The Yerba Buena Gardens Festival is an annual May through October free concert series held on the lawn above the Moscone Convention Center between Howard and Mission near 3rd Street.
I always forget about the performances because I tend not to go downtown unless someone is offering pay for work, but whenever stumbling across a free performance at the Yerba Buena Gardens, I'm always impressed by the quality of performers in every musical genre imaginable.
Plus, it's not an overcrowded, claustrophobic scene like Stern Grove or Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, possibly because others feel the same way about downtown and the decades-long redevelopment mess that is the Yerba Buena Center.
Last Saturday afternoon there were two Latino bands, La Cafetera from Los Angeles, with the local Mission District ensemble Soltron opening up for them.
Soltron's music was not only lively, tight, fun and cross-cultural...
...but everyone was beautiful to look at too, in very different ways...
...including guitarist/vocalist Manolo Davila above.
Unfortunately, I didn't stay long, because there was a date with a friend for a first-time tour of the new SFMOMA building across the street. Pics and a few observations to come.
Nice. Kind of makes me feel melancholy, though, to think of the crowded, febrile scene that is SF today. Not to my taste.
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