The Portola Music Festival, now in its third year on San Francisco's Pier 80, felt far more crowded and much better organized than in its initial outing — and the VIP offerings have only grown to occupy a huge footprint of the event.

There was a true mix of San Francisco weather for this year's Portola Fest, with a mostly cloudy, chilly, and blustery Saturday giving way to a lovely and sunny Sunday on Pier 80. The festival, largely focused on electronic music DJs and producers with some indie pop singers thrown in, is a more rave-y counterpoint to Outside Lands, and has matured in its third year into something that clearly has a strong audience draw — with a 21-and-up crowd that skews a little older than some larger, mainstream festivals.

Also, the Warehouse stage, in the airplane-hangar-sized warehouse that was once Larry Ellison's America's Cup Oracle boat headquarters, now plays a role as a kind of intense-late-night-rave venue from noon onward — more of a side attraction for the heavily drugged than a main event, like it was when Charlie XCX played there in 2022 and caused a potentially dangerous stampede. (Still, internationally known DJ Honey Dijon made a notable appearance in there on Sunday.)

Clearly festival producers Goldenvoice have seen significant demand for VIP passes, with this year's VIP area occupying about one fourth of the festival grounds and nearly half of the audience space in front of the central mainstage. The Mission District's Thai restaurant Farmhouse Kitchen had a whole sit-down dining operation inside VIP, in addition to multiple VIP food concessions and bars. By contrast, the food options for GA ticket holders were fewer and mostly far off by the Bay side of the pier.

As in previous years, there were noise complaints from over in Alameda — but the Entertainment Commission reported to the Chronicle that there were about half as many complaints this year as last year, and Goldenvoice took steps to re-orient the stages for reducing sound across the Bay.

Standout sets on Saturday included Empress Of, Frank Moody, Jessie Ware, Deltron 3030, and Rufus du Sol. And early-aughts British pop princess Natasha Bedingfield made a surprise appearance doing a 15-minute set that included her hits "Unwritten" and "These Words" — and while these were big crowd pleasers, Bedingfield hit a few sour notes.

Peaches, who continues to pop up on the dance festival circuit 24 years after the release of her seminal hit "Fuck the Pain Away," performed other profane numbers like "Vaginoplasty" and "Rub," all with the help of two backup dancers with long-haird vaginal wigs on their crotches and vaginas for heads.

Sunday's headliners Justice and Fisher did plenty to keep the crowd rolling, and UK house music producers Disclosure (brothers Howard and Guy Lawrence) put on a sweeping 75-minute set that included hits like "Latch," "Help Me Lose My Mind," and "When a Fire Starts to Burn," and closed out with the hard-driving "Tondo."

And Rebecca Black, primarily known for her 13-year-old pop hit "Friday," came out as queer in 2020 and has been up to much darker, campier stuff since then. She put on a terrific, eminently watchable show Sunday at the Ship Tent for all those festival goers who weren't drawn to DJ Pee Wee (Anderson.Paak), or Barry Can't Swim, both on simultaneously at the bigger stages.

The crowd for Barry Can't Swim:

Here's a drone shot of the crowd for Chase & Status on Sunday:

But the Sunday set everyone was bound to talk about the most, for better or worse, was M.I.A., who did 50 minutes of both singing and incoherently ranting, angrily, about American politics and how she's been "canceled" by her American audiences multiple times.

Wearing a bright, orange-red wig, M.I.A. commented between renditions of "Bad Girls" and "Come Around" saying things like "Don’t get me wrong, I love Mexicans. Honestly, I do. And I love Americans, too. I do. I got canceled so many fucking times because of you guys, for you guys. Before you canceled Snowden. Maya got canceled. That was for the Americans, so I don’t want to hear it."

And: "“Before Nicki Minaj had this wig, M.I.A. had this wig. Before Rihanna had this wig, M.I.A. had this wig. Before there was Kamala Harris, there was M.I.A."

And also: "Kamala Harris! Donald Trump! Yes, and there’s no one else."

M.I.A., who is a British citizen of Sri Lankan descent, has been outspoken about American politics, and even issued an endorsement of Trump last month. The singer had, inexplicably, been a big fan of RFK Jr., perhaps because she is a fan of conspiracy theories, and she followed suit in endorsing Trump after RFK did, tweeting, "RFK will inherit America when God is ready to replant and rebuild it righteously."

M.I.A., who was slotted in between Justice and Disclosure, lost a fair number of audience members a short way into her set, probably because people needed to get food and got tired of her bullshit.

Top image courtesy of Portola Music Festival