An article I wrote about San Francisco literary events in bars, for BarTAB magazine:
You can trace the marriage of booze and books in San Francisco back to the 1950s, when Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac passed around bottles of cheap red wine during live readings at North Beach bars like The Black Cat, The Cellar, and Vesuvio.
That tradition is alive and well today. Several local series blow the cobwebs off the typical staid literary reading with raucous, unpredictable events where you can always slip away from the rare tedious author for a shot of whiskey at the bar, or a quick smoke out front.
October is by far the greatest month for local book and bar lovers. Litquake, the city’s annual literary festival, runs from October 1–9 and brings together an astonishing array of writers and fans for readings and panels in unusual locations (www.litquake.org).
(You can read the rest of the article on BarTAB’s site.)