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The Golden Gate Park Band has been playing free Sunday concerts in Golden Gate Park since 1882. Their 2006 concert season (April 23-Oct. 8) runs the gamut from classical to swing, opera to Broadway, plus a wide range of ethnic music. The band collaborates regularly with various San Francisco ethnic and arts groups, who bring to the park their colorful costumes, dance groups, singers, and musicians.
Bring a blanket or lawn chair, pack a picnic, and enjoy one of America's oldest professional concert bands in the magnificent surroundings of Golden Gate Park.
Three of San Francisco's most popular visitor attractions offer FREE admission on the first Wednesday of every month. Take advantage of Free Admission Wednesdays at the California Academy of Sciences, the Exploratorium, and the San Francisco Zoo.
San Francisco's most visited museums offer FREE admission on the first Tuesday of every month. Take advantage of Free Museum Tuesdays and check out the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Asian Art Museum, the newly reopened de Young Museum, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, or the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park.
Organized by the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation, Film Night in the Park is the city's premiere outdoor film series. Films are presented free of charge on a giant outdoor screen in beautiful park settings.
On October 7, the series presents "Young Frankenstein" at Dolores Park in the Mission District.
Thousands of books in all categories on sale for $1 or less!
Proceeds from this quarterly sale benefit programs for children and adults at all San Francisco branch libraries. The sale runs Saturday 10am-5pm and Sunday 10am-3:30pm.
San Francisco City Guides offer free historical and architectural walking tours of San Francisco's most famous (or, in some cases, infamous) districts, as well as some of its more hidden neighborhoods. Approximately 30 different walks are offered each month, year-round, rain or shine. Walkers meet at the place and time designated in the current tour schedule. No reservations are required.
The free, annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival welcomes top names in bluegrass to Golden Gate Park. This year's event features Earl Scruggs, Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Billy Bragg, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle and the Bluegrass Dukes, Drive-By Truckers, The Austin Lounge Lizards, Nashville Bluegrass Band, North Mississippi Allstars Hill Country Revue, T Bone Burnett, Bob Weir and The Waybacks, Linda Ronstadt and Ann Savoy, SF Opera Bluegrass Dukes, and many, many more. Founded 24 years ago, San Francisco's Comedy Day is a free outdoor comedy "concert" in Golden Gate Park, featuring nearly 30 of today's top performers. This year's event features performances by Will Durst, Robin Williams, Carrie Snow, Will Franken, Todd Barry, Rick Overton, Bruce Baum, and many, many more. Yerba Buena Gardens presents their third annual Latin Jazz Festival, featuring Jimmy Bosch and AguaLibre. One of the most explosive and versatile trombonists of his generation, Jimmy Bosch heads up a 10-piece ensemble from New York/Puerto Rico, and is a fiery exponent of the progressive sound he calls “Salsa Dura” (Hard Salsa). Continuously reinventing the music of a culture with roots in Africa and Spain, he draws on an eclectic repertoire: the plenas of an agrarian Puerto Rico, the Afro-Cuban mambo, the Beatles, American folk tunes, and the New York salsa of the 70s informed by straight-ahead jazz and contemporary rock. AguaLibre is the new project from seven of the former members of beloved Bay Area Latin hip-hop group O-Maya. Combining Afro-Latin sounds, hip hop, soul, and reggae, AguaLibre is guaranteed to get the dance floor moving and the smiles flowing, with music that conveys positive and powerful messages of social change. More than 400,000 revelers are expected at San Francisco's 138th annual Italian Heritage Parade, as the city's oldest civic event and the nation's oldest Italian-American parade and community celebration winds its way from Fisherman's Wharf to North Beach. A San Francisco institution since it was established in 1868, the 2006 parade includes dozens of handcrafted parade floats featuring Bay Area businesses, community groups, and Italian organizations; local high school Italian clubs and marching bands; special appearances by "Christopher Columbus" and "Queen Isabella and Her Court;" festive open-air dining and Italian wine and food specials at North Beach restaurants lining the parade route; performances by a variety of traditional Italian musicians and performance artists; and special appearances by Bay Area and Italian-American celebrities. Every October, ArtSpan produces SF Open Studios, the country’s largest, longest-running free visual arts event and a model for open studios throughout the country and the world. During the event, over 800 practicing and emerging San Francisco artists open their art studios on weekends to showcase their work for the public. SF Open Studios is a unique and fun way to meet artists, see where artwork is created, and explore San Francisco’s diverse neighborhoods. In advance of Halloween, a San Francisco cemetery history walk of the Laurel Heights, Jordan Park, and Lone Mountain neighborhoods. From 1852 to the mid-1940s, the Big Four cemeteries--Laurel Hill, Calvary, Masonic, and Odd Fellows--covered this area. Several San Francisco pioneers, including Emperor Norton, were buried there. The fascinating history of this little-known area will unfold with old photographs and the story of why the cemeteries were moved. We’ll end up where many San Franciscans have their final rest, the Columbarium, which was the entrance to the Odd Fellows cemetery. Murder has a long and distinguished history in San Francisco. The city and the Bay Area can stand proudly with Paris, London, and New York in the splendor of its misdeeds--murders that have suspense, horror, audacity, and flair. The homicides chronicled in "Murder by the Bay" have been selected because a convergence of personality, circumstance, character, and geography make them peculiarly San Franciscan. Charles F. Adams will present highlights from the book, including a discussion of the infamous Fatty Arbuckle affair. In advance of Halloween, come in a costume of the 1920s and win a prize! The event is preceded by a free reception at 7 p.m.
