This past weekend is known to Bay Area dwellers as one of the most eventful weekends of the Indian Summer, and perhaps the year. Between Oktoberfest, the West Coast Green conference, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival and Lovevolution, there is certainly something for everyone.
These are the days when it starts to get cold. You wake up freezing and clinging to your covers because your apartment doesn't get proper insulation, and in fact it's probably colder inside than it is outside. But the sun is shining and there are plenty of outdoor activities calling your name...
Feeling like you want to learn a little more about sustainability and what we can do to protect our planet? Ride your bike down to Fort Mason Center and walk the convention floor of the annual West Coast Green conference. The conference kicks off on Thursday and closes with an after party on Saturday night. This year I didn't make it to the conference, but I managed to score a ticket to the after party at the Cal Academy of Sciences. My friend and I took in the warm air of the rain forest after our cold walk to the museum, then watched a really fascinating planetarium film on the size of our earth compared to the vast universe around us. And we managed to get a couple cocktails in there too!
If green isn't your thing, maybe you should check out SF's Oktoberfest at Pier 49. Modeled after the notorious German festival, Oktoberfest lets you sample brews and schnitzers from all over Germany, without leaving the country (or the city for that matter)! If you like drinking beer and hooking up with drunk Bridge and Tunnel people, look no further than Oktoberfest. Don't forget your beer goggles!
This weekend SF borrows from another popular German event, Berlin's Love Parade, to create our very own Lovevolution. Every year San Francisco's music gurus parade down Market Street on floats blasting various forms of dance music. Half naked men and women adorn these floats, dressed in tutus, bikinis, and some of the most extravagant outfits you will see outside of Bay to Breakers. Almost everyone is on some kind of illegal drug, including but not limited to ecstasy, Molly, acid, mushrooms, special K, Oxycontin, and pretty much anything you can get your hands on to make you feel the love, ecstasy being the most popular. And if underage girls are your thing, then you'll find plenty of them here. You might want to ask for id before you find yourself sticking your tongue down some fourteen-year-olds throat - or some other appendage, for that matter. But in all seriousness, it's a pretty fantastic event if you find yourself in the right mood to partake in it. And it takes place in our very own Civic Center, where gay couples were once able to get married!
The most favored event of this weekend, catering to all types of San Franciscan's, would have to be the annual three day Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in Golden Gate Park. Maybe it's the twang of banjo echoing off the eucalyptus trees, or the array of hippies and hobos selling cans of C-level beer along the outskirts of the park, or perhaps it's the fact that the entire event is free thanks to the monetary support of founder F. Warren Hellman, chairman and co-founder of Hellman & Friedman LLC (and avid bluegrass listener). Whatever it is that draws you to this unique music festival, you'll find yourself immersed in every aspect of San Francisco culture: dread head hippie dance circles kicking up dirt, Red Sox capped Marina frat boys wheeling coolers of Budweiser, families picnicking with their earplug-wearing toddlers, and even some stragglers from the Lovevolution crowd who are trying to nurse their drug hangovers while laying in the sun (a true recipe for dehydration)- some of whom have forgotten to change out of their barely-there outfits, but nobody notices or cares because they're just in it for the music! And it's not just bluegrass (as you'll notice in the clever title of the event), but funk, country, jazz and rock-n-roll too!
And if none of these events spark your interest (which I find hard to believe), there's always Taste of Fillmore, Castro Street Fair, Jack London Square Cupcake festival, and about a million other things going on in this eclectic and exciting City by the Bay.
*Next year I'll try to get this out before the weekend is over already....
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