The popular Sunset Night Market has drawn thousands to San Francisco’s usually quiet Sunset District for two years in a row.
But even as Mayor Daniel Lurie’s administration doubles down on outdoor festivals as a key strategy for boosting local businesses and the city’s economic and civic fortunes, the night market’s future is dim.
A meeting between the Sunset Night Market’s organizers earlier this month resulted in a decision to put planning for the market “on pause at the moment,” said Angie Petitt, director at Sunset Mercantile, one of the organizations running the night market.
Last year, the market took place on Aug. 30 and Sep. 27 at on Irving Street. This year, neither dates nor locations were set, according to Lily Wong, director of the Sunset Chinese Cultural District, a community coalition that organizes the market.
One reason for this caution, said organizers, is the city’s impending $782 million in budget cuts. The Sunset Night Market was largely funded by the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. Last year, the Wah Mei School, the leading organizer for the market, received a $120,000 grant from the office to cover expenses.
In a statement, the office informed Mission Local that it is working to maintain that funding, and “is currently negotiating potential extension of the grant agreement for the night market in the Sunset.”
The Sunset Night Market was started in 2023 and spearheaded by District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio. Night markets are common in other countries, especially in Asia; Engardio’s idea for the market came from visits to Taipei’s various night markets and thinking to himself, “Why can’t we have this in San Francisco?”
It has doubled in size since its inception, and Engardio takes pride in the market, which has spread to neighborhoods all over the city.
This year, Engardio is also facing an uncertain fate with an upcoming recall election in early September.
Sophie Shao, a legislative aide in Engardio’s office, said the office held a town hall earlier this year to discuss the night market. Now, Shao added, it’s in the partner organizations’ hands to decide how to proceed.
At the town hall, Shao said local businesses wanted to keep hosting the festival, praising it as more “family-friendly” than other night markets across the city. But the merchants also asked, “Can we not have so much inconvenience coming with it?”
During last year’s Sunset night market, thousands of people packed Irving Street between the seven blocks from 19th to 26th avenues. The size of the crowd became too hard to manage, said Petitt.
“We got forced into being too big of an event,” Petitt recalled. “And we are evaluating how we can make it work for our community.”
The crowds benefited some businesses but deeply annoyed others. The night market only ran from 5 to 10 p.m., but streets closed to traffic hours earlier, diverting deliveries and keeping regular customers away.
For a hair salon, for example. “Nobody shows up to the night market to cut their hair,” Wong said. Or, a laundromat might not like having a barbecue booth right in front of its doors.
A production the size of the Sunset Night Market needs a minimum of three months to prepare, said Katy Birnbaum, founder and CEO of Into The Streets, which helped with production for the market last year. That includes steps like getting green-lighted for funding and reaching a consensus on location. An “ideal” timeframe for planning is closer to six to eight months.
“There are so many moving parts that need to line up,” Birnbaