North Beach Poetry Crawl and Being Tired of Trash in Dolores Park

Photo by Diane Church. North Beach cats in 1975, making poetry look cool.

I was walking through Dolores Park yesterday and truthfully I was quite appalled at the total mess left behind by people.  Seriously, get it together people!  I don’t know what you think is going on in the park but we are SO FUCKING LUCKY to have it and I’m tired of shitty people disrespecting it.

In the United States, we don’t have a lot of public space '” spaces where we can congregate for FREE and not be expected to purchase something.  And Dolores Park is not only one of those places, it’s also turned into a temporary autonomous zone of sorts.  While Curtis the Creme Brulee guy has done something awesome by organizing an occasional clean-up, you can’t expect him to clean up your shit every weekend.  The man has creme brulees to sell!  So yeah, sorry about this rant, but take some responsibility for something that you love, and clean-up after yourself, fucktard.

Anyways, on to something else.  If you’re not gonna be in the park today, and you’re not gonna stop by Oliver’s Drinks with Designers, you should stop by the Poetry Crawl in North Beach.  It’s the last event of the San Francisco International Poetry Festival that’s been going on all weekend.  Here is the itinerary:

1:30pm '“ 3:00 pm: Beat Museum

Hosted by Tony Ryan, featuring Ámbar Past (Mexico) reading with Alejandro Murguía, and Al Young (United States).

1:30pm '“ 3:00pm: Kerouac Alley

Hosted by Bob Coleman. Poets: Ferruccio Brugnaro (Italy) reading with Jack Hirschman, and Carla Badillo Coronado (Ecuador) reading with Jessica Loos.

3:30pm '“ 5:00pm: Caffe Trieste

Hosted by Soheyl Dahi, featuring Ziba Karbassi (Iran) reading with Niloufar Talebi, and Najwan Darwish (Palestine) reading with Sharon Doubiago.

3:30pm '“ 5:00 pm: Beat Museum

Hosted by Csaba Polony. Poets: Francis Combes (France) reading with Matt Gonzales, and Agneta Falk.

5:30pm '“ 7:00 pm: Live Worms Gallery

Hosted by Bix Warden, featuring Tarek Eltayeb (Sudan/Austria) reading with Kareem James Abu Zeid, and Sasha Pimentel Chacòn (The Philippines).

5:30pm '“ 7:00 pm: Kerouac Alley

Hosted by Nadya Williams, featuring Georges Castera/Joj Kastra (Haiti) reading with Boadiba, and Taslima Nasrin (Bangladesh) reading with Dottie Payne.

7:30pm – Washington Square Park Closing Party

Join host Jack Hirschman with Jonathan Richman and Friends of the Library Executive Director Donna Bero for the closing event, featuring an indigenous Quichua dance by poet Carla Badillo Coronado accompanied by Jorge Molina, and music by the Vince Lateano Quartet.