A sizable brawl that reportedly involved two security companies (!) kept police busy near Golden Gate Park as Outside Lands let out Sunday night, while jilted Muni riders complained of being passed up by absolutely jam-packed 5-Fulton, 38-Geary, and N-Judah vessels.

We will concede up front that yes, it’s an exceedingly difficult task to manage the 80,000 or more people emerging from Golden Gate Park when any Outside Lands event lets out for the evening. But the solution seems simple — you just run as many 5-Fulton, 38-Geary, and N-Judah lines as possible to manage the crowd flow out of the park. Yet there still wasn’t enough of that after Day Three of Outside Lands Sunday.

Here we see two frustrated N-Judah riders getting creative after they were just passed by an N-Judah train which was too full at 31st Avenue and Judah Streets. Undaunted, the pair took matters into their own hands and hopped on to the back bumper of the N-Judah car, and successfully rode like that as many blocks as we could see them ride off into the distance.

According to KRON4, there was also a “large fight” outside Golden Gate Park just after 11 p.m. Sunday. KRON4 describes the fight as having happened “a block away” from where a woman’s body was found in a duffel bag, so that would be the Inner Richmond near 22nd Avenue and Fulton Street. The station adds that “Three people were seen lying on the ground before being placed into an ambulance,” and there are no further reports of any injuries.

But this is odd: KRON4 adds that “The fight involved two different security companies, according to an account from a witness at the scene.” We will hope to learn more about that in the days to come!

Update: KPIX seems to confirm that workers for two security firms that were hired for the festival were involved — and the large brawl apparently resulted in injuries to a 45-year-old adult female and a 20-year-old adult female. One of those victims was reportedly seen wearing one of the yellow-striped jackets that security personnel were wearing.

BART and Muni said they were bolstering service for Outside Lands. But for Muni at least, it was not bolstered enough. On the 5-Fulton front, they sure could have used more 5R rapid buses in action. Both Saturday and Sunday afternoons, the Nextbus app was showing “No Current Prediction” for the westbound 5R-Fulton taking people out to the park. Those lines were running, but it was not an increase of magnitude that the crowd sizes merited.  

The number of 5-Fulton buses headed to the park Sunday afternoon felt notably insufficient, with a gap between them of 25 to 30 minutes during prime time at 2 p.m. which led to packed curbs and packed buses passing by those festival-goers.

SFist witnessed a completely empty bus headed away from the park Friday night just around the time they should have been lining up waiting for those exiting at 9 p.m., and the situation at the 30th Avenue and Fulton gate was chaotic each night, with not nearly enough buses for the massive crowds needing to get downtown.

Down in the Sunset, N-Judahs were running so full that they rarely stopped for more passengers. On Sunday night, large crowds spilled into the streets at each corner along Irving and Judah streets as people milled around waiting for their rideshares. And SFGate reports that Uber and Lyft enriched themselves quite well with ridiculous surge pricing.

Having been in the thick of these frazzled Sunday night street crowds myself, I have to stress this could have gone much more tragically. Exasperated drivers had absolutely had it after three days of this chaos, with throngs of drunken, tripping fools running roughshod over their neighborhoods. Driver tensions were running high, and many of the crusty post-Outside Lands revelers were not displaying their best or most intelligent behavior.

So it was a rough ride home that caused many an inconvenience, but no real emergencies (we’re still awaiting any injury details for the related fight).

This SFist correspondent remembers the disastrous 2019 Sunday night Outside Lands trip home, where several mobbed N-Judah trains were stopped in place for 40 minutes. Two people on my train had medical incidents during that time, and riders were forced to pry the train doors open by hand themselves to get those people out to safety. At least from my perspective, Sunday’s mess was not a cataclysm of anywhere near that magnitude.  

So Muni may have disappointed some with their Outside Lands service. But the large-scale public relations disaster of the weekend still goes to self-driving car company Cruise, whose massive stall-out of suddenly immobilized robo-cars gummed up North Beach Friday night. The company blamed “wireless bandwidth constraints” caused by the Outside Lands festival.

Related: Muni Had Meltdown On N-Judah Line Just As Crowds Were Leaving Outside Lands Sunday [SFist]

Image: Torbakhopper via Flickr