SFist Raves: Stern Grove
We are getting very psyched up as the annual Stern Grove festival opens next Sunday. Every city in the world can offer free live entertainment, but only SF can do it with such spectacular backdrops. Fireworks, shmireworks, we say, unless we have the bay in the background. Bike races are boring, they run in circles, unless they follow the course of the Bullit car race. And summer concerts are just not the same when they take place ensconced in a beautiful eucalyptus grove.
We are so getting ready, we are packing our icebox with cold cuts, pasta salads and a few bottles of chardonnay. We do not enjoy carrying the cooler on muni, even though the K and M lines go there, so we drive along the Great Highway, adding yet another pleasure to our day. Hellish parking does dampen the mood for a short while, but the hike down the hidden and secluded grove make us feel like John Muir and all perky again. Redwood swaying in the breeze, birds chirping, the smell of the eucalyptus, this is what California looked like, we like to daydream, before this city sprung here.
We'd be happy just sitting in the grove, taking in the scenery, getting a nice buzz from the wine and the sun. Actually, that we mostly do, as we love to go there early and stake claims on a parcel in the flat area of the grove. We have arrived later, when only horizontally challenged spots where still left open, and fighting gravity on a grassy slippery slope does take something away from the enjoyment of the music. We haven't been there yet this year, the festival opens only this week, but we hear that they have landscaped the grove, with more stairs and plateaus, and less opportunities to roll down the grass.
On top of sitting in the eucalyptus breeze, we get classy music acts too. There is a concert for everyone in the program, what with the symphony, the opera for the classically inclined, Khaled for the rai aficionados, grammy-winning Lucinda Williams for the grammy-winner lovers, flamenco with Ojos de Brujo (never heard of, but quick, name a flamenco performer?), hip hop, you name it, they got it. All the concerts we sat through always pleased us. Sometimes, it might have been the chardonnay talking, but every time, it was free.