Lee Heidhues 5.12.2023
The continued despoliation of historic Golden Gate Park has no end in sight.
The latest turn of the screw in turning this urban sanctuary into a promoter’s fever dream has selected the Polo Fields at the west end of the Park as its chosen bed.
Citing a yawning budget deficit as the excuse to further destroy the Park, Mayor London Breed and Recreation and Parks Director Phil Ginsburg want to piggyback on top of the yearly Outside Lands concert. A yearly environmentally destructive event which has wreaked havoc in the Park since 2007.
The dim bulbs at City Hall are playing a false tune. They now want to follow Outside Lands with another mammoth musical disaster in the week after Outside Lands concludes.
The promoter for this proposed act of greed and environmental degradation is Another Planet Entertainment. http://www.apeconcerts.com The same avaricious promoter which sponsors Outside Lands and many large scale profit generating events.
The San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission, https://sfrecpark.org, followed by the Board of Supervisors, https://sfbos.org/, must approve the proposal. Rest assured it’s a done deal and the public hearings will be no more than perfunctory nonsense. Money talks.
Mayor Breed claims these “events … show off the beauty of our parks.” What the Mayor fails to ad is that these events also destroy and despoil the parks.
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 5.12.2023
San Francisco Mayor London Breed has unveiled a new plan to bring more summer concerts to Golden Gate Park starting next year.
“Music has been a vital part of the park’s history, from the Summer of Love to the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and Outside Lands festivals of today,” she said in a statement. “These kinds of events bring excitement to our city, show off the beauty of our parks, and help support our local economy.”
The proposal, announced first to The Chronicle on Friday, May 12, calls for two or three days of headliner-driven events on the weekend following the annual Outside Lands music festival.
The San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission is scheduled to vote on Thursday, May 18, on whether to recommend granting a permit to Another Planet Entertainment to organize ticketed concerts at the Golden Gate Park Polo Field for three years beginning in 2024. APE produces Outside Lands, but these concerts would be separate, smaller events that would utilize a portion of the festival’s existing infrastructure, which would remain in place to minimize the impact on the park.
The permit fees for the city, amounting to $1.4 million for a two-day event and $2.1 million for a three-day event, would help the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department continue offering programming to residents and maintaining park facilities, according to city officials.
Currently, the city faces a budget deficit of $780 million over the next two years.
“We’ve all been asked to cut back,” Tamara Barak Aparton, deputy director of communications and public affairs for the Recreation and Park Department, told The Chronicle. “We don’t want to cut our recreation programs or park maintenance, so we are looking at ways to supplement them.”
Top photo – The eerie view of the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park as sun sets on the environmentally destructive Outside Lands concert
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