Courtesy of Lit Crawl Henry Chang reading from a planter box on Bleecker.

You might normally steer clear of neighborhood bar crawlers, but next month, you may well want to join a couple of culturally enlightened crawls. First, on September 7, 30 art galleries around the Lower East Side will host openings from 6 p.m. till 8 p.m. The Lo-Down has the full list today.

Meanwhile, a few days later on September 10, the annual Lit Crawl will take over 18 bars, a coffee shop, and a bookstore in the East Village and Lower East Side. The free event (an offspring of San Francisco’s Litquake festival that came to New York in 2008) encourages participants to crawl from bar to bar, hearing readings by the likes of Gregory Young (co-host of the Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast), Madison Smartt Bell, downtown poet Steve Dalachinsky, and dozens more. Events include a game of literary “Jeopardy!” featuring FSG authors, a “six-word memoir slam” inspired by Hemingway, and a karaoke event in which you can reenact author interviews that appeared in “Bomb” magazine. For the full calendar, see Lit Crawl’s official site.