From Save SF Parks:

Golden Gate Park is one of San Francisco’s greatest treasures. For more than a century, it has been a place where residents from every neighborhood and visitors from around the world come to gather, recreate and reconnect with nature. Our public dollars maintain this space so that it can remain free and accessible to everyone. But in recent years, that promise has been eroded.

Large-scale, ticketed concerts have increasingly fenced off major sections of Golden Gate Park for weeks at a time. Outside Lands, Dead & Co., and other events now occupy the park for extended periods, shutting out the very people the park was meant to serve. In August alone, the SF Recreation and Park Department reported that nearly 450,000 concertgoers attended these weekend concerts, which closed off the Polo Field and surrounding areas for weeks. Now, Rec. and Park has announced yet another ticketed concert on Oct. 11 at Robin Williams Meadow, further cementing its stated goal of making Golden Gate Park “the heart of San Francisco concerts” (Rec Park Newsletter, Aug. 20).

That vision comes at a steep cost. When our parks are treated as concert venues, the impacts reach far beyond the fenced-off areas.

Congestion and Access
Closures in Golden Gate Park frequently occur in the summer, when children are out of school and families rely on the park for recreation. Summer camps are displaced, parents lose safe and affordable spaces for their kids, and the community is left behind while Rec. and Park prioritizes revenue. Events drawing hundreds of thousands of people bring gridlock to surrounding neighborhoods, impacting residents’ access to their own homes. Once the fences and barricades go up, residents are effectively shut out of their own park. Even those who try to enjoy other areas of Golden Gate Park often stay away due to traffic and congestion. In some cases, increased congestion can cause a delay in emergency response times in surrounding communities, an unacceptable consequence for neighborhoods adjacent to the park.

Safety at Risk
Public safety should never be outsourced. According to the San Francisco Fire Department, city EMTs and paramedics were not utilized during the three music festivals in Golden Gate Park this year. Instead, Another Planet Entertainment contracted with a private ambulance service. Concertgoers reported passing out from crowding, with some departing areas altogether because they feared for their safety. Public safety in San Francisco’s largest park should not be handed over to private companies with limited accountability.

Local Business Impacts
Some businesses near the park see a surge of customers during concerts, but many others lose out. Regular patrons avoid the area because of traffic, closures and crowding. Meanwhile, corporate vendors inside the festival capture much of the profit, leaving small, neighborhood-serving businesses behind. 

Environmental Costs
Golden Gate Park is a living ecosystem, not just a backdrop for entertainment. Weeks of heavy equipment, stage construction, and fencing compact soil, damage roots and fence residents out of the park. These closures both degrade the natural environment and deny San Franciscans access to the space that makes our City unique. Concert infrastructure threatens trees and habitat, while excessive noise, crowds, and lighting disrupt nesting and migrating birds.

Rec. and Park has a responsibility to protect our public lands, not rent them out at the expense of long-term ecological health. These are not minor inconveniences. They are real harms that undermine the very purpose of Golden Gate Park – to remain free, open and shared public space for all.

What Needs to Change
Before approving more large-scale concerts, the City must commission a comprehensive, independent study of their impacts on safety, access, small businesses and the environment. We need transparency, accountability and community oversight, not piecemeal approvals that prioritize corporate profits over public good.

San Francisco already has models for inclusive events that uplift rather than exclude. Free community gatherings like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and Flower Piano demonstrate how music can bring people together without walling others out. But when private, ticketed events fence off our parks for weeks, the public loses.

San Francisco’s parks have always been free and open because our public dollars make them that way. They are not commodities for rent. Golden Gate Park is a jewel of San Francisco. Let’s make sure it stays open and accessible for generations to come.

Save SF Parks is a coalition of San Francisco park advocates committed to keeping Golden Gate Park open, accessible and protected as the shared public space it was always meant to be.

Members of Save SF Parks: Wendy Aragon, representative PROSAC District 1; Jeanne Crawford, Friends of McLaren Park; Nancy DeStefanis, founder, San Francisco Nature Education; Chris Giorni, founder, Tree Frog Treks; Alan Hopkins, past president, Golden Gate Audubon Society, instructor on Birds of San Francisco Parks; Jake Sigg, founder, Nature News. (Titles for identification purposes only.)