Portola Music Festival

Last updated
Portola Music Festival
Genre Electronic dance music
DatesEnd of September
Location(s) Pier 80
(San Francisco, California, U.S.)
Years active2022–present
Organised by Goldenvoice
Website portolamusicfestival.com

The Portola Music Festival, also referred to as Portola, is an annual music festival held at Pier 80 in San Francisco, California. The festival made its debut in 2022. It is presented by Goldenvoice, the same company that promotes Coachella. The event primarily features electronic dance music. Limited to people over the age of 21, it is intended to "present electronic music in an adult way". [1] [2]

The festival is named after the 1909 Portola Festival, an event thrown by the city of San Francisco to demonstrate its recovery from the 1906 earthquake. [3] [4]

The event received noise complaints from residents of the city of Alameda which is located across the San Francisco Bay from Pier 80. [5] The city requested that the festival be discontinued or moved to a different location due to the various noise complaints from its residents. [6] The highest sound level recorded by sound monitors located in Alameda was 61.4 dBA, which is below the city's noise ordinance of 70 dBA. However, the dBA scale, A-weighting, attenuates low frequency audio by as much as 40 decibels, implying the actual noise level at the lowest audio frequencies could have been as high as 101 decibels. [7]

Related Research Articles

The decibel is a relative unit of measurement equal to one tenth of a bel (B). It expresses the ratio of two values of a power or root-power quantity on a logarithmic scale. Two signals whose levels differ by one decibel have a power ratio of 101/10 or root-power ratio of 101/20.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weighting filter</span>

A weighting filter is used to emphasize or suppress some aspects of a phenomenon compared to others, for measurement or other purposes.

Dynamic range is the ratio between the largest and smallest values that a certain quantity can assume. It is often used in the context of signals, like sound and light. It is measured either as a ratio or as a base-10 (decibel) or base-2 logarithmic value of the ratio between the largest and smallest signal values.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noise</span> Unwanted sound

Noise is sound, chiefly unwanted, unintentional, or harmful sound considered unpleasant, loud, or disruptive to mental or hearing faculties. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference arises when the brain receives and perceives a sound.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">San Francisco State University</span> Public university in San Francisco, California

San Francisco State University is a public research university in San Francisco. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is part of the California State University system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Castro Theatre</span> Historic movie palace in San Francisco

The Castro Theatre is a historic movie palace in the Castro District of San Francisco, California. The venue became San Francisco Historic Landmark #100 in September 1976. Located at 429 Castro Street, it was built in 1922 with a California Churrigueresque façade that pays homage—in its great arched central window surmounted by a scrolling pediment framing a niche—to the basilica of Mission Dolores nearby. Its designer, Timothy L. Pflueger, also designed Oakland's Paramount Theater and other movie theaters in California during that period. The theater has more than 1,400 seats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oakland Arena</span> Indoor arena in California, U.S.

Oakland Arena is an indoor arena located in Oakland, California, United States. From its opening in 1966 until 1996, it was known as the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum Arena. After a major renovation completed in 1997, the arena was renamed The Arena in Oakland until 2005 and Oracle Arena from 2006 to 2019. It is often referred to as the Oakland Coliseum Arena as it is part of the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum Complex with the adjacent Oakland Coliseum. Oakland Arena seats 19,596 fans for basketball.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alameda Terminal</span> Railroad station and ferry wharf of the San Francisco and Alameda Railroad at Alameda (1864-1870)

Alameda Terminal was a railroad station and ferry wharf at the foot and west of present-day Pacific Avenue and Main Street in Alameda, California, on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay with ferry service to San Francisco. It was built in 1864 and operated by the San Francisco and Alameda Railroad. In 1869, it served as the original west coast terminus of the U.S. First transcontinental railroad, until the opening of Oakland Pier two months later. The western terminus was inaugurated September 6, 1869, when the first Western Pacific through train from Sacramento reached the shores of San Francisco Bay at Alameda Terminal, — thus completing the first transcontinental railroad "from the Missouri river to the Pacific ocean" in accordance with the Pacific Railroad Acts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noise control</span> Strategies to reduce noise pollution or its impact

Noise control or noise mitigation is a set of strategies to reduce noise pollution or to reduce the impact of that noise, whether outdoors or indoors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area</span>

People in the San Francisco Bay Area rely on a complex multimodal transportation infrastructure consisting of roads, bridges, highways, rail, tunnels, airports, seaports, and bike and pedestrian paths. The development, maintenance, and operation of these different modes of transportation are overseen by various agencies, including the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the Association of Bay Area Governments, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. These and other organizations collectively manage several interstate highways and state routes, eight passenger rail networks, eight trans-bay bridges, transbay ferry service, local and transbay bus service, three international airports, and an extensive network of roads, tunnels, and bike paths.

