A professional opinion

Dave suggested I send my keg query to Kieran, who manages Solstice on Divisadero. Here was his professional recommendation about how many kegs to line up:

"The beer question you pose is humanity's true mystery, isn't it? Will there be anything other than beer offered? Wine and spirits? Or just soft drinks? How long is the event? All things that make the difference between 1 keg and 10 kegs...

Mathematically speaking there are about 90-100 glasses of beer in a standard American keg (15.5 gallons). That figures in 12 oz glasses with minor spills and fobbing (foaming in lay-terms). I generally figure on 1.5 glasses per person per hour which accounts for the people that will drink 3 in an hour as well as the people that will drink 0. That however, depends on what else is available to drink. If there is nothing else, I think your golden number for a 3 hour event is about 8 kegs , which is about 760 total beers (give or take 40) or 3.8 beers per person on a 200 person party."

It all makes sense, though eight kegs seems like a crapload of beer. Too much beer is definitely better than not enough, especially when you have Bay to Breakers happening the next morning.

To complicate the situation, our RSVP list has gone up from 200 to 250 in the last week.

I am at least feeling on top of the food situation -- A.G. Ferarri will be bringing in a bunch of sandwiches, salads, and nibbly stuff. And we booked a face painter for the kids. Oski is out, face painter is in. I wanted to rent a bouncy house (actually I wanted one for the kids and one for the drunk adults), but the contract for the park won't allow it.