cary head how it works
The free noon writing practice at Cafe la Boheme every Friday works like this:

Every Friday a little before noon people gather at a table. They write little phrases  on scraps of paper and fold them and put them in the center of the table. Somebody sets a timer and picks a prompt at random and reads it aloud. Everybody writes. When the timer goes off we go around the table and read aloud one by one. Nobody comments. We just read aloud. Then the next person picks a prompt and reads it aloud and we write and keep doing that until 1 p.m.
Then we're done.
Anybody can come. It's free.
We write and read aloud to each other just to do it. We don't do it to get commentary on our work. We don't discuss the work. Sometimes somebody will laugh or sigh but that's it. We just read.
It's a quiet demonstration of the primacy of the creative act in everyday life.
It happens every week regardless. It's always there.

cary head again, the facts:
Every Friday, a little before noon.
Cafe la Boheme, 24th Street at Mission, San Francisco.
cary head a little history
The free Cafe la Boheme writing practice has now gone on continuously every Friday at noon since March 27, 2009. According to my notes from that day, the first participants were Caitlin Meyer, Alice Wu, Roberta Llewellyn, Paula Hendricks and me.
But  Alice Wu really started it.
In January 2009, Alice came to our regular Saturday afternoon writing workshop on 48th Avenue. Alice seemed like a really fun, interesting person and she was thinking of moving out here from New York. We got to be friends, and Alice mentioned this really intriguing writing practice she had participated in at a cafe in Seattle, hosted by these two guys Jack and Bob, whom it would be great to go thank in person! So anyway we thought, hey, we should do that  here in SF! So we checked out a lot of places but Cafe la Boheme was the natural location.
Since March 2009, members of the Portuguese Artists Colony such as Caitlin, Leslie Ingham, Benjamin Wachs and Megan Enright, as well as many folks from the writing workshops such as Cavett Hughes, Eric DeRiel, Melissa Price, Heather Baird Donovan, Donna Reese, Alexandra Jones, Mary Burnham and others have joined us. We hope you will too.
cary head what if it went worldwide?
Anyone who happens to be in San Francisco on a Friday could come to Cafe la Boheme, find a group of writers at a table, join them, and spend an hour writing and reading their writing aloud without judgment or comment, and then leave to go about their day, or back to their hotel, or wherever they're going.
And then they could take this practice back to their city or country and start it in their own cafes, so that when we are traveling, we can drop in on cafes around the world and do the same thing. And then there will grow up a network of such groups in cafes around the world, and the practice will continue all over the world for decades or centuries, and the unbrokenness of the practice will amaze people and give them a sense of continuity and a sense that wherever you are, whatever century you are in, if you are called to be a writer this is something you can do.
cary head what if it lasts for 50 years?
Then sometime in the year 2060 on a Friday at noon a writer will sit at a table in the Cafe la Boheme and will realize that it was 50 years ago when she first came there and did the writing practice, and now it's done all over the world, and writers are still gathering at noon, putting their prompts on little pieces of paper, putting the papers in the middle of the table, drawing prompts, setting the timer, writing and then reading aloud around the circle without comment. Isn't that great? she'll say. Isn't that great?