Temperatures were chilly and the sun was nowhere to be found. But that wasn’t enough to deter thousands of hearty Richmond District residents from coming out for the first Sunday Streets in the neighborhood.
Beginning Sunday morning, Clement Street between Arguello and Funston, and Arguello between Clement and Fulton were closed off to cars and parking. The regular Sunday Farmer’s Market was doubled to run 4 blocks, and dozens of businesses and organizations came out to set up along the Sunday Streets route. Check out the video above for highlights from the day (photos also available on Flickr).
Along the way we came upon zumba enthusiasts, lots of bicyclists, live bands, dogs galore, merchants set up outside their businesses, a cotton candy maker, a pack of alpacas, a woman spewing bubbles out the back of her bike onhealthy naprosyn buy seat, a very well-dressed Alice in Wonderland rabbit, kids getting a driver’s view from a DPW street sweeping truck, wee children learning to ride a bike, Sea Scouts teaching people how to tie knots, lots of Bluegrass, and much more.
It was great to have Sunday Streets in the neighborhood. We think the route could be consolidated to just Clement Street as things were pretty spread out. Perhaps run it on Clement and on Arguello just between Geary and Clement…
What did you think of Sunday Streets? Leave a comment to let us know! Sunday Streets also has an official survey for the event. Take it and you’ll be entered into a drawing for a messenger bag from Rickshaw Bagworks and Sunday Streets T-shirts. Survey closes Thursday November 7.
Sarah B.
It was great! Really enjoyed it (visited local merchants and the Farmers Market) and the closure needs to be limited. It spanned too far for the number of people, even there was a crowd. Loved the alpacas!
Wife and I really enjoyed the fair. And , we visited many stores alone Clement that we didn’t know about before, so they shouldn’t complain. Bands we great, too. do it again
That’s a good question. Since we live only a block from lower clement, we go up there all the time and know the street well. So we were just trying to get to the farmer’s market to do our weekly shopping. It was seriously a bit perilous. I thought it was going to be an easy stroll since they were closing off the street to traffic, but instead it was actually kind of worse! On the farmers market side, they left very little room for pedestrians, and folks on their bikes were blowing through. I saw a lot of near misses with bikes vs. pedestrians. My husband was getting so bothered, we just ended up grabbing stuff from the market and running away. Since I was in the sea scouts for about 4 years I would have loved to seen that.
“lower clement, we go up there” — yeah, I’m not sure what to call it either. 😉 Arguello to Park Presidio is higher up the hill, but lower addresses; a quick google shows that I’m not the only one who’s confused.
I thought the bands were pretty mixed, some good, some not, and didn’t really need to be that loud for a street fair.
I think of it being “lower” since it is closer to downtown and I grew up in the Haight (“lower” is closer to downtown,etc) . So for me, anything West of Park Presidio would “upper”. Saying “Inner Richmond side Clement” is just too awkward lol. Judging from some of the pics, it looks like they moved the barricade over quite a bit to accommodate pedestrians. It sure didn’t look like that when we were there!
That last pic is ADORABLE!!
“Temperatures were chilly and the sun was nowhere to be found.”
Yup, that’s The Richmond I grew up in.
I hope they spread the programming and the bands out more next year. Clement from Funston to about 10th was pretty sparsely populated and I felt sorry for the few organizations situated out there especially when we saw how jammed it was on the east end of Clement.
my family and i had a fantastic time despite the arctic weather. kudos to the organizers.
i don’t suppose anyone found a set of keys including an audi car key?
I was impressed with how well the selected route on Clement and Arguello worked out. It was simple and straight-forward. I don’t think it created much congestion since there were adequate ways for traffic to cross the route. I think the only problem was likely for some merchants, like Arguello Supermarket or New May Wah, whose regular customers couldn’t park close enough. On balance, once a year for an event like this doesn’t seem to be an excessive burden for the merchants.
What fun. Even though it was cold, spirits were high and folks were incredibly friendly. I agree that it could end at Geary.
It was great if you were on foot.
As you can see, there was very little room to ride bicycles. I would suggest calling it a Farmer’s Market or a Street Fair, but not Sunday Streets, which I thought was intended for bicycles as well.
I agree that it could be consolidated a little more. There wasn’t much happening on Arguello between Geary and Fulton, except for the bike shop at Arguello and Golden Gate that had a DJ at DEAFENING volume. It was excruciatingly loud and didn’t fit the nature of the event at all. Other than that, I thought it was great and am looking forward to the next one.
I enjoyed it but it really didn’t need to go west of 8th Avenue in my opinion. And some businesses were hurting. I did some shopping in May Wah (there was no lettuce in the farmers market that I could find) and it was unusually empty and sunday is normally one of there busiest days.
It was pretty sparse along west of 8th. I can’t believe more resturants didn’t have specials going on. Come on pizza places, have some by the slice ready to go!! If they ever do this again they should work with all the pizza, dim-sum, and vietnamese sandwich shops. You pay a flat rate of, say $10 and that entitles you to 1 slice of pizza from each participating vendor & 1 vote. Place your vote for favorite slice of pie & winner gets a special plaque from the city: “Winner of 2013 Clement Sunday Street Best Slice!”. Do the same with dim-sum & vietnamese sandwiches. It’ll drive business to people who normally wouldn’t try the restuarant.
I like Phil’s idea. Businesses should be more into this kind of stuff. So many were closed or acting like it was an ordinary Sunday, their lack of effort baffles me.
I also agree that there was not really enough space for bikes. But Clement’s street area always seems crowded for cars and buses and bikes…
I second Phil’s idea.
Sorry to have missed the event. However I was at the local market in Jinka , Omo valley and their weekly market was similar but no bikes or bands but goats, honey combs, and lots of local people.