Off the Grid, which predates SF's latest night-market craze by fifteen years, is coming back to life at Fort Mason Center a week from Friday, on April 18, following a lengthy hiatus.

After taking a full year-and-a-half break from doing regular Friday night markets at Fort Mason Center, Off the Grid is coming back to life there on April 18, on a monthly basis.

The organization that first launched the popular food-truck party there in 2010 has since grown to be a larger entity that provides catering services and hosts food events and truck gatherings all around the Bay throughout the year. Off the Grid is responsible for the food trucks that park near Salesforce Tower and in Levi's Plaza on a daily basis, and they now have markets in Oakland, Pleasant Hill, Foster City, Sunnyvale and elsewhere.

But putting on the OG OTG event, Fridays at Fort Mason Center, had become a very expensive affair as of 2023 when these markets last happened regularly — and even that year, they happened in two, sort of truncated seasons in the spring and late summer/fall. Founder Matt Cohen explained in an Instagram video last year that the costs of powering the event, trash removal, and labor had all escalated about 300%, and they needed to rethink how the free event was put on.

"We’ve faced the same rapidly expanding costs that everyone else has over the last few years, and it became increasingly clear that if Friday Nights was going to last another 15 years we needed to take the time to rethink how we were doing it," Off the Grid said at the time.

Late last summer, OTG hosted a lunchtime "food pod" at Fort Mason Center instead, and they hosted a holiday night market there in December. But now, the full deal is back, with a couple dozen food trucks and tents, including popular vendors like Jollof Kitchen, The Chinita Baker, Senor Sisig, and Johnny Doughnuts.

Cocktails will be on offer from Rye on the Road, and beer and wine are available for sale as well.

At least seven monthly Off the Grid Fort Mason Center events are on the books, running through December. The set dates are April 18, May 30, June 27, July 18, September 5, October 17, and December 12 — with August and November dates still TBA.

Each market will feature an array of craft and retail vendors, curated by West Coast Craft.

It looks like a paid program that provided reservable tables and staff to fetch food for you, launched in 2023, is no more.

Follow Off the Grid on Instagram for more info, and here's more info on the April 18 event, which runs from 4 pm to 9 pm.