No roller coaster rides and no waterslides. There were no theater picnics and no concert tickets — and definitely no hugging the person you’d just met while dancing at the big music festival in the park.
Let’s face it: Summer 2020 left a lot to be desired.
But things are looking up for Summer 2021. If all goes well, we’re hoping to party like it’s, well, 2019.
Vaccines are rolling out and venues reopening as we progress down the multi-hued COVID-19 tier ladder. Bay Area residents — many of them downright starved for in-person entertainment — can begin returning to amusement parks, theaters and other venues. But the experience will be different.
Even if the state’s recently announced plan to let all indoor venues reopen June 15 — if certain COVID conditions measure up — there will likely be pandemic-related precautions folks will need to deal with: reduced capacity limits, timed-entry tickets, advance booking requirements and social-distancing measures that limit interaction between parties.
After more than a year at home, it will all be worth it, if it means we can once again safely enjoy live, in-person entertainment and fun.
Ride the roller coasters
Nothing says summer quite like the cinnamon-sugar taste of a churro, chased down with 40 ounces of neon-hued Mountain Dew, slurped between thrill rides at a local amusement park. Get ready for the sugar-and-adrenaline rush to return this summer.
In Santa Clara, California’s Great America — which missed the entire 2020 season, due to the pandemic shutdown — was scheduled to begin welcoming guests this weekend, with extensive new health and safety plans firmly in place. Park communications manager Danny Messinger said the theme park’s staff is just “thrilled to reopen Great America and provide the Bay Area a much-needed return to fun.”
Face coverings are required — including while riding the rides. Ticket sales are limited to ensure space for safe social distancing, and you can expect to see hand sanitization stations at high-touch areas, such as rides and restrooms and other spots around the park.
If you bought Great America season tickets last year, they’re good for the 2021 season, and any individual tickets purchased for 2020 are valid through Sept. 6.
Vallejo’s Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, by contrast, didn’t miss the entire 2020 summer season. The park resumed limited operations only a few months after the shutdowns began in March, thanks to its hybrid nature. It’s part wildlife park.
“Fortunately for our park, we had the opportunity to open to guests back in July of 2020 without rides (by) featuring the animals in our care,” says Discovery Kingdom public relations manager Marc Merino. That limited reopening means the park staff had a chance to test out its safety measures, including health screenings at entry, sanitizer stations, social distancing and mask enforcement early on.
Discovery Kingdom’s thrill rides began rolling again last month.
“Guests will find the ride experience very much the same as they have in the past,” Merino says, with the addition of measures “currently commonplace in other areas of everyday life, like mask wearing, social distancing markers in the queue line, not filling every available seat to allow for social distancing on the ride itself and regular sanitizing of the ride vehicle by our team members.”
The iconic Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, which shuttered for only the second time in its long history when the pandemic hit, began operating rides again at limited capacity last month. Gilroy Gardens, which is aimed at families with younger thrill-seekers, was scheduled to reopen this weekend.
See a show
Theater was hit hard by the pandemic, which shuttered performance venues around the world. But the show went on — online, that is — as theater troupes quickly figured out ways to stream productions to fans at home.
Streaming will remain a major avenue for most theater companies to reach their audiences this summer. It was welcome news when restrictions on indoor theaters began lifting in mid-April, with venue capacity capped according to COVID-19 tier and degree of audience vaccination, but it didn’t give troupes much time to plan and mount summer productions. Look for a broader return to indoor theater this fall.
But outdoor venues, including the California Shakespeare Theater’s popular Bruns Amphitheater in Orinda, will be hosting live theater this summer. Cal Shakes will host one production, Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” and then share its coveted stage with other arts organizations throughout the summer during what has been dubbed the 2021 “Season of Shared Light.” West Edge Opera, for example, kicks off a three-week opera festival at the amphitheater on July 24.
Meanwhile, other organizations continue to find creative solutions for hosting shows. The Oakland Theater Project, for example, is staging drive-in productions.
“Audiences were thrilled to experience a live theatrical production from the safety of their car,” says Colin Mandlin, the theater company’s managing director. “It has been a profound experience to gather together again as a community and to participate in a season of shows that attempt to speak to the urgent crises facing our society, and find renewal as we all learn how we move forward in this new world.”
San Francisco’s “Immersive Van Gogh,” a touring multimedia exhibition and global sensation made its West Coast premiere at SVN West back in March. Co-producer Corey Ross said the organizers were “really excited to bring one of the first things for people to do, in a safe way, during COVID.”
The show uses light, music and other elements to illuminate the life and art of Vincent Van Gogh, immersing viewers in the great 19th-century post-Impressionist painter’s world from the safety of their clearly marked social bubbles. The smash production has been extended through Sept. 6.
San Francisco Shakespeare Festival will take its summer production — “Pericles, Prince of Tyre” — online this year. Other summer theater companies — the annual Mountain Play on Mount Tamalpais, Livermore Shakespeare Festival, San Francisco Mime Troupe — had yet to announce summer plans at press time. Woodminster Theatre in Oakland is hoping to present live shows this summer, with its seating cut from 1,200 to 400 to accommodate social distancing.
As for the fall, both Broadway San Jose and TheatreWorks Silicon Valley are eyeing live shows in October. Broadway San Jose’s 2021-22 schedule of all live shows is slated to kick off Oct. 13 with the blockbuster of blockbusters, “Hamilton.” TheatreWorks will open Oct. 6 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts with a new indie-rock musical comedy “Lizard Boy.” Berkeley Rep is eyeing a fall reopening but has not announced dates yet, while American Conservatory Theater will pivot to live productions in January.
Live music, on the other hand, is having a harder time regaining its footing. Most major promoters are reluctant to host limited-capacity concerts. The reason? Simple economics: Promoters need to fill vast numbers of seats to offset the costs associated with putting on a Taylor Swift, Phish or Travis Scott gig.
There have been some encouraging developments, as Bay Area counties move to less-restrictive COVID-19 tiers, but it’s hard to imagine many major concerts taking place at the big venues this summer. Organizers have already postponed three of Northern California’s biggest music festivals. BottleRock Napa was pushed back from May to Labor Day weekend, Sept. 3-5. Santa Rosa’s Country Summer was postponed a year; it’s now set for June 17-19, 2022. And San Francisco’s Outside Lands was moved from its typical August dates to Halloween weekend, Oct. 29-31.
But you can expect to see some smaller shows mounted at outdoor venues around the Bay. One of the more intriguing offerings is an outdoor concert series in Napa.
“We are planning on opening the Blue Note Napa outdoors in a socially distanced, COVID-responsible manner at Charles Krug Winery,” says Blue Note managing director Ken Tesler. Among the shows on sale now: Pink Martini, Chris Botti, Brian McKnight, Los Lobos and Kenny G.
“The response has been huge,” Tesler says. “We are definitely feeling a significant pent-up demand for live music. There is no doubt the experience will be different, yet in its own way, very fun and special.”
We’ll take that. Gladly.
