Portrero Hill Festival 1: The NABE

Large San Francisco street fairs such as the annual events on Haight, Castro, and Folsom tend to give me claustrophobia these days, but there are tiny affairs in various neighborhoods that are utterly charming such as the Potrero Hill Festival, which had its 20th anniversary on Saturday.



The three blocks between Missouri and Wisconsin Streets on the North side of Potrero Hill were filled with lots of young parents...



..."elite fitness" trainers demonstrating their beauty...



...and a great a capella quartet singing on a makeshift stage with a view of downtown.



The Festival is nominally a benefit for the NABE, which is a neighborhood community center with youth and senior programs. They were operating a dunk tank with local celebrities being doused...



...including Thick Description theatre director Tony Kelly (above), who is running for District 10 Supervisor on November 2nd.



In fact, there seemed to be as many candidates and political operatives at the fair as there were voters to convince.



With the election fervor in the air, it seemed appropriate for the San Francisco Department of Elections lady above to be fronting a booth looking for pollworkers, and also explaining ranked-choice voting to anyone interested. "So explain ranked choice voting in as few words as possible," I asked her. "Okay. Even if you only want one candidate to win, don't put their name down three times as your first, second, and third choice. Because if your second choice is being used, it means that your first choice is already completely out of the running, so putting their name down again is useless. It's amazing, even some of the candidates don't understand this."