Litquake 2008: Read, Eat, Crawl

Litquake 2008: Nine lit-focused days of readings, tributes, panels, workshops, and literary death matches and it comes to its much anticipated end with the now famous Lit Crawl this Saturday taking place in various venues around the Mission from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

For those of you who don’t know how Lit Crawl works, here’s the blurb:

A three-hour literary crawl through the heart of San Francisco’s 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. All Lit Crawl events are free; see specific venues for age restrictions.

Lit Crawl is always lots of fun and having more than 250 authors and hundreds of readers celebrating the written (and spoken) word we think this is always a good night to be in Mission. It can also be a hungry one if you don’t plan accordingly.

Over 3 hours of bar and bookstore hopping, even the most avid Litquake lover has to eat. This can get difficult when you’re trying to get to as many events as possible.

The first option is to check out the events that take place in a venue that serves food. Here’s a handy list of food venues and the event they are hosting organized by phase:

Phase 1 (6-7 p.m.)
Ti Couz Creperie: Writin’ On Empty: Authors – And Parents – Reading About Life in An Empty Nest)
Gestalt Haus: At One With the World: Travel Writers Share Stories of Place, People, and Culture

Phase 2 (7:15-8:15 p.m.)
Parea Wine Bar: The Women’s National Book Association Turns on the Lights
BollyHood Cafe: Writing the Lines of Our Hands: Writing from South Asian American Authors

Phase 3 (8:30-9:30 p.m.)
Foreign Cinema: A Different Light: LGBT Literature
The Liberties: Crossroads Irish-American Festival: Storytelling, Poetry, Prose, & Pizzazz with Irish-American Authors

Another option is to take a look at the complete list of events, figure out which events strike your fancy (Edible San Francisco Presents A Smorgasboord Of Food Writers, perhaps?) and then grab a bite between venues at whatever faster food spot is nearby. One great thing about Lit Crawl? You can’t beat the location when it comes to food options—Valencia and Mission streets between 16th and 22nd.

But personally, the route we’ve gone in the days of Lit Crawls past has been enjoying what the bar-hosted events have to offer to satisfy our liquid needs and then stopping at one of the bacon-wrapped hot dog carts for some grilled goodness between phases.

Yum!

But whatever route you decide to take, be sure to have a Plan A and a Plan B and maybe even a Plan C—Lit Crawl is one very popular event and the already hectic Mission gets even more hectic during this event, making compromise and flexibility somewhat mandatory.

[Photo by Alexis Wright]

Litquake 2008: Read, Eat, Crawl