Bass – boom, boom, boom – can be heard in parts of San Francisco and East Bay over the weekend during the two-day Portola Festival at Pier 80 in Bayview, featuring top electronic music like Flume, Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim.
Residents complained on social media that the lively music ‘Shockingly high’ And the drives them crazy. The sound can be heard in San Francisco noi valley, Castro The neighborhoods Twin Peaks – and all the way across the bay to Auckland and Alameda.
Mark Schulze of Alameda SFGATE told SFGATE that sometimes, the music was so loud that the windows in his house were shaking.
“Unbelievable…I can hear the amazing bass from the Portola Music Festival all the way here in Noe Valley,” Wrote One Twitter user.
@LondonBreed Time to stop the ‘Music Festival’ nightmare tonight in San Francisco! subscriber else. “We live miles away in Alameda and the walls in our house are shaking from the vibrations! This is a violation of California noise laws. Shut it down!”
The city of Alameda issued a letter on Sunday warning residents of the source of the noise and said the police department was aware of the issue but was “limited in its ability to address the problem.”
The San Francisco Police Department informed SFGATE in an email that it is aware of the noise complaints and is addressing the issue with the event coordinator.
The SF Entertainment Commission, the agency that issues and organizes permits for all events with amplified sound, said it is also reviewing the sound effects on residents. The committee told SFGATE in a statement that its staff and team members from Goldenvoice, who set up the event, worked together to take multiple audio readings on both days of the festival.
“Goldenvoice has a specific department that monitors and responds to all community feedback, and at 3 p.m. on Saturday that department began receiving calls about festival sound levels,” the committee said in an emailed statement. “They immediately began real-time mapping of the complaints sites to take readings in decibels, and met their production and audio teams to implement a frequency limit plan for the next day. All readings on Sunday showed compliance with the sound limit.”
The National Weather Service said a temperature inversion, where a layer of warm air sits on top of a layer of cool air that hugs the surface, was present in San Francisco and surrounding areas on Saturday and Sunday. This may have allowed the sound from the festival to travel further than it would in other weather conditions.
“There was a shallow reflection layer, and that was probably a cover,” said Warren Blair, a meteorologist and science officer in the Bay Area Office of the National Weather Service in Monterey, so the sound bounces somewhat off that cover. This can increase the distance that can be heard and possibly the loudness of the sound.”
Some Twitter users said they were confused by the source of the sound they heard in their homes. “I went outside in my jams to have a conversation with neighbors with hooligans bumping into the deep, pulsating bass that reverberated through my floors only to discover it was coming from Tweet embedacross the San Francisco Bay,” single books.
“Where does the noise come from, you know?” He said Another Twitter user. “Folsom Street Fair or Portola Music Festival? I’m at Twin Peaks and the bass is driving me wild.”
While the festival took place on Saturday and Sunday, Friday’s rehearsal could be heard. “That bass rumble: Portola Music Festival, Pier 80 in SF. Friday rehearsal, still going on at 10:30 tonight,” a Twitter user subscriber.
Many on social media praised the musical works. “The Chemical Brothers are the undisputed masters of electronic dance music,” single books. “They definitely killed Portola.”
The festival is produced by Goldenvoice, the same promoter behind Coachella. The company also received complaints about Crowd Management, with fans rushing over the fences at one stage. The police department told SFGATE that it had not received any reports of injuries related to the influx of crowds. The department also said that no arrests were made at the event.
The entertainment committee said 30,000 people attended each day and called the event a success.
The commission said that “large and destination music festivals are important to the city’s economic recovery and are an example of how arts and recreational activity can stimulate long-term recovery at the neighborhood level, and for the city as a whole.”
This was the festival’s first tour of the city. The event’s name is a reference to the 1909 Portola Festival, which celebrated the city’s reopening after the 1906 earthquake.
Ahead of the festival, the committee said it had begun working with Goldenvoice to hold talks with residents and businesses in Bayview and Dogpatch, the neighborhoods closest to the event.
“The festival organizers attended a public hearing and discussed the festival’s plans and sound strategies,” the committee said. “Our staff and commissioners worked with the Portola organizers to ensure that meaningful outreach took place in the neighborhood, including the establishment of a hotline operated by festival staff that was shared with 311 prior to the event. We also set an 11pm deadline and worked to establish reasonable monitored volume limits for compliance throughout. the event “.
SFGATE has contacted Goldenvoice regarding this story, but has not received a response as of the date of publication.
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