Let's give credit where it's due. Howl was a genuine act of rebellion. When the poem was seized by customs agents and its publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti was put on trial for obscenity, it became one of the most important First Amendment cases of the 20th century. San Francisco was the city that fought for the right to publish it. That matters. That's worth celebrating.

But here's the uncomfortable part: the San Francisco that birthed the Beats — a cheap, scrappy, slightly dangerous city where broke poets could afford a cold-water flat in North Beach — doesn't really exist anymore. And that's not entirely the fault of tech bros or greedy landlords. Decades of suffocating regulation, Byzantine permitting, and a housing policy framework that treats new construction like a war crime have made this city unaffordable to exactly the kind of artists we now canonize.

Ginsberg railed against conformity and institutional control. Today, San Francisco's institutional apparatus would require him to file three permits just to read poetry in a park. The irony is thick enough to spread on sourdough.

So yes, celebrate the centennial. Go to the events. Read Howl aloud to someone who's never heard it. But maybe also ask: are we building a city where the next Ginsberg could actually afford to live? Or are we just throwing expensive parties for dead poets while pricing out the living ones?

The best tribute to radical art isn't a gala — it's a city that still has room for radicals.