For 150 years San Francisco was above all a port city. This tour explores the waterfront from the days of sail to the era of husky longshoremen. We begin at the Great Seawall, San Francisco's largest public works project, and follow the waterfront to two World War II vessels and into famous Fisherman's Wharf. The tour visits Hyde Street Pier, the largest collection of historic ships in the United States, and ends at the streamlined, modern Maritime Museum.
This tour of San Francisco's Mission Dolores includes a visit inside the mission, the basilica, and the museum, as well as the original mission site and an explanation of what happened to Laguna de los Dolores. A visit to the graveyard features Spanish and Irish graves as well as vigilante victims. Additional highlights include what happened on Valencia Street in 1906, and why, and the story of the false gravestone for Alfred Hitchcock's movie "Vertigo."
This tour by the San Francisco Historical Society explores an area devastated in 1906, then rebuilt into a world-class city. The tour starts at the Old U.S. Mint, a National Historic Landmark. We walk up to Union Square, site of Civil War-era rallies, then along Maiden Lane, a sunny street with a shady past. We visit the oldest Catholic cathedral in the West, and venture along the "street of the painted balconies" to the oldest Asian temple in America and the Clarion Music Center.
Fleet Week San Francisco is an annual opportunity for Northern Californians to honor the men and women serving in the United States Navy, Coast Guard, and Marines. This year 9,000 crewmembers on visiting ships will arrive in San Francisco to celebrate Fleet Week and the 60th anniversary of the US Navy Blue Angels. The schedule of events includes the Red Bull Air Race World Series, the Fleet Week Air Show with aerial demonstrations by the Blue Angels, Team Oracle, and the Air Force's A-10 Demonstration Team, the Parade of Navy Ships, and free topside ship tours conducted by crewmembers. Started in 1974 by Harvey Milk, San Francisco's Castro Street Fair is a community celebration showcasing booths by local artists, craftspeople, businesses, and community organizations. The fair also presents a continuously running stage show spotlighting some of San Francisco's most popular entertainers. And don't miss the nonstop dance pavilions--one of the most popular features of the fair! Friends of the San Francisco Public Library put on what may well be the biggest book sale on the West Coast. The sale, occupying the vast Fort Mason Festival Pavilion, features more than 200,000 previously owned books available at remarkable savings. The Friends have been putting these sales together for 42 years. During that time, they have sold more than three million books, with proceeds going to San Francisco Public Library programs and services. There are more than 50 categories of books on sale, including rare books, first editions, and of course, many books that just can’t be categorized. On Sunday, all books are $1 OR LESS! El Teatro Jornalero! (ETJ), a performance company of Latino immigrant workers, presents "living altares" with ETJ members creating tableaux vivant representing immigrant workers who cross the border looking for a better life, and an accompanying dramatic piece, "No Olvidado/Not Forgotten," at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Gardens. Under the guidance of El Coyote, a mystical border-crossing character, audience members experience a migration, moving from one altar to the next. Based on real life stories, the journey presents the difficulties, obstacles and in some cases, death, awaiting many immigrants as they pursue the American dream. Join members of the Sierra Club's San Francisco Bay Area chapter for a moderately paced, historical hike through the Presidio. Join members of the Sierra Club's San Francisco Bay Area chapter for an all-day educational walk through the many cemeteries of Colma, the "City of the Dead." Litquake is an annual San Francisco literary festival bringing together more than 300 authors for nine days of readings and panel discussions around the city. Organizers created the event to represent a lively and inclusive overview of San Francisco’s thriving contemporary literary scene. Litquake is a festival with heart, guts, and a taste for the wilder side of the literary world. The range of live events gives fans the opportunity to hear quality literature straight from the author’s mouth. And you never quite know what will happen. Curiosity compelled Wendy Yanagihara, author of Lonely Planet’s guide to Vietnam, to live in Ho Chi Minh City for a year, during which she taught English, learned more than could be crammed into one glib sentence, and attained (slightly) higher levels of peace and patience. Speaking at the San Francisco Public Library's main branch, Wendy will talk about her trips to Vietnam and favorite places to visit while showing slides from her travels. She will cover the major cities and some off-the-beaten-path gems and give a general overview of the country and its regions. The San Francisco Public Library presents a special screening of "Democracy on Deadline." Does a free press make a free society? This film shadows working journalists and champions of independent media as they work to make--and keep--their societies free in Afghanistan, Israel, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, Sierra Leone, and the U.S. "San Francisco's Chinatown" is a new pictorial book that spans 150 years of Chinatown history, revealing how a place visitors see as foreign and exotic is, in fact, a vibrant Chinese-American neighborhood with a complex history and rich cultural legacy. Author and historian Judy Young discusses this history in a free slide presentation at the San Francisco Public Library's main branch. Take a four-mile walk back in time to the Spanish