How Weird Street Faire Not Weird at All

I was lucky enough to catch one of San Francisco's famous street fairs while on my recent vacation. The How Weird Street Faire was on Sunday, May 10, 2009 at Howard and Second streets.




In its tenth year, the How Weird Street Faire is an "experiment in creating peace, bringing together a wide range of eclectic styles and communities," according to its website. I think this objective was definitely achieved. There were tons of different people roaming around, a vast number of vendors and best of all, various stages rockin' out to diverse music.




Before my trip, I watched some vids of the 2008 event and thought it'd be pretty sweet to experience it live since we don't ever get these kinds of events locally. I wasn't sure what to expect out of a block party with "weird" right there in its name. I mean, it's SF after all. I imagined people in outrageous get ups (I was actually hoping to get to see this), but once we got there the vibe was actually pretty peaceful (as peaceful as electronica music can get you) and not weird at all. Of course, there were some people in costumes, a couple cross-dressers and girls in skimpy clothing, but to be honest, it's worse in Waikiki on Halloween.



I'm not sure if this laid back atmosphere is a normal thing for How Weird Street Faires or if all the cool peeps had already gone home to prep for the night events. Still, it was interesting to see. I wish we had come earlier in the day, but we had visited a ton of other neighborhoods that day and only got to squeeze in the last hour of the event. By the time we toured around as many stages as we could, the event was almost done.



The music stages were all dj-driven with some cool-looking dj booths. They played mostly electronica, something we don't really see too much of in Hawaii. In my vocabulary it was all sort of house, techno and trance-type music. According to the website, it was actually "live electronica, downtempo, dubstep, breaks, electro, psytrance, house, techno, drum & bass, world beat and too many sub-genres to name." As you can see, my electronica vocab is quite limited.



Besides listening to the music, I had a great time people watching. As I said, I don't think most of the participants were very weird at all. I even saw some families and young children there. While I know people were drinking (saw one guy passed out standing up against a building), I didn't see any violence or anyone get obnoxious because of the alcohol. Surprisingly, I didn't even see any bud smokers or smell anyone blazing up. (Not that I'm into it, but it's SF after all, and I was so sure it'd be going on at this concert.) People just seemed to be there to have a good time and dance.




Overall, this was a really cool thing to see firsthand. It was definitely an experience and I just wish we had more time to stay. It would've been awesome to go to one of the after parties, but at that point we were just too tired. It was the day before we flew home and after a week of on-the-go activities, we were beat.