With its beautiful weather and bountiful wide-open spaces, the Bay Area has long been known as a hotspot for big, splashy outdoor festivals during the summer. Calendars from May through September would be dotted with events crisscrossing the region. At least until last year.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit and everyone pretty much stayed home, as region-wide restrictions on large gatherings knocked fairs and festivals off the calendar like dominoes. Some optimistically called it a postponement, while others straight out canceled.
As this summer approaches, however, hope appears on the horizon with coronavirus cases on the decline, more Bay Area residents getting vaccinated and the state gearing up to lift all restrictions.
So all our favorite events can come back, right? Not so fast.
The uncertainty of the past few months kept many of the bigger events from being able to plan, book artists or musicians or get city permits lined up in time for their traditional time slots. So it’s unclear if you’ll be able to bask in the sun at San Francisco’s Union Street Fair or take your dad to Palo Alto’s World Music Day on Father’s Day weekend.
In some cases, “summer” is getting stretched for events such as the Bay Area KidFest, normally held in downtown Concord over Memorial Day weekend but moving this year to Labor Day weekend. The Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton is pulling up stakes from its regular mid-June timeframe and coming back Oct. 22-31.
“The Fair may look a little different in 2021, but we assure you it’s the same good time where you can build memories that last a lifetime,” Alameda County Fair CEO Jerome Hoban said. And while the main chunk of the fair has been pushed from summer to fall, horse racing and the junior livestock competition and auction will still happen this summer.
One late summer mainstay is returning — the Sausalito Art Festival. The long standing three-day event will take place at its traditional waterfront spot in its usual Labor Day weekend slot, Sept. 4-6, albeit at a smaller scale with less crowded sections.
County fairs take different paths
Fair fans on the Peninsula won’t have to wait, though, as the San Mateo County Fair — which was canceled last year for just the second time in its 87-year history — will be returning as an in-person event June 5 to June 13 at the San Mateo County Event Center.
“The theme of the San Mateo County Fair is ‘Where Tradition Meets Innovation,’ and we will certainly bring the favorite traditions of animals, pig races, BBQ, funnel cakes, carnival rides, and the Ferris wheel back, with the innovations that provide a healthy and safe space for our community,” San Mateo County Event Center CEO Dana Stoehr said.
Among those innovations is a scheduled timed entry for mask-wearing visitors — which will help meet capacity limits — with tickets sold online only and scanned digitally at the gate.
The Santa Clara County Fair is going a safer route, announcing plans for a drive-through edition in late July and early August, with guests able to buy fair food favorites like corn dogs and kettle corn and see displays that take them on a trip through California. And the Marin County Fair is coupling a virtual event July 2-4 with a drive-through fair food happening.
Big question mark for big events
Some organizers already have decided against in-person events or have scaled back. Mountain View’s A La Carte & Art, which traditionally opens Silicon Valley’s summer festival season in early May, will go dark for a second year in a row, as the city’s Chamber of Commerce couldn’t reliably plan for the event in keeping with Santa Clara County guidelines and instead is looking ahead to 2022.
Fans of SubZERO, the popular summer DIY/art mash-up in downtown San Jose, also will have to wait until next year. “We were really looking forward to SubZERO Festival 2021, but we’re going to have to just plan on 2022,” said Cherri Lakey of Anno Domini gallery, who organizes the event. “This June/July feels like it’s going to be a very crucial time of being diligent towards post-pandemic progress, and in the interest of keeping our artists and community safe, we feel the timing isn’t right for thousands of people to gather yet.”
But for many, the biggest disappointment will be hearing that Art+Soul Oakland — a beloved Bay Area tradition that has filled Frank Ogawa Plaza with music, art and other entertainment for two decades — is pushing back its 20th annual event for the second year. A smaller or virtual event just wouldn’t be the same, said Sammee Roberts, Art+Soul’s executive producer.
“The sights, sounds, aromas, and energy from our wonderfully diverse crowd all contribute to the festival vibe. It is because of this that we want our 20th to be in person,” Roberts said, adding that plans are cooking for a free event on Facebook in late summer or early fall to show the festival’s love for its supporters and launch a countdown to the milestone return.
Both San Jose Jazz and the Gilroy Garlic Festival — two midsummer events that draw more than 100,000 people apiece during their weekend runs — are working on plans for this summer, but they’ll likely be different than what festivalgoers are used to. San Jose Jazz executive director Brendan Rawson says the nonprofit, which canceled both last year’s SummerFest and this year’s WinterFest, is hoping for a slimmed-down version of the festival this August.
The Gilroy Garlic Festival will be bringing back its annual celebration of the Stinking Rose in July, though the festival will be “creatively reimagined” with both socially distanced and virtual events that showcase Gourmet Alley favorites, Bay Area music, local craft beers and wines from Gilroy’s burgeoning wine trail. Details still are being sorted out, but if any festival could successfully pull off social distancing it would be one with garlic on everyone’s breath.
And while President Joe Biden is hopeful the Fourth of July will be an independence day from coronavirus, patriotic revelers should expect a different holiday this year. There’s no word yet if fireworks will be bursting over Pier 39 in San Francisco — an event that annually draws about 200,000 spectators — but the skies over downtown San Jose will be dark with no fireworks at Discovery Meadow Park for the second year in a row.
The virtues of going virtual
Still other event planners have turned the challenges of 2020 into a positive by repositioning their events as virtual or hybrid affairs. The Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley is one example, having gone with an entirely virtual event in May.
Founder and executive director Cherilyn Parsons said the decision was largely forced because the authors fans would normally come to see in person aren’t touring right now and may not be until later this fall. But she said having held virtual events for the past year has shown a few upsides, such as engaging with a much larger audience that stretches well beyond Berkeley, allowing the festival to grow in an unexpected way.
“The annual festival is normally on a weekend, but now it’s nine days and totally virtual,” she said. “I think that’s something that is going to continue, and long-term, I think people will expect events to be both in-person and virtual.”
The SoFA Music Festival in San Jose over Memorial Day weekend is following a hybrid format with in-person audiences in downtown’s arty South First Street district as well as livestreaming bands to viewers watching from home. Fil Maresca, a longtime San Jose event planner who produces the street fair twice a year along with other events, said streaming technology seems to be going in a more interactive direction, allowing remote audiences to actively participate and not just watch a show on a screen.
“You’re going to be seeing a lot of hybrid events,” he predicted. “Events are going to have virtual components, because some people still aren’t going to be comfortable being in crowds.”
For people who missed an entire summer of fairs and festivals, the idea of having both is better than having none.