and Mexican era, when the families of the soldiers walked from the Presidio to Mission Dolores, the only other Spanish settlement in the area. Enjoy the 230th Birthday Fiesta celebration at the mission after the walk. Space is limited and registration is required; call or . On a moderately strenuous hike organized by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area park service, see and learn about some of the ships that perished on the rocky cliffs of San Francisco's Golden Gate, just north of 48th and Point Lobos avenues. Reservations required; call . Join historian John Martini for a moderate two-mile hike along the Coastal Trail at San Francisco's Lands End, which follows the route of Adolph Sutro's famous steam train. On this Halloween hike, you'll hear fascinating stories of the mysterious and the macabre, including the history of San Francisco's earliest cemeteries. Reservations requested; call . Join thousands of locals for a free live simulcast of Verdi's classic opera "Rigoletto" in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza--an unforgettable evening of opera under the stars. As the opera is being performed on stage inside the War Memorial Opera House, the video image of the performance is projected with concert-quality audio and English subtitles for plaza audiences. If you'd like to sample San Francisco opera, this free outdoor simulcast is a perfect introduction. Come join the fun on October 28 at the Point Montara Lighthouse Hostel's fourth annual Halloween bash! This year's event features entertainment by Rock Steady Juggling and DJ "Sippy Paul," plus lots of fun activities including a costume parade, a scavenger hunt, Halloween crafts, and Boris the Spider. Don't miss this once-a-year treat for the whole family! Located just 25 miles south of San Francisco on the rugged, dramatic California coast the Point Montara Lighthouse Hostel provides year-round traveler accommodations in the former fog signal and Coast Guard buildings. The coastside location provides access to several beaches for swimming, surfing, kayaking, jogging, horseback riding, and windsurfing, and is a perfect base for exploring nearby Half Moon Bay. HI-USA Golden Gate Council is proud to sponsor Bands That Rock, a series of shows at 330 Ritch in San Francisco, featuring the Bay Area’s hottest emerging bands. Hostelling International members get in free! On October 31, celebrate Halloween with The Downfalls, Blood on the Tracks, The Feeders, and Drowsy Holler. About The Downfalls About The Feeders Bands That Rock is presented by Ripstar–uniting artists and audiences thru music. Bands and visual artists send submissions to 806 Moultrie Street, San Francisco, CA 94110. HI-USA Golden Gate Council is proud to sponsor Bands That Rock, a series of shows at 330 Ritch in San Francisco, featuring the Bay Area’s hottest emerging bands. Hostelling International members get in free! On November 1, nurse your Halloween hangover with Evolution Eden, High Fly, My Monster, and Passive Aggressives. About Evolution Eden Evolution Eden's debut CD "Story Road" was released in April, and their music is currently being heard in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal, Belarus, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Denmark. Their single “Walls of Wonderland” won KGO’s Best Music You’ve Never Heard contest in California, and was also a winner on Wisconsin’s WIFC 95.5 Slam It or Jam It Hour. Over in Australia, Evolution Eden has two songs on the World Indie Pop Charts: “Puppet On A String” (#10) and “Ordinary Girl” (#25). Showing their cross-over potential, “Summer Nights” is currently being played on country radio in Nashville. About My Monster Bands That Rock is presented by Ripstar–uniting artists and audiences thru music. Bands and visual artists send submissions to 806 Moultrie Street, San Francisco, CA 94110. The American Indian Film Festival is the nation's most dominant outlet for Native American films, featuring over 70 new narrative films and documentaries by and about U.S. American Indian and Canada First Nation communities. Poetry and Pizza is a San Francisco reading series held the first Friday of every month. Hear local writers read from their latest works while you chow down on all-you-can-eat pizza! Skateboarding icon Tony Hawk and Olympic gold medalist Jonny Moseley are this year’s co-hosts for the Icer Air "urban big air" competition, part of a daylong festival of music and action sports. Icer Air features a 100-foot high ski and snowboard jump that descends from the scoreboard at the Giants' baseball stadium, ATandT Park, extending over 350 feet in length and covered with more than 200 tons of snow. Spectators will be afforded views of Olympic medalists and X-Games champions flying through the air amidst the backdrop of the spectacular San Francisco Bay. The first urban sports event of its kind, Icer Air also presents headliner bands Ladytron and Jurassic 5, a skate and BMX demo, a wakeboard exhibition on McCovey Cove, and 100 industry exhibitors including every major ski resort from the Lake Tahoe area. This year the International Latino Film Festival--San Francisco Bay Area celebrates 10 years showcasing independent Latino films from Latin America, Spain, and Latinos in the U.S. Created to give voice to Latino cultural expression through the powerful medium of film, the festival presents the best in new international Latino cinema, encourages emerging talent, and pays tribute to celebrated Latino actors, directors, and producers. This year's programs--comprising 85 films at 17 venues around the Bay Area--include documentaries about the Latino experience in the U.S. and the Jewish culture in the Hispanic world, the Women and Film series, and special programs devoted to LGBT themes, music, art, and human rights. |
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