first hotels was built that catered to immigrant Basque shepherds who lived North and East on sheep ranches.  But, like most everything in North Beach, it too was destroyed by the great quake of 1906.

It was in the early 50's that beat writers Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac first came to North Beach.  And it was in a North Beach attic room that Kerouac revised the beat-era bible "On the Road."  Not far away Allen Ginsberg wrote the seminal beat poem "Howl" in 1955.

In 1958, San Francisco columnist Herb Caen coined the word "beatnik," inspired by the launch of the Russian Sputnik satellite some months earlier.  The name stuck and North Beach has never been the same.