rewrite this content and keep HTML tags Chemical Brothers perform at the Pier Tent stage at the Portola Music Festival in San Francisco on Sunday, Sept. 25, 2022.Adam Pardee/Special to SFGATELast year’s Portola Festival in San Francisco was the largest electronic music event San Francisco has seen in years, with 30,000 fans flocking to Pier 80 to see legendary DJs like Chemical Brothers as well as up-and-comers like Fred Again. The event will return this weekend with four stages featuring Skrillex, Underworld and Nelly Furtado, as well as dozens more synth-heavy acts. Billed as an event for “adult electronic music fans,” the focus is squarely on the music rather than the extravagant production design of EDM festivals like Electric Daisy Carnival — for better, and at times, for worse.Organized by Goldenvoice, the same promoters responsible for Coachella and countless other large-scale events, Portola was far from the team’s first musical rodeo. But head booker Danny Bell explained that even the pros learn a lot from the debut year of a new festival. One of the biggest challenges is adapting to a new site.AdvertisementArticle continues below this ad“It’s something that every festival producer deals with, especially one like this, that is not just a wide open grass field that you build fences around,” Bell said. “We’re going into a very cool space with a lot of infrastructure and it’s fairly challenging to get it right the first time.”Peggy Gou performs at the Crane Stage at the Portola Music Festival in San Francisco on Sunday, Sept. 25, 2022.Adam Pardee/Special to SFGATEOne of the more unique elements of the Pier 80 site is a massive warehouse space, which served as the site of standout performances by the likes of Kelly Lee Owens, Charlie XCX and Fred Again. However, booking such headlining talent in the space led to bottlenecks at the entrance. An impatient crowd ignored security guards and crawled over barricades, creating a dangerous situation that was sensationalized by TMZ, but thankfully did not result in any reported injuries.AdvertisementArticle continues below this adThe warehouse is slated to be open again this year, but with the stage at the opposite side of building near a larger entrance. Organizers also plan to open more exits, and the schedule features DJs rather than live acts to discourage bottlenecks at the beginning and end of sets.Security guards stand near the entrance of the Warehouse stage at the Portola Music Festival in San Francisco on Sunday, Sept. 25, 2022.Adam Pardee/Special to SFGATEThe reorientation of the stage is also expected to help with another issue that the event faced, which was sound bleeding between stages. Additionally, slight adjustments to placement of the outdoor stages are intended to help isolate the sound, and a new audio vendor has been hired to attempt to mitigate complaints that kick drums could be heard as far away as Alameda.“Our main stage sound traveled 7 miles, which we couldn’t believe,” Bell said. The new company, Rat Sound Systems (named after founder Dave Rat), hopes to alleviate concerns of neighbors who reported their windows rattling last year. “The analogy [Dave] used is that you’ve got a hose that’s releasing water. And what he’s doing is putting a sprinkler on that hose.”AdvertisementArticle continues below this adAnother challenge faced by the festival was how best to fill the site’s 80-acre footprint. The pier served as an incredible setting, with the bay to one side, Sutro Tower hovering in the distance, and cranes and ships providing an industrial backdrop. But aside from a few strips of artificial turf, it felt like not a lot was done to dress up the site, an especially stark contrast to festivals like Outside Lands, which features hundreds of yards of murals flanking walkways through the park.“The focus on that is hang spaces, spaces where people can take a break and have a drink and eat some food. We didn’t have a lot of that last year,” Bell said.Concertgoers hang out near the the Pier Stage at the Portola Music Festival, on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022.Charles Russo/SFGATEAdvertisementArticle continues below this adAlthough attendees still shouldn’t expect the type of art installations you might find at Coachella or Outside Lands, a few additional activations are planned to spruce up the space, most notably an art exhibit of rave fliers and stickers curated by Blurring Books, a Brooklyn publisher run by veteran rave DJ DB Burkeman. More food vendors are also planned on the grounds to combat the long lines and sellouts from last year, which Bell attributed to multiple vendors dropping out at the last minute. Cell and internet connectivity, which were nearly nonexistent at the 2022 iteration, are being reinforced to provide reliable service. Last year, the Bay Area was represented by a range of artists, including Toro Y Moi, DJ Dials and a satellite stage from Fault Radio, but this year, local talent is noticeably missing, an even more glaring omission given Outside Lands added a new stage this year devoted to local DJs. Bell chalks up unfortunate timing with regard to artist availability.“That’s something I know we consciously need to work on,” Bell said.First-time festivals also typically face challenges surrounding profitability and rarely break even.AdvertisementArticle continues below this ad“The real reason why every first year festival isn’t profitable is you can only guess the cost so much,” Bell said. “We obviously use our previous experience, we’re lucky we have a large full-time festival staff … there’s so many things that are outside of your control in year one.” Caribou performs inside the Ship Tent at the Portola Music Festival, on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022. Charles Russo/SFGATEIn the case of Portola, a few curveballs included increased cost of shipping due to a shortage of shipping containers, plus more expensive artist trailers, which Bell said was due to consolidation of several companies within that sector of the festival industry.But post mortems aside, Bell is pumped to present another year of left-of-center electronic music aimed at more of an adult crowd than your typical EDM festival. He suggests attendees arrive early for acts like New Zealand deep house duo Chaos in the CBD (Sunday, 2 p.m.), British-Nigerian rapper Little Simz (Sunday, 3:50 p.m.), certified-platinum Scottish producers LF System (Saturday, 3 p.m.) and rising Australian house producer Dom Dolla (Saturday, 5 p.m.). That’s not to mention living legends like Basement Jaxx, 2ManyDJs and Underworld, and a rare appearance from Nelly Furtado.AdvertisementArticle continues below this ad“People look at [the Nelly Furtado booking] and think it seems a little off-base,” Bell said. “But once they see the show and understand the whole context, which is just at the end of the day a big party and celebration of dance music, they’ll be reminded that her songs slap.”More Bay Area dance music
Portola Fest addresses sound and crowd control issues
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