Litquake concludes tonight with the famous Litcrawl in the Mission District. From the event page:

Litquake 2008 closes in high style with the wild and woolly Lit Crawl Saturday night, beginning at 6 pm! More than 250 authors appear in a three-plus-hour literary crawl through the heart of the Mission District. Three phases (6-7 pm; 7:15-8:15; 8:30-9:30 pm) will carry you through our version of the traditional pub crawl, from bars and cafés to galleries, restaurants, and even a few bookstores. Come get drunk on literature with hundreds of your closest friends. And best of all, Lit Crawl events are FREE.

New this year are the events in Clarion Alley, which is over by Good Vibrations. There will be music, readings, and an open mic event devoted to the theme of six-word memoirs, hosted by the publishers of the collection Not Quite What I Was Planning.

But there is more, so much more I don’t even know what to recommend. In fact, I’m sad that I only have one body, because for each of these hours I would like to be in at least three or four places at once. In the first hour alone: Femina Potens is hosting something at Intersection for the Arts. Travel writing is the theme of the reading at the Gestalt Haus. Adobe Books, as usual, is hosting the Here Comes Everyone Reading Series. Elixir is hosting their Bang Out Reading Series (where writers have been asked to “bang out” a story on a given theme). Food writing is the theme at 18 Reasons. And the Dark Room is hosting readings from the SoMa Literary Review.

See what I mean? It was exhausting just to properly link that paragraph.

These events get crowded, so if you see something on the schedule you really don’t want to miss, it’s a good idea to show up early. (Some people recommend skipping the second hour for that purpose, but is that really fair? I think not.) However, if you’re easily overwhelmed by choice, or just don’t feel like planning, there is such an overabundance this year that you could probably just walk at random and be entertained by any event you happen to stumble into — so long as you don’t mind trying to work your way into a dense crowd. Happy crawling!