San Francisco's season of music festivals wraps up this weekend with Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, which this year features The Reverend Horton Heat, Lucinda Williams, young jazz singer Samara Joy, and regulars Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris.
Yes, it's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass time. The free music festival founded and endowed by the late billionaire Warren Hellman kicks off in the western meadows of Golden Gate Park at 1 pm Friday — including the meadow named for Hellman, Hellman Hollow, which will be the home to the Banjo Stage all weekend.
See the full daily schedule here, by clicking on "Grid."
If you've attended Outside Lands and you haven't been to Hardly Strictly before, the footprint of the festival is similar, minus the Polo Field, and the stages are a bit rearranged. As you can see on the map below, the Banjo Stage is where the Twin Peaks Stage gets set up at OSL, while the Towers of Gold and Swan stages are set up back to back sort of where the Sutro Stage usually is in Lindley Meadow. Marx Meadow, where the SOMA dance area gets set up for OSL, is where the Rooster Stage stands.
The festival entrances on the Fulton (north) side of the park are in the same places as Outside Lands, at 30th Avenue, and at 36th Avenue (where OSL's VIP entrance is typically located). The entrance on the south side is at Middle Drive and Metson Road, near the south side of the Polo field, and a fourth entrance — the one furthest east/closest to downtown — is at JFK Drive and Transverse Drive.
Gates open at 11 am Friday, and at 9 am Saturday.
What You Can Bring
The easy answer to what you can bring into the festival is: short lawn chairs, small-ish blankets, clear backpacks, and small, soft-sided coolers with cans of beer, soft drinks, plastic or metal water bottles, or canned cocktails.
You can not bring in hard-sided coolers, or any bag that measures larger than 22”x 15” x 10”. Soft coolers that are up to that size are subject to a secondary search.
What You Can NOT Bring
You can't bring in glass of any kind, or hard liquor. Wagons and strollers will be subject to secondary search — and keep in mind that this is a very crowded (free) festival, and it's bad form to set up camp with lots of stuff like strollers when everyone will be camped pretty tightly together.
Blankets larger than 6-feet-by-8-feet are also not allowed, and neither are umbrellas, tents, or grills.
How to Watch at Home
As with Outside Lands, there is a livestream you can watch from your couch if you're not feeling the crowd situation this year.
You can watch the livestream via your browser, or stream it to your TV using the HSB TV app, available on the Apple TV App Store, in the Google Play Store, and on Roku.
