​The excellent annual Filipino American cultural festival is this weekend; we passed by the Yerba Buena Gardens this morning, and the place was already covered in white tenting. It has to be, because part of the Pistahan plan is the unusual and welcome system of themed pavilions. So instead of wandering around wondering where the balut are, and waiting for your boyfriend to get distracted by the Filipino Jazz Festival along the way, you can actually plan where you'd like to go! Wow.

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Anna Diem

​"Pick a story that you tell all the time -- a story that you tell the same way, with the same words, every time. And it has to revolve around food. You've got 10 minutes to write, and you can't stop writing until time's up."

Heads go down as 35 pens hit paper, and suddenly there's complete silence.

But it's not the eerie quiet of an exam room or the polite silence of strangers in a library. It's a comfortable silence, the sort you get when you're surrounded by friends, but everybody's just doing their own thing. At Feast of Words, SOMArts' monthly "literary potluck," this comfortable intimacy with a group of strangers is exactly what hosts Irina Zadov and Lex Leifheit try to cultivate.

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Charles Linder, artist and barbecuist.

​I've talked before about how helpful it is for galleries to offer food and refreshments at openings, that a lot of art seems more beautiful, profound, socially conscious, and politically relevant to the well-fed and slightly tipsy. I lamented the shocking lack of cheese cubes as well as the austere Kruschev-era-style Perrier-rationing at 49 Geary, an unfortunate state of things on its own, but especially piteous in light of something I heard at the most recent first Thursday. A couple of stalwart art lovers who'd attended the monthly art walk since 2001 said that in former days of plenty, not only did the galleries there serve more generous amounts of water, champagne, and wine -- and in glasses made of glass rather than plastic - but in what now seems like an ecstasy of largesse, offered entire wheels of cheese. I was ready to despair that America's best days really were behind it, and that that behind, happily fattened on bries as fragrant as the feet of French angels, had waddled away forever.

But as I approached Guerrero Gallery on Sunday for the opening of Mark Mulroney's "Sent Upstate" and Charles Linder's "Swimmingly, with Watermelons and Referrals," I was greeted by Linder himself, sweating manfully over the barbecue. He basted a magnificently darkening, odorous, glistening goat. A goat. For us to eat while we looked at art. Also offered were corn on the cob, artisanal mini cupcakes, homemade slaw, grilled veggies, luxury Vickles pickles, kimchee, and watermelon cocktails.

Once inside, Mulroney's graphic yet comical depictions of sex and death were omnipresent. You'll see some if you read further.

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The galleries at 49 Geary are always among the hot spots on First Thursday in San Francisco.

​ Dear 49 Geary: I'm afraid you just got served.

First Thursdays at the prestigious address are always intellectually, perhaps even spiritually satisfying, not only for art's enriching effect on the mind and soul, but also because, as with any intellectual or spiritual pursuit, you must suffer physical discomforts, deprivations, and abstentions to achieve enlightenment. The elevators are invariably so busy you don't bother to take them from floor to floor in the five-story complex, and instead opt to squeeze past the corridor texters to schlep the cold stone stairs, regretting the high heels you thought looked so Helmut Newton.

The galleries are lit and kept at a similar temperature to Whole Foods' hot buffet, and when you visit one of the few that offer refreshment, you are given a plastic cup of water that would be enough to soak your contacts in. You find yourself lingering near the refreshment stand, pretending to find whatever art happens to be nearby particularly mesmerizing, and return three or four times, hand outstretched like some sweaty, blotchy Oliver Twist in senseless shoes and Rorschach mascara cheeks: "Please, intern, can I have some more?"

To be sure, notable works were on display at the venerable art-mall. But first, 49 Geary, I'll speak of your First Thursday competition. Its name is the San Francisco Jazz Heritage Center.

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