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Summerfest 2023 edition

By Carl Fisher

August 30^th, 2023

Hammer time

Once again it was Summerfest in San Jose and even though I live about 50 minutes away now, I had to take in at least one day. Saturday it was. Once there, I had to get around the restriction of no backpacks. That meant that I had to go with a fanny pack/shoulder sling and my camera slung over my shoulder. A bit of a pain, but I made it work.

The first group I took in, Isaiah Collier and the Chosen Few, was in the Hammer Theater, a venue with no real bad seats. It was a great start to the day.

Dancin in the streets

A big chunk of my day was spent near 200 Park street, which gave me good access to the stage. As a bonus, there was a lot of space for crowd interaction to happen. Barely Funktional was highly entertaining and very engaging. There appeared to be a lot of family and friends in the crowd, which I think made the group that much more energized and caused them to work harder to impress those in attendance.

Not all the entertainment was on the stage.

Get down on it

So many great shots came out of this set that it was really tough for me to winnow them down. As a result, you are treated to even more pics than normal without the encumbrance of words. Enjoy :-)

Cimafunk

Cimafunk (another great name) appeared on the main stage, which drew many colorful characters, including myself ;-).

Boom Box

The SJ Jazz Boom Box stage was in a funky (that word again) spot, just off of First street, across from the California Theater in a location that was at one time just a parking lot. There is now a weird boxy pyramid-like structure with some curvy raised parts on the periphery. It’s closed off by fencing most of the time, but they opened it up for this event and I’m hopeful that it will see more life in the near future. There just aren’t that many interesting spaces in SJ. The few that are there should be more fully utilized.

A sizable crowd

Getting there early and plunking down your lawn chairs in a strategic spot is the veteran move at Summerfest. Some folks even bring collapsible wagons stuffed with coolers, chairs, cushions, and I don’t know what else. You’d think they’d have more restrictions on what’s permissible for entry, but so long as people have bought a ticket, and it’s not a back pack, almost anything goes. It’s all good so long as it gets by the metal detector.

Marcus Miller doing his thing on the Main stage.

SJ State marching band bringing it to the streets.

Locally grown

Most of the groups that I saw I had never heard of before. Either I don’t get out much or they are just not that well known. I think it’s the latter. B DeVeux was one of those. According to the program she’s locally grown, practically my neighbor, being from Oakland. Someone that I’ll have to hunt down in the future since she was worthy of spending quality festival listening time with.

Wrapping it

The Boom Box stage was the scene for the final performance that I took in. I have no idea who the performers were, but, regardless, it was a nice to be entertained by them while I wound the day down.