Emporium Centre San Francisco is a shopping mall located in San Francisco, California, United States. It is anchored by Bloomingdale's. It connects directly to the Powell Street station via an underground entrance on the concourse floor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ferries of San Francisco Bay</span>

San Francisco Bay in California has been served by ferries of all types for over 150 years. John Reed established a sailboat ferry service in 1826. Although the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge led to the decline in the importance of most ferries, some are still in use today for both commuters and tourists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bassnectar</span> American DJ and record producer

Lorin Gabriel Ashton, better known under his stage name Bassnectar, is an American DJ and electronic music producer. With a career spanning several decades, Bassnectar has gained recognition for his innovative sound design and energetic live performances. His music and performances typically combine elements of dubstep, drum and bass, and various other electronic subgenres, often characterized by heavy basslines and intricate, layered production. Bassnectar has released numerous albums and singles, and his impact on the electronic music scene has been significant, contributing to the popularization of bass-heavy dance music in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noise Pop</span> Music promoter in California, US

Noise Pop is an independent music promoter founded in San Francisco in 1993. The Noise Pop Festival, organized by Noise Pop, has showcased a variety of artists including the White Stripes, Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, The Flaming Lips, The Shins, Fleet Foxes, Bright Eyes, and Yoko Ono.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">San Francisco Bay Ferry</span> Public transit passenger ferry service in the San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay Ferry is a public transit passenger ferry service in the San Francisco Bay, administered by the San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) and operated under contract by the privately owned, Blue and Gold Fleet. In 2023, the system had a ridership of 2,230,400, or about 8,000 per weekday as of the second quarter of 2024.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Decibel Festival</span> Former US music festival

The Decibel Festival was an annual music and digital arts festival in Seattle, Washington, which featured live electronic music performances, visual arts, and new media.

The San Francisco and Alameda Railroad (SF&A) was a short-lived railroad company in the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay Area. The railroad line opened 1864–1865 from Alameda Terminal on Alameda Island to Hayward, California, with ferry service between Alameda Terminal and San Francisco started in 1864. After being bankrupted by the 1868 Hayward earthquake, it was acquired by a subsidiary of the Central Pacific Railroad in August 1869. Part of the SF&A line between Alameda Terminal and San Leandro served as a portion of the First transcontinental railroad starting in September 1869, while the southern section was abandoned in 1873.

Soundwave Biennial Festival is a sound, art, and music festival that happens every two years for two months in San Francisco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chase Center</span> Indoor arena in San Francisco, California, U.S.

Chase Center is an indoor arena in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The building is the home venue for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Golden State Valkyries of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), and occasionally for the University of San Francisco men's and women's basketball teams in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The Warriors, who have been located in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1962, played their home games at Oakland Arena in Oakland from 1971 to 2019. Chase Center opened on September 6, 2019, and seats 18,064 for Warriors games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">San Francisco Independent Film Festival</span> Annual festival held in San Francisco, California, U.S.

The San Francisco Independent Film Festival, known as IndieFest, is an annual film festival, held in January or February, that recognizes contemporary independent film. It is run by SF IndieFest, a non-profit organization, and based at the Roxie Theater in the Mission District.

References

  1. Price, Emily. "Portola Music Festival 2023: Everything you need to know". SFGATE. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  2. Mayer, Phil (2022-05-16). "New music festival 'Portola' comes to SF in September". KRON4. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  3. Salazar, James (September 20, 2022). "San Francisco's historic Portola Festival inspired S.F.'s newest musical offering". San Francisco Examiner. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  4. "The Portola Festival: A Closer Look". www.opensfhistory.org. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  5. Goeres, Kelsey (October 4, 2023). "Updated: Portola Music Festival Rocks Alameda for Second Year in a Row". Alameda Post. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  6. Tolentino, Aaron (October 6, 2023). "Alameda formally requests SF's Portola Music Festival to be discontinued". KRON4. Retrieved 2024-05-14.
  7. Ege, Mike (October 11, 2023). "Alameda Relents on Demand to Close San Francisco Music Festival". The San Francisco Standard. Retrieved May 14, 2024.