There is a wicked glee that arrives with being a San Francisco lover. For decades, FOX News and tech magnates and longtime residents and music heads and politicians have decried the once-thriving union town for any of the bevy of its socio-geo-political issues. San Francisco’s death rattle is a long and laborious one. It takes a real freak; a terminal optimist or an ignorant airhead or a career contrarian, to harbor a genuine, unironic affection for the city. 

Last Saturday, over 40,000 of these idiosyncratic freaks—myself, my colleagues, and my friends included— descended on San Francisco's Pier 80 for the third iteration of Goldenvoice’s Portola Festival. Shrouded in an opaque fog and nestled safely in the ear-rattling embrace of techno masterminds, one begins to realize that the perpetual San Franciscan death rattle isn’t so bad. In fact, this rattle is a rather groovy one. 

As has become the norm for the three years of the festival, music from a range of internationally acclaimed bands, singers, and DJs was divided between four stages: Crane, Warehouse, Pier, and Ship Tent, with a healthy portion of each crowd section (as well vast swaths of the pier itself) partitioned off for VIP—an absurd and near comical division, given that VIP areas seemed often equally prone to congestion issues as GA sections— but “soooo worth it,” according to a fellow HorsegiirL attendee who acquiesced to the Portola app notifications encouraging GA crowds to upgrade on Day 2.

The lineup, as is now to be expected, was fabulous. In its third iteration, the festival has confirmed that there was no beginner’s luck on the booking side in its nascent years, having hosted Arca, Charli xcx, Skrillex, Jai Paul, Fred again.. in its infancy— this year, Portola has cemented itself as one of the most well-curated musical events in the country. Crowds bounced between sets by nostalgia-inducing heavy-hitters (M.I.A! Natasha Bedingfield! Disclosure!), current internet it-girl internet darlings (Empress Of! Rebecca Black! HorsegiirL! Shygirl!) and tenured titans (Braxe + Falcon, Soulwax, Honey Dijon), clad in nothing; or clad in seventy-five dollar emblazoned sweatshirts.

Though the performers were nothing short of delightful, and Goldenvoice continued to improve on the once-haphazard crowd control (aside from the arduous daily exodus from the grounds, which will hopefully get streamlined in coming years), the most enjoyable portions of the festival were, as always, interactions with fellow festival goers. What is a concert without its writhing crowd? What is San Francisco without its avid lovers, making their way by bus and private car and on foot from their respective townhouses and college co-ops and inland suburbs to the largest cargo terminal in the area? What is Portola, really, without engaging in haphazard conversations with 55 year-old therapists and their domestic life partners in the crowd at Jamie XX who grin at you because they “have a daughter your age,” or bikers from Oakland, clutching unwieldy disco balls, who “can’t seem to stay away from the warehouse scene.” What is a day at Portola without sharing a stranger’s last bites of food at DJ Pee Wee, or clutching the hand of a mutual friend in the final moments of a set everyone else has vacated? 

You have to be a freak to love San Francisco in the same way that you have to be a freak to love Portola, walking fifteen miles a day across a concrete port; paying triple the price for everything you could easily procure half a block outside the venue; vying for space in crowds of thousands to absorb a neverending thrum that will ring in your ears for days after. 

Call me a freak. I love both. 

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