This month's festival pick...

Carnaval in San Francisco

By Patrick Totty

The most popular festivals on earth are the pre-Lenten carnivals in places like Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans and Quebec City. For people who’d like to attend the above-named events, there are drawbacks: Rio is overcrowded, heavily booked and far away from Europe and North America. New Orleans’ Mardi Gras is also crowded, and the youthful aspect of the celebrants often gives its party the feel of spring break in Panama City, FL. Quebec City is downright cold at Mardi Gras, one reason why its festival is built around an ice theme each year. 

So how about a Carnaval in an unlikely city that isn’t overbooked, rivals Rio in beauty and even holds its event well after the official date just so people can be warm? 

You’d be looking at Carnaval in San Francisco, an annual event that will mark its 25^th  edition on May 24-25, 2003. The celebration, which features a full-fledged parade, judges, dancing troupes, up to 200,000 spectators and lots of sideshow stuff like performers, tsotchke vendors and food booths, takes place in the city’s Mission District. It’s an heavily Hispanic neighborhood that’s also drawn an arty crowd that’s the heir to San Francisco’s old beatnik-bohemian-hippie tradition. 

The multicultural aspect of San Francisco’s Carnaval is what sets it apart from most others. While the Brazilians explore the endless permutations of samba in their Mardi Gras parades, and the Quebeçois hold mid-winter dress-up balls, San Franciscans throw in any type of dance and music that exists in their ethnically diverse city. Japanese taiko drummers join Chinese lion dancers, who join Caribbean and African dancing and music contingents, Peruvian reed players, Mexican Aztec performers and “traditional” Brazilian-style sambaistas. 

This being San Francisco, where trying to be naughty is a sort of civic fetish, many of the dancers’ outfits leave little to the imagination. Cops look the other way, and if they don’t, the furthest thing from their mind is appraising any of the participants for handcuff measurements. 

The parade’s main stretch is down Mission St., supposedly the city’s second most important thoroughfare behind Market St., but certainly the most important in terms of history. It runs southwest from the Bay for about two miles, then plunges south to Daly City, ending up as one of San Francisco’s longest streets. Along the way it slices through a skyscraper canyon, a museum complex, a high-rise condo neighborhood, then a slum, then a bustling neighborhood of Mexicans, Central Americans, gentry and artists. By the time it reaches Daly City, there’s a pronounced Filipino influence. 

Even better than the frivolity of the occasion, or its human scale or its usually balmy weather, is the simple fact that this Carnaval takes place where it does. San Francisco, whose main industry is tourism, was double-whammied by dot-com bust and 9-11. With tourism off by 20%, the city is full of bargains. Hotels, restaurants and traveler-oriented services are all cheaper and friendlier than they were at the height of recent high-tech boom. For those Americans who want to celebrate Carnaval in a place close to home without worrying about the prices or availability of services, San Francisco should be a serious consideration. 

Carnaval’s URL is located at www.carnavalsf.com/