SF Traditions We Hope Are Revived in 2025: Part 2

San Francisco isn’t dead, but our recovery is going so-so. Our mascot is a phoenix because we’re a town of boom and bust. Good things tend to recur or get uncovered and brought back to life here. Here are some memorable traditions we hope get revived in 2025. Click here for Part 1.

Critical Manners

As a counter protest to the more wiley and anti-facist Critical Mass, Critical Manners was the Polite Night alternative to disrupting traffic. What’s the fun in that, you might ask. Well, it sparked more conversation about what cycling safely in The City requires. 

Prediction: With tensions over bike lanes, traffic improvement plans, and parks like The Great Highway at Ocean Beach, perhaps it’s time for Critical Manners to return. On the other hand, with so many pedestrians dying, drivers ignoring unenforced traffic laws, and The City throwing their collective hands in the air at the issue, fuck being polite.

Community Congress

Do you know why we have district-level elections and supervisors? This author worries that the Powers that Be will try and uproot this system, so it’s worth looking back at the 1960s and 1970s. What made us change from top-down, citywide bureaucracy to the more friendly variety of neighborhood representation (still bureaucratic but at least voters know where they live and shop and play and can theoretically hold them more accountable)? Long story short, decades of activism around redevelopment, racism, and corporate greed led to the summer of 1975. That’s when there was a citywide meeting to get to the heart of the issues. It was called the Community Congress.

The document that came out of the Community Congress is strangely prescient, begging for greener schoolyards and more attention on working families. These are things we’re still struggling for today.

Prediction: Oh god, if there’s anything on this list we’d really love to see return in 2025 in San Francisco it’s this one. More than parties, fairs, or celebrations, the Community Congress could help us get our act together and be prepared to fight back against the dark money that influenced the 2024 elections. We just need someone to take up the mantle.  

Noe Valley Crack Henge

There are two buildings in Noe Valley that are so close there’s only a sliver of air betwixt them. Near the solstice, the afternoon sun peeks through, sparking a very SF tradition of gathering to mark the occasion. San Francisco’s dynamic lot sizes are a major part of why buildings are nearly flush with each other. It’s part of the convoluted urban planning that enabled The City to rebuild after several disasters, and it’s why we have these strange tiny cracks where the light can shine but once a year.

Prediction: The location is near the corner of 30th and Sanchez, where a crowd and a bouquet or two shall surely help you find the precise location in 2025. Pagans may flock to Stonehenge but San Franciscans have Noe Valley. Solstice is Friday, June 20th so mark your calendars now. 

How Weird Street Faire

Organized around the noble idea of peace, this music and art festival has been around for nearly 25 years. It’s been an incredible piece of San Francisco history and we can’t lament its demise enough.

Prediction: Nope, sorry folks. The organizers say this one is kaput. They won’t apply for a permit. There’s a glut of other street parties, but to turn an idiom on its head, they walk because How Weird ran. RIP.

SF Improv Festival

Back in the day, there were all sorts of ways for theatre kids to get their fix in The City. One of these, started in 2003 or 2004, was the SF Improv Festival. Shoutout to Facebook commenter David Boyll for this one. 

Prediction: Their social media presence has been dead since 2020, and their website suggested the 2024 events would happen but to little fanfare. Sorry, David, this one seems unlikely.

Cablecar Ringing Competition

What’s the rule in San Francisco? No fun allowed. For decades, the cablecar ringing competition allowed locals and tourists to celebrate something very special about this place. Then there were union issues, by which we mean that workers tried to fight back against unfair changes to their workload and the tradition died.

Prediction: Our cablecars are sucking the blood out of our transportation budget. There’s a fiscal crisis at hand. But the incoming Mayor promised that cablecars were off the negotiation table. Perhaps that means a reinvestment in making these relics something the local taxpayers can afford, appreciate, and participate in. Starting with a celebration of the workers who keep them safe.

San Francisco Urban County Fair

Let’s rev up the time machine because this is a major throwback. County fairs are agricultural in nature, so that already makes it seem odd to have one in San Francisco. But if you can recall, the reason the Portola neighborhood is called the Garden District is because it was very much an agricultural hub. The first California Fair was held in 1854 here in San Francisco. Then until the 1980s there was a lull. 

When it was revived, it sounded SO fun. Check this out: 

“Events tested fog calling, waitperson and one-liner come-on skills. There were food contests as well as a bicycle messenger olympics, pet competition, lowrider car show, parking space contest, Herb Caen column-writing event, Ghirardelli Square treasure hunt, and Financial District businesswomen’s team competition.”

Prediction: We have a county fair building in Golden Gate Park. We have lots of amateur gardeners, plenty of artists, and even scatterings of animals like backyard and schoolyard chickens. We still have fog and wait staff, flirters and lowriders. We still have parallel parking on hills and businesswomen. All the ingredients. If this one comes back, it would be absolutely joyous. 

SF Financial District NYE Confetti

At the end of the year, our Financial District workers used to open their windows and toss out something called ticker tape. It’s a relic of the past that isn’t used anymore, but it created Ticker Tape parades in NYC. That tradition spread to San Francisco in a fun flurry of tape. 

Prediction: Because we don’t use ticker tape and most people don’t use printed out calendars, this seems unlikely. It’s also an environmental disaster. Could it return? Maybe. But there are plenty of beach bonfires and other traditions where you can symbolically destroy the paperwork that burdened you in 2025. Let’s circle back in December.