Hardly Strictly Bluegrass – your neighborhood survival guide
This weekend marks the 11th performance of the extremely popular Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Music Festival in Golden Gate Park. The festival’s six stages offer up a packed line-up with acts as diverse as the legendary Earl Scruggs to the modern sound of UK-based Elbow. Best of all, as in all previous 10 years, the festival is free and open to the public.
The music runs from 11 a.m.-7 p.m. on Friday Sept. 30 through Sunday, Oct. 2, and is based in Lindley Meadow, Speedway Meadow and Marx Meadow. For the duration of the festival, JFK Drive, Transverse Drive and Middle West Drive will all be closed to car traffic. No Muni lines will be closed as a result of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, but 5-Fulton bus line will have supplemental service starting at 2 p.m. each day in an effort to encourage people to take Muni to the event.
Shuttles operated throughout the park during the concert in previous years, but as of this writing there was no confirmation that the shuttles would continue this year.
A common problem for neighborhood residents during festivals of this size is cars blocking residential driveways. While the Outside Lands Festival in August offered a dedicated phone hotline to address these concerns, any parking issues during Hardly Strictly Bluegrass should be reported to the Department of Parking and Traffic at (415) 701-4500.
The Ocean Beach Bulletin wants to hear from you about Hardly Strictly Bluegrass! Did you go? What was your favorite performance? Was your driveway blocked? Was it too noisy? Send us a tweet, post on our Facebook wall, or email us with your reactions to the festival.
Hope to see you out there!
The traffic in GG Park is a bit strange. JFK is typically closed to autos on Saturdays between the 19th Ave overpass, near Traverse, and the De Young, but for whatever reason autos are allowed as far west as Stow Lake where they have to turn around. The end result is confused motorists and cars parked along a street normally closed on Saturdays. Autos would normally have to turn around or turn left towards the De Young.
Bicycles are being allowed on JFK east of Traverse, but the event coordinators decided that the road should be barricaded with a single opening only big enough for one or two people to pass at a time.
I wonder why SF didn’t just have their normal Saturday JFK street closure. There are many more openings for bicycles and pedestrians to pass through near JFK and Traverse and cars are forced to turn around or towards De Young on the east end.
MLK has many more cars parked than usual and it creates a fairly hazardous condition where the lane for east bound traffic isn’t actually wide enough for vehicles to pass. At least the section between Chain of Lakes (41st Ave) and Middle Dr.
The event seems more crowded than Outside Lands but the atmosphere seems a bit more relaxed. However, my friend did have a concert attendee leave their car IN her driveway; not just blocking.
Outside Lands hasn’t even finished cleaning up yet…
My biggest problem is when I need to get across the park. Luckily I usually plan on not crossing the park when there’s festivals going on there.