Outside Lands (OSL) is just a day-and-change away, which means Golden Gate Park will, again, be inundated with gastronomes, comedians, and, of course, more musical acts than you can shake a mic stand at.

With over 50 bands and solo-performers belting across six stages over the verdant western end of Golden Gate Park, deciding who you should see is a bit daunting. We decided to save you some legwork, compiling a list of our favorites from this year's lineup to enjoy between macerating tapioca balls and downing cocktails from Comstock Saloon.

Some tips: 1) You are not going to get a prime standing location for any show unless you give up something else you want to see and get there way before the set starts; 2) be warned that the Lands End and Twin Peaks stages where most of the big acts are performing are nearly 10 minutes apart, depending on how fast you walk; 3) If you're over 40 and mostly excited about Paul Simon you might want to splurge on VIP for at least one day in order not to feel jostled and abused by the end of Sunday.

The following acts are ones you should not pass up:

  • Childish Gambino
  • Kacey Musgraves
  • Flume
  • CupCaKke
  • Counting Crows
  • Mavis Staples
  • Still Woozy
  • Puddles Pity Party
  • Alyssa Edwards
  • Mike Birbiglia
  • Aparna Nancherla
  • The Lumineers
  • Bon Appetit’s Adam Rappaport, Molly Baz, and Andy Baraghani
  • Monster Rally
  • Jon Armstrong
  • and obviously Paul Simon, though Kygo is good too (and those sets conflict)

(To see specific times and locations for each act, visit OSL’s lineup calendar.)

Musgraves and Gambino, in particular, have had quite the year. The formerly mentioned 35-year-old multi-hyphen artist Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino, not only voiced Simba in Disney’s live-action, record-breaking The Lion King, but also lent his musical touch to both the film’s  soundtrack and sister LP, curated by none other than Beyoncé herself, The Lion King: The Gift. Musgraves, too, garnered four Grammy wins earlier in the year, including Album of the Year.

Notable, left-of-center mentions like drag tour-de-force Edwards and the Bon Appetit’s always charismatic on-camera cohort, offer a fresh side of comedy and live-cooking demonstrations to the litany of concerts. (Edwards will be performing both in the Barbary tent on Friday and on the GastroMagic stage with local chef Melissa King.)

2008’s inaugural OSL was a game-changing festival for SF that included over 60 musical acts from around the world, including Radiohead and Bon Iver, as well as erecting several art installations, all of which attracted nearly 60,000 festival-goers; 3-day event tickets were only $225 at that time. Now over a decade later — with SFist reporting from the festival grounds for all but one, mind you — OSL has become a calendar staple for concert-aficionados, comedy nerds, and steadfast foodies alike, far and wide; this year’s crowds are expected to number north of 200,000 warm bodies.

OSL 2019 begins tomorrow, Friday (August 9th) and noon, and goes through Sunday evening (August 11th), occupying a huge swath of Golden Gate Park. Both GA and VIP tickets are still available from $155 to $815, though single-day Saturday GA tickets are sold out. And if you want to be cheap about it and listen to a few sets for free, Broke-Ass Stuart has some tips.

Here's a small taste of the numbers (and sets) from that aforementioned list we hope to see tomorrow and this weekend – WARNING: THE CUPCAKKE SPOOF OF "OLD TOWN ROAD" IS VERY NSFW!:

Photo: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons