By Lorraine Meier

Next month will mark the 17th year that the Outside Lands Festival (OSL) will be held in Golden Gate Park. In 2019, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to extend the contract between Another Planet Entertainment (APE) and the City of San Francisco until 2031.

In addition to OSL happening from Aug. 8 to Aug. 11, next month APE will present two new concert series in GG Park. Live Nation and APE, in partnership with the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, will present Dead & Company on Aug. 1, 2 and 3.

Zach Bryan – along with Kings of Leon, Turnpike Troubadours and Noeline Hofmann – will play GG Park’s Polo Field on Aug. 15.

In 2023, the Board of Supervisors approved plans for APE to hold two to three ticketed events in August, as opposed to just one.

Approximately 60 people gathered last month at Golden Gate Park Senior Center for a community meeting with APE and Rec. and Park about the August concerts. At times the meeting became heated with residents voicing concerns about lost income for businesses, parking, trash, road closures and noise levels.

Noise seems to be one of the biggest complaints from many residents. The distance sound travels depends on several factors including the environment and atmospheric conditions.

Charles Salter is an acoustical engineer who works closely with APE to evaluate how to create quality sound that not only works for the band and audience but also minimizes the impact on residential neighborhoods. According to Salter, a few years ago, a phenomenon known as thermal inversion carried sound farther than usual. It is a temperature inversion where warm air sits above cooler air and can cause sound waves to bend downward and travel farther than normal. It can have a strong effect on how sound travels.

“The more bass, the more lower frequency noise transfers,” Salter said. “The noise levels are monitored every day the concerts occur, and the noise has not increased or decreased over the years.”

The concerts are expected to bring music lovers from all over the world to westside neighborhoods.

According to Statista, an intelligence platform that provides market data, OSL grossed $40 million in 2023. Revenue for 2024 has not yet been released.

Part of the agreement for OSL is for APE to provide $25,000 annually for a Community Benefit Fund for neighborhood-specific projects and programs in the Sunset and Richmond districts – with an additional $10,000 granted to both District 1 and District 4 for the Zach Bryan concert, according to SF.gov.

District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan’s legislative aide Robyn Burke said, “The Dead & Company is a separate contract and there will be no additional funding.”

Some community members are calling for that Community Benefit Fund to increase. According to District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio, “The rate for community benefits for the Outside Lands concerts has remained fixed at $25,000 for many years and we are long overdue for an increase tied to annual inflation, at a minimum. Last year, we negotiated another $10,000 for the additional weekend concerts after Outside Lands. But this does not address the original $25,000 that has not kept up with inflation and concert profits over the years.”

According to the OSL website, the concert has injected $1 billion into the local economy. Economic impact reports are compiled by APE.

Rec. and Park did not respond to our publication’s questions before press time.

Bill Barnickel is the president of the Outer Sunset Merchant & Professional Association. From the Outer Sunset’s business standpoint, one of its largest concerns is festival re-entry – allowing concert goers to go into the festival, come out to patronize local businesses and then re-enter the festival.

“After the gates were closed to re-entry, the businesses on Irving lost between 25% and 30% of their business,” Barnickel said.

“The no re-entry policy has become standard practice at large-scale ticketed events, and is rooted in ensuring the safety and security of all attendees and the surrounding area,” said Ruth Carlton, senior vice president of concert operations at APE.

Derek Esposito is the manager of Underdogs Too, a Mexican restaurant on Taraval Street and 46th Avenue. He said the restaurant is a bit too far from the park to be significantly affected by OSL, but Underdog Tres on Ninth Avenue near Irving Street definitely gets busy.

“If anything, Underdogs Too gets some more action in the couple days leading up to it with people coming into town to stay with friends and go to the event,” Esposito said. “And maybe some busier lunches with people getting fed before they go to it. But it ends near when we close, and there’s no in-and-outs, so that all affects it.”

Personally, Esposito said he believes “the concerts are good for the cultural health of the City.”

Some local businesses are also concerned about an increase of people in the neighborhood who may be overindulging in substances, leading to additional safety concerns.

One of the owners of Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant on Geary Boulevard, Julio Bermejo, said that Tommy’s and other businesses in the neighborhood started closing early for OSL.

“The first few years of Outside Lands brought a ton of business, and it seemed good,” Bermejo said. “People were happy, but many were also really wasted. We used to stay open late as people needed food and bathrooms more than anything else. But as the years passed, a few people who overindulged in other substances really changed our perspective. One year, we had a guest almost overdose. After calling an ambulance and praying she would be ok, it got too stressful to worry about people who were not taking care of themselves.”

According to Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon research, every hotel in both the Sunset and Richmond districts are completely booked for the weekends of OSL and Dead & Company, but not yet for the Zach Bryan concert on Aug. 15.

Many residents are excited about the festivals.

Pamela Gernstein runs Biss List, an entertainment website with nearly five thousand followers on Facebook. At the meeting, she urged people to have an open mind about the concerts, claiming they bring much needed revenue to San Francisco – and joy to many.

Sunset resident Mimi Pratt lives close to the park and said she is excited for the upcoming concerts. Dead & Company held a lottery for firefighters in California and her husband, a San Francisco firefighter, entered and won tickets.

“I am all for having concerts close by in Golden Gate Park,” Pratt said. “The benefits of having these concerts far outweigh the minor inconveniences, such as street closures and traffic in our neighborhood. Music brings people together in such a positive way and also boosts our local economy. In my opinion, they are a welcome presence in our community.”

Road closures will likely impact residents in areas surrounding GG Park from late July to mid-August. For a list of road closures, visit sfrecpark.org.

For bicycle and pedestrian reroutes, visit sfoutsidelands.com/311/.