Friday, August 04, 2006

Getting Grinchy with the Two Buck Chuck

People often think the art world and wine world are natural partners. Wine drinkers sometimes like to talk about art, and art lovers sometimes like to drink a little wine. It makes sense that appreciators of one craft would also dig the other.

So it made sense, and triggered some enticement, when I heard about the once-a-month gallery hop event held and plugged at 49 Geary. The deal is this: on the first Thursday of every month, several of the galleries in the building stay open past their usual terminus time of 5:30, and serve wine to the browsers who venture in. I heard about this initially from a 70 year old casual carpool rider who pegged the 49 Geary galleries as the only worthwhile ones in town. Between the one-stop-shopping and the free wine, this is clearly an unmissable event.

Yesterday being the first Thursday of August, it was a good opportunity to finally attend. I was impressed with how many people turned up -- when we drove by on our way to find parking there was a congregation of young, hip urbanites milling around the door. The elevators were crowded and the stairs were nearly unavigatable due to the high traffic. While many in the crowd looked like they were either artists, friends of artists, or art students, there were also a number of well dressed, dapper older folks (collectors? afficianados?) as well as some from my peer group -- that is, art novices who like to look at pretty things and appreciate complimentary beverages.

That whole wine component however, was overhyped. Turns out all the galleries have bottles and plastic glasses behind their desks, but 1.) they don't like to promote this fact and 2.) they're extremely reluctant to distribute it. I'm not clear on why they're so underenthusiastic about sharing the libations. One glance around a given crowded gallery revealed numerous (usually empty) cups being grasped in hot little hands, so it wasn't a secret that the bar-factor existed.

How to explain the withering look and pour service we received when we approached the guy at the Gregory Lind gallery. The puzzle got even more murky as we realized they were serving two buck chuck. Being stingy with expensive grape juice is somewhat understandable; being stingy with the world's cheapest imitative answer to a grape glut is rather ridiculous.

In any event, the galleries were open, and we did find some cool stuff. We capped off the night with vegetarian Japanese food at the very cool but oddly named Medicine Eatstation. Where we enjoyed two flights of sake and cheerful service. The sake and the service were very refreshing.