Writers With Drinks tomorrow at the Makeout Room
I generally don’t drink at Writers With Drinks, or I stick to coffee from the Revolution Cafe across the street at 22nd and Bartlett, and take it into the Makeout Room. It’s amazing how crowded it gets in there! If only there were folding chairs. I’ve seen a hundred people cram into that bar, squashing themselves onto the pool table or even sitting on the floor.
That area of the Mission tends to draw me in, for the Make-out Room, Ritual Roasters, the library on 24th and Bartlett, and all the stores where I can buy stripey socks with indivually outlined toes. I long to know who buys the porcelain things that light up in those stores crammed full of imports. All I can say is, you could do an awesome analysis of globalization from shopping there with a camera and a notebook in hand. I got a 5 dollar shirt with the Virgin of Guadalupe printed on it, made in South Korea, and it wasn’t just any old iron-on virgin, it was like, fabric with embossed embroidered flying virgins that boggled my mind.
Anyway! Tomorrow night’s readers at Writers With Drinks will be Daniel Alarcon, Mark Budz, Mako Matsuda, Mary Van Note, Sparky, Tom Patchell and Christopher Upham.
It’s been interesting to go to WWD nearly every show for the last couple of years. It features six writers from six different genres. They tend to freak out a little that they didn’t pick something to read that will “fit in”, which is funny because there is no way to fit in and the whole point is that the writing isn’t all the same kind of thing. You get bizarre juxtapositions; stand up comedy and then Daisy Zamora talking about war and quoting Octavio Paz and then some kind of weird science fiction erotica. I think my favorite disconnect was Peter Beagle reading a sweet fairytale right after Hambone Johnson had been on stage wearing nothing but a diaper and a fur coat, talking about anal sex with sailors.
This way, no one has time to get bored, and you don’t get the sense of an insular, competitive scene that emanates from so many literary readings. Another excellent bonus – writers get thrown for a loop as MC Charlie Anders outlines their weird, wild, fictional biographies. I love watching how they deal with getting on stage after their fake life is exposed!
See you on Saturday at 7:30 at the Makeout Room; 3225 22nd. St. between Mission and Valencia, San Francisco. ($3-$5 sliding scale)
this is hands down one of the funnest events in San Francisco — I have a blast every time I go!