Carl and Steve, General Meeting, December 8th
By Carl Nolte, Contributor Dec 20, 2025 - San Francisco Chronicle
“I walk the street and see the world,” the poet Raymond Carver wrote once. Walk east down San Francisco’s Market Street almost to the bay and you’ll see poetry.
The poet is H. (for Howard) Brian McFarland, who has a sidewalk table at the corner where Spear Street runs into Market, next to the entrance to the Embarcadero BART and Muni Station. It’s kind of a poetic location in itself; cable cars stop across the street and the Ferry Building is down the block.
McFarland is a sidewalk poet, a rarity these high-tech days. He has dozens of small volumes for sale: love poems, essays, a Christmas tale, a detective story, a long unfinished poem. He wrote them all himself and published them, too. “I’m a writer,” he explains, “I like to write.”
You might say McFarland is the heir to a great San Francisco writing tradition that goes back to the Gold Rush: Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, Gelett Burgess, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ina Coolbrith, a dozen others. George Sterling even gave San Francisco a poetic name: “The cool, gray city of love,” he called it. When a later generation of writers and poets came to town and began a poetry renaissance it was in San Francisco’s North Beach — Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened the famous City Lights bookstore and was the city’s first poet laureate; Jack Hirschman, the city’s fourth poet laureate, used to host a reading at the North Beach Public Library and then lead the group down Columbus Avenue to Specs’ bar a few blocks away, a parade of poets.
The tradition continues without the drinking: Chinatown playwright and poet Genny Lim is San Francisco’s reigning poet laureate.
There was a time when San Francisco was full of poets; it was said even the waiters in North Beach restaurants were all poets. Now the word is that high tech and artificial intelligence is killing the arts.
That may be true, but poetry is alive and well at Spear and Market when McFarland sets up shop. He’s there most weekdays, except when it rains. Rainy days are bad for the sidewalk poetry business.
Everything begins with a story. Your life, mine, everyone’s
Poetry in San Francisco lives on at Market and Spear streets
Greg
Quick and Dirty
“I walk the street and see the world,” the poet Raymond Carver wrote once. Walk east down San Francisco’s Market Street almost to the bay and you’ll see poetry.
The poet is H. (for Howard) Brian McFarland, who has a sidewalk table at the corner where Spear Street runs into Market, next to the entrance to the Embarcadero BART and Muni Station. It’s kind of a poetic location in itself; cable cars stop across the street and the Ferry Building is down the block.
McFarland is a sidewalk poet, a rarity these high-tech days. He has dozens of small volumes for sale: love poems, essays, a Christmas tale, a detective story, a long unfinished poem. He wrote them all himself and published them, too. “I’m a writer,” he explains, “I like to write.”
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You might say McFarland is the heir to a great San Francisco writing tradition that goes back to the Gold Rush: Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, Gelett Burgess, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ina Coolbrith, a dozen others. George Sterling even gave San Francisco a poetic name: “The cool, gray city of love,” he called it. When a later generation of writers and poets came to town and began a poetry renaissance it was in San Francisco’s North Beach — Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened the famous City Lights bookstore and was the city’s first poet laureate; Jack Hirschman, the city’s fourth poet laureate, used to host a reading at the North Beach Public Library and then lead the group down Columbus Avenue to Specs’ bar a few blocks away, a parade of poets.
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The tradition continues without the drinking: Chinatown playwright and poet Genny Lim is San Francisco’s reigning poet laureate.
There was a time when San Francisco was full of poets; it was said even the waiters in North Beach restaurants were all poets. Now the word is that high tech and artificial intelligence is killing the arts.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
That may be true, but poetry is alive and well at Spear and Market when McFarland sets up shop. He’s there most weekdays, except when it rains. Rainy days are bad for the sidewalk poetry business.
Everything begins with a story. Your life, mine, everyone’s
That’s the opening of “Streams of Consciousness,” one of McFarland’s most popular titles. It’s a handsome small book, one McFarland wrote as a kind of experiment.
He began writing 35 years ago, born, he writes, to “a loveless marriage” in St. Louis. He drifted for a while, hitchhiked around the country. “I was homeless for 25 years,” he said. He kept writing and writing, mostly for himself, until a year ago when he settled down in San Francisco. Once here and once through with wandering, he decided to publish and sell what he had written.
“It was Valentine’s Day last year,” he said, “I decided to publish and sell my book ‘One Month of Love Poems for You.’ He contacted a self-publishing firm in South Carolina and got graphic artist Miata Richards to design covers. He set up near the Embarcadero BART and Muni station, and was in business.
He’s no two-bit poet. His books have a professional look to them. Most cost $10, but he gives discounts, too. And he has a following.
“I get a lot of my customers from BART,” he says. They come up the escalator fresh from the subway and into the city. And there he is sitting down behind a table: poetry on the street corner.
His marketing at first is simple. He smiles at passersby and says good morning. “My goal,” he says, “is to sell two or three or four a day.” He says he’s sold 700 or so a season. “I do it for extra money,” he says. His main income is elsewhere. “I’m on disability,” he says.
There used to be other street poets in San Francisco. I remember a man who sold poems at Muni bus stops, a single sheet at a time, but I haven’t seen him for a while. McFarland remembers a man who worked at the Ferry Building. “He had a typewriter and he would type up a poem on request. I haven’t checked on him lately,” he said. I looked around myself, but this man seems to be a lost poet.
Most sidewalk poets are ephemeral, like most poetry. But McFarland appears to be here to stay. He’s set up an account at Amazon to sell his books and has his own website. He published three of his books this year and has more writing projects in mind. He’s big in his small world.
He’s written a bookshelf full of books, all different. Does he have a favorite? “No,” he said. “That’s like asking a parent if he has a favorite child.”
In the larger world of poetry, readings are still popular. The first one in the new year is on Jan. 2 at the Golden Sardine, a poetry bookstore, as part of North Beach First Fridays.