North Beach is Italian for Piazza

At the behest of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a piazza that will take up a block of Vallejo street is in the plans for 2007. The piazza will be located on Vallejo Street between Columbus and Grant, by the St. Francis of Assisi. If we can remember our North Beach geography through our fuzzy, alcohol drenched memories of North Beach, that's right by Busters (home of yummy Cheese Steaks) and Caffe Trieste. The piazza will include benches, trees and a "starving poets podium" for, well, starving poets. If we can remember our geography through our fuzzy, alcohol drenched memories, isn't there something like that in London? Says Tony Gartner, the president of the North Beach Merchants Association a nice restful place for "people to come and rest their souls."

Right now the problem with the piazza is... drum roll please... money. Or more like not knowing where it'll come from. Estimated price is somewhere around a half million, which doesn't sound like that much but is if you don't have any of it. Also, the city will lose several parking spots if the piazza is created and no parking spots means less money for the city. And needless to say, one closed street could cause a lot of traffic hassles, especially in a neighborhood well known for being a traffic clusterf----.

The positives in the piazza are mainly in that it's a pretty frickin' cool idea if you ask us.