Outside Lands Music Festival better second time around

by Thomas K. Pendergast

The area of the City after which the Outside Lands Festival was named appears to be warming up to the music festival, after a rough start last year, when the current producer, Another Planet Entertainment, made a tidy profit but also created a lot of tension between the mostly young adult patrons and local residents.

This year, the festival was smaller, at 100,000 people over a three-day weekend period, 30,000 less than last year. And on the whole it seems to have been better organized.

"Last year there was a lot of confusion as to where people should park. There was a lot of traffic going through the neighborhoods, people driving erratically and parking in driveways or across driveways and there was just generally a lot of bad attitudes by the patrons coming to the festival, plus trash and other things," said Ron Suen, a resident of 34th Avenue who lives less than a block from Fulton Street, an intersection that was also a main entrance point for the concert.

"So, it left kind of a bad taste, I think, in a lot of people's minds. And the music just seemed noisier. It seemed louder. It just seemed like a messier, less organized concert than this year."

This year, on the other hand, he said things seemed to go a lot smoother, primarily because more people knew better than to bring their cars to the festival.

"The park was better organized," he said. "The traffic flow seemed to be better organized. They had more points of entry, more points where they could collect tickets, so that seems to have helped distribute the traffic flow. The residents were warned - last year it caught people by surprise. This year, they informed the public that was going to the concert to use public transportation and other means to get there. I think they really impressed on them the difficulty of parking and I think that played out. They took public transportation and rode their bicycles. That really made for a much better environment this year."

Capt. Richard Corriea, the commanding officer at the Richmond Police Station, which handled security for the event along with a private security force hired by the production company, said this year's patrons were noticeably different than last year's in two respects.

"The size and tenor of the crowd was more manageable this year," he said. "The challenging part of this event for the police department is the number of venues and its size. I felt we had enough officers to cover the area. It was adequate to the size and tenor of the the crowd, which was reasonably well behaved."

Corriea credits much of this to limitations imposed on alcohol sales. No alcohol from outside was allowed inside the event and no one was allowed to buy more than two drinks at a time. An adult caught giving alcohol to minors would be ejected immediately and all food and alcohol sales were stopped an hour before the end of the concert.

Corriea said the Alcohol and Beverage Control (ABC) had undercover agents working the concert but they "did not find any violations of the temporary liquor license. The vendors complied with the restrictions on the license. By and large, alcohol sales were constrained. Police problems rise exponentially related to alcohol."

He also gave a nod to the influence of weather, notably a fog bank that moved in just before the show ended Saturday evening and stayed for the entire Sunday event.

"The cool weather sent them home," he said. "That does a lot to keep people focused on why they're there. The fog flowing in for the evening also helps keep things calm."

The most common problem, he said, was chasing away ticket scalpers and catching gate crashers trying to jump over fences.

"That was constant throughout the day."

He also noted that the promoters are paying for the officers assigned to the event.

Lisa Seitz Gruwell, communications director for the SF Recreation and Park Department, said with the rental fee of $950,000 and an additional $1 per ticket surcharge, the department is expecting to make slightly more than $1 million from the event. She also said Another Planet Entertainment paid for the extra shuttle buses, extra trains and drivers, plus a clean up crew of about 125 people.

"They're doing a good job of returning the park to the condition they found it," she said. "We'll do an assessment on any damage to the turf or any other issues."

She said they had a goal of recycling at least 75 percent of the trash and "at this point it looks like they're going to meet that goal."

"The systems that were developed this year made a lot more sense," Seitz Gruwell said. "The systems they developed for community outreach made a lot more sense than last year's."

She said a hotline was set up and unlike last year, this time it was well publicized, receiving about 500 complaints total for the entire weekend with the bulk of those being noise complaints from Friday night. Adjustments to the arrangement of loudspeakers were made Saturday, resulting in a sharp drop in such complaints. She said any other type of complaint did not make up more than 10 percent of the total.

"We're now compiling a report with sound consultants on how to minimize the impact of the sound system, so we hope to do better next time," said Seitz Gruwell.

Kristin Holland, spokesperson for the MTA, said they had a total of 37 extra buses running on the 7-line and 5-lines and six extra two-car Muni trains, which increased to 10 trains after the other four were done taking Giants fans home. She said this seemed to work because after a while buses were reported leaving stops at the event without filling up with passengers.

Yemame Woldemicael is the proprietor of the Better Food Market at the corner of 33rd Avenue and Balboa Street. He said he really likes the festival because it roughly doubles his business volume.

"I like it," he said. "I like a nice weekend like this, a three-day weekend like this. It's helpful for business."

Marta Troyano, a resident of 29th Avenue, said she's been pressured to give up the parking space in front of her house "because it's just a few blocks from the concert. They have been very pushy."

She also saw a man fall off a bicycle and she suspects he was drunk. "He was drunk and he was riding his bicycle," she said. "He just passed out there in the intersection. We asked him if he was all right, and he got up, but I think he was really drunk."

Nevertheless, these incidents have not left her opposed to future Outside Lands concerts.

"It's only a couple of days a year," said Troyano. "It's only around this time of year. The rest of the year it's very quiet. You have to give an opportunity for people to have some fun and it's also a cultural thing too."

Sandra Langlotz echoed that sentiment when asked about the future of Outside Lands in Golden Gate Park.

"It's part of the art of San Francisco, to have this happen," said the resident of 28th Avenue.

"I love opening my kitchen window and being able to hear, like for instance last year Tom Petty. I feel that it's just one of the prices you pay for being a citizen of an international city where people want to come and do cool things," Langlotz said.