Neil Cassady was the inspiration for the Dean Moriarty character in Jack Kerouac’s most famous book, On The Road. Cassady and his wife Carolyn lived here in the early 1950s, and his on-off best buddy Kerouac lived in the attic for a while, writing part of On the Road here. While this could be considered more a part of Russian Hill than North Beach, it would have been a walk of only half a dozen blocks or so for the Cassadys and Kerouac to get into the heart of the beat action in City Light Books, Washington Square, and other North Beach hangouts.