All month long, Proposition Chicken has been dedicating their non-profit Mondays to Bird & Beckett, cutting us in for 10% of the revenues from any sales made at the counter. Orders placed online don’t count. Gotta go there and talk to the good folks face to face for us to benefit. It’s a friendly place; they don’t bite! They’re super nice actually, and the place has a great patio with a fireplace and everything. Yardbird, fried, flipped & fake. Plus all those sides and canned wine, beer & cocktails. They’re open for breakfast, even! Did you realize that eggs is chicken? We just tripped on that! You can get chicken chicken, even at breakfast, if that’s your bag.

Well, this coming Monday is your big chance if you’ve been waiting for one! We’re throwing a party to celebrate and we crave a big turn out to go with the grub! Junk Drawer (JoeDeAndreis-Tim Renner-Skooter Fein) play at 6pm. At 6:55 its Hank Maninger and the Juke Box Charlies. And at 7:50pm it’s the Kai Lyons Trio, with Giulio Xavier Cetto on bass and Malachi Whitson on drums! Intersticial poets, to boot!

So turn out! West Portal is cool! There’s a bookshop and a music (read, vinyl) store in the same block. Used to be a movie theater across the street, oh well! Bars, coffee shops, restaurants, markets, shops, services. A bakery (alas! we do miss ours… Joe, where’d ya go?)…

Muni! A tunnel under a mountain! A university just down the road in Stonestown! Well, just past Stonestown. A community college around the corner the other way, with an Olmec head and much more! A grove for concerts and nature somewhere in between. West Portal’s got a lot, and a lot of that is chicken, even the chicken that’s not chicken! Be brave! Venture out of Glen Park for a New York minute! Monday the 27th, they got jazz and they got pomes pennyeach and they got honky tonk! Just like you like at Bird & Beckett! Here’s to Charlie “Yardbird” Parker and Sam the Man Beckett who can write circles around your humble proprietor, that’s for certain! Prop us up, so we can keep tryin’!

Monday the 27th, buy the chicken or the fake chicken–at the place, not online!–and we’ll get 10% of what you spend. It’s good grub, we’re tellin’ ya!

And if you really want to fill our coffers back up (they deplete fast, them coffers, especially when you offer nine musicians a fair wage to play your benefit), buy a commemorative poster from us at the party or just write a check to the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project — that’s our 501(c)3 and it’s the way we finance the guaranteed fair wage to the many musicians we hire year round, the small stipends we pay to the several dozen poets we feature each year, pay some staff, pay the accountants and the licensing agencies and insurance companies… do you realize that we carry workers comp insurance on every one of those musicians and featured poets that cross our stage? It’s not a small expense… And those licensing companies! ASCAP and SESAC… Have you ever even heard of SESAC? Well, they get their pound of flesh, too…

So thanks, thanks, thanks to you, our customers, our patrons, our donors, our well-wishers! We’re throwing a party and there’s no charge to cross the threshold. Do come! We’ll leave the light on for ya… Wait, it won’t even be dark yet! And the parking’s not bad on a Monday evening… and did we mention Muni? We love Muni like some kids love BART! We get why they do! Last chance this week to catch the kids doing announcements over the BART P.A. during its Autism Appreciation Month, it’s more than just acceptance or awareness, it’s big love. It’s David Byrne, baby, and Bob, your uncle!

Next thing you know, it’ll be May… Honor Labor! and the dos de Mayo, everyone needs a dose of mayo, and a fifth of scotch, but we’re talking Cantos de Mi Tierra in the store Saturday May 2nd… the fun never stops. Thanks for making it work by coming around and spending your dough and enjoying the show! Oh, and reading the books! That’s really the best thing. We just figure it’s between you and the page, and we don’t wanna meddle in your private business! Well, sure we do, but we try not to!

Like Duke Ellington always said, we love you madly.

Don’t change! Just be more of it!

/s/Eric, prop., since 1999