653 Chenery Street
in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood
1-415-586-3733
[email protected]
Open to walk-in trade and browsing
Tuesday to Sunday
noon to six
Live Streams every weekend!
Refresh your browser to catch a show in progress!
Visit our Facebook page or YouTube channel!
But nothing beats being in the room with the music & the musicians!
Friday, August 16th, 5:30 to 8:00 pm
Scott Foster Brazilian Jazz
Jazz in the bookshop… every Friday without fail. San Francisco’s longest running neighborhood jazz party. Joining guitarist Scott Foster at Bird & Beckett this Friday are vibes player Jim Zimmerman, bassist Ken Lenga and drummer Curt Moore, playing a repertoire steeped in the work of the Brazilian masters Jobim, Gilberto, Lins & more…
Thursday, August 15th, 7:00 pm:
Poets Michael Koch & Gerald Nicosia
open mic follows
Jerry Ferraz hosts
Michael Koch, born in New York City of Slavic and Jamaican heritage. He is a painter, poet, translator, amateur percussionist and avid salsero. Gerald Nicosia is a biographer, historian, poet, playwright and novelist. His biography of Jack Kerouac, Memory Babe, won the Distinguished Young Writer Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters and…
Wednesday, August 14th, 7:00 pm:
The Gardener’s Guide to Common-Sense Pest Control
Steven Ash (coauthor and editor) will present this new edition (Taunton Press, 2013) of the valuable book by William Olkowski, Sheila Daar and Helga Olkowski — who pioneered the non-toxic alternative “Integrated Pest Management” approach. IPM provides an environmentally friendly approach to controlling insects and diseases that can afflict lawns, edible and ornamental gardens, and…
Sunday, August 11th:
An Afghan Afternoon
Little Kabul comes to San Francisco! 2:00 pm – “Secrets of Little Kabul: The Inside Scoop on Afghans in America” A panel discussion with journalist Fariba Nawa, memoirist Atta Arghandiwal and poet/fiction writer Nahid Fattahi. 4:30 pm – A concert of music by Afghan-American vocalist Abu Sofyan with tabla accompaniment performing modern and traditional music Fariba…
Thursday, August 8th, 7 pm
The Righteous Mind by Haidt
Bird & Beckett Political Book Group
This week’s subject of discussion is Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. Anyone can come and join the discussion, and take part in choosing future books… Following are some thoughts on the book by one of the regulars in the group, Dwight Smith: The Righteous Mind I…
Wednesday, August 7th, 7:00 pm:
Killing All Your Darlings…
& finding an audience
An evening with writers Seth Harwood and Jim Sidel - the first in a series featuring prose writers with emerging careers, who will read from their work and discuss matters of craft, process and getting one’s work published. Seth Harwood, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, was born in Boston…
Sunday, Aug. 4th, 4:30-6:30 pm:
The Ruth Keady Quartet
which way west? Sunday concert series. All ages welcome! No cover charge, but your generous donations make it possible for us to pay the musicians. Sunday, August 4th – 4:30-6:30 pm: Vocalist Ruth Keady with Madaline Duran, sax; Keith Saunders, piano; Scott Chapek, bass. Ruth Keady has a powerfully swinging way with jazz standards that’s gained…
Wednesday, July 31, 6:30 pm:
Poets Sunnylyn Thibodeaux, Jason Morris, Jackson Meazle
DOUBLE BOOK RELEASE READING Jackson Meazle joins Jason Morris and Sunnylyn Thibodeaux in reading to mark the publication by Bird & Beckett of Morris’ Local News and Thibodeaux’s 88 Haiku for Lorca by Morris’ PUSH Press. Meazle’s Jack of Diamonds and the Queen of Spades was published by Bird & Beckett in 2012. Sunnylyn Thibodeaux is the author…
Sunday, July 28th, 2:00 pm:
Writer Donnelle McGee
Donnelle McGee is the author of Shine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). He earned his MFA from Goddard College, and is now on faculty at Mission College in Santa Clara, California. Donnelle’s work has appeared in Controlled Burn, Colere, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Home Planet News, Iodine Poetry Journal, Permafrost, River Oak Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review,…
Friday, July 26th, 9 pm:
Lao She’s “Teahouse”
a bilingual reading of excerpts
“Don’t Discuss State Affairs” (a sign mounted on the wall of the Yutai Teahouse — 1898, 1917, 1945) Lao She’s Teahouse is a classic of the Chinese theatre from the late 1950s, an episodic observation over the decades from the turn of the 20th century through the 1940s, set in a milieu where the common preoccupations of the…