references/sources.md
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SF Event Sources
Last verified: September 2026. Platforms add and drop features, newsletters fold, and seasonal dates move every year. Items marked (verify) were uncertain or could not be confirmed. Check a source is still active before relying on it.
Contents
- Event platforms
- Official feeds
- Curators and newsletters
- Recurring and seasonal programs
- Social media and communities
- What fills fast
- Seasonal calendar
1. Event platforms
| Platform | Best for | What the person can follow | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Luma (luma.com) | Tech, AI, and startup events; hackathons, demo nights, founder dinners; growing arts and social scene | The SF city page (Subscribe), topic pages, and community calendars such as SF Tech Week and AI event calendars | Public calendars and city pages offer iCal subscriptions. Many events are approval-required with registration questions; listings show Waitlist and Sold Out. |
| Partiful | Parties, DJ nights, clubs (mahjong, walk, run), pop-ups | Invites they're sent | Explore (partiful.com/explore/sf) lists public events hosts submit; most events still spread as invite links on X, Instagram, and group chats. |
| Cerebral Valley (cerebralvalley.ai/events) | AI hackathons, meetups, summits | Weekly newsletter | Has an SF & Bay Area filter; most listings link to Luma. |
| Eventbrite | Broad: food markets, mixers, classes | Organizers (verify) | |
| Meetup | Hobby groups, language exchanges, some tech | Groups | New events arrive by email and push. |
| DICE | Club and indie venues | Artists and venues | Sold-out shows use a waiting list (verify). |
| Resident Advisor (ra.co) | Underground electronic and DJ nights | Promoters, clubs, artists (verify) | |
| Posh | Nightlife and social parties | Hosts (verify) | Often promoted on Instagram. |
| Bandsintown, Songkick | Artists announcing Bay Area shows | Artists | |
| Fever | Candlelight concerts, resold experiences | — | Prefer the venue's own site. |
2. Official feeds
The cleanest things to check on a schedule:
- Luma iCal subscriptions for any public calendar, including the SF city page
- SF Rec & Park calendar (sfrecpark.org): Notify Me, iCal, and RSS; covers Golden Gate Park Bandshell and other park programming
- Newsletters delivered to the person's own inbox
3. Curators and newsletters
All showed 2026 activity unless marked.
- Funcheap SF: free and cheap events, today and weekend pages, weekly newsletter, guides to big recurring events and lotteries
- Do The Bay: music, nightlife, and festival calendar (also runs Broke-Ass Stuart's event calendar)
- San Francisco Standard: weekend best-events roundups
- SF Chronicle things-to-do coverage and newsletters; SFGATE things to do (verify)
- KQED Arts: The Do List and seasonal arts guides
- 48 hills: weekly arts picks and seasonal previews
- Time Out San Francisco: weekend list
- SF Station calendar (verify how actively updated)
- Independent newsletters such as Eddie's List and SF Girl Chronicle (verify)
4. Recurring and seasonal programs
- Museum late nights: Exploratorium After Dark (Thursdays, 18+) and California Academy of Sciences NightLife (Thursdays, 21+, regularly sells out) (verify prices and schedule)
- Museums on Us: free general admission at participating museums for Bank of America cardholders on the first full weekend of each month (verify participating museums)
- Stern Grove Festival: free Sunday concerts in summer. Tickets come from a per-concert lottery that opens about 6 weeks before the show and stays open about a week; winners must claim within a short window (verify each season)
- Hardly Strictly Bluegrass: free festival in Golden Gate Park, early October
- Outside Lands: ticketed festival in Golden Gate Park, August
- Sunday Streets: car-free street events in different neighborhoods through the year
- Off the Grid Fort Mason night market: roughly monthly, spring through December (verify dates)
- SF Tech Week (early October) and AI Week SF (late September into October): hundreds of separately hosted events, most on Luma, posted in the few weeks before
5. Social media and communities
- X: the main channel for SF tech events. Hosts, founders, investors, and AI labs post Luma or Partiful links, often with "limited spots, apply."
- Instagram: supper clubs, food pop-ups, run clubs, DJ collectives, galleries, and venues announce drops with "link in bio" or in stories.
- TikTok: roundup creators, useful for discovering new hosts, weak on exact dates.
- Reddit: r/sanfrancisco, r/bayarea, r/oakland weekend and events threads (verify). Context, not timely drops.
- Discord, Slack, and WhatsApp communities (hackathon groups, founder groups, run clubs): private. Only use what the person is a member of and shares.
Platform terms (verify current wording): X prohibits crawling or scraping in any form without consent, and its API is paid. Instagram and TikTok prohibit automated collection. Partiful's terms prohibit scraping and data mining. Luma's terms limit access to its publicly supported interfaces (city pages, iCal subscriptions). Reddit requires approval for automated use. Don't monitor any of these with automated crawling; use official feeds, the person's own follows and notifications, forwarded links, web search, and occasional human-paced page views.
6. What fills fast
Check every 2–4 hours, or at the announced drop time:
- Approval-required AI hackathons, demo nights, and founder dinners on Luma (often waitlisted within hours)
- Events during Tech Week and AI Week, in the weeks before
- Museum late nights that sell out
- Stern Grove lottery windows (the opening date and the day before it closes)
- Big free shows in Golden Gate Park
- Supper club and pop-up drops
- Run club special events and collaborations
- Popular DJ nights at small clubs
Daily digest is fine for walk-in free events, markets, street fairs, talks, gallery openings, and most Meetup and Eventbrite listings.
7. Seasonal calendar
Dates move every year; confirm before recommending.
- February: Noise Pop festival; Lunar New Year festivities
- April–May: Fort Mason night market season opens; Cherry Blossom Festival; Bay to Breakers; Carnaval (verify)
- June: Stern Grove Festival begins; Sunday Streets; Pride (late June)
- July–August: Stern Grove continues; Nihonmachi Street Fair; Outside Lands (early August)
- September: Flower Piano in the Botanical Garden; Folsom Street Fair; Opera in the Park (verify); AI Week SF (late September)
- October: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass (early October); Fleet Week and its air show (around the Marina and northern waterfront); SF Tech Week; Litquake (verify)
- November–December: holiday markets; Fort Mason night market through December (verify)
- Year-round: Thursday museum late nights; Museums on Us on the first full weekend of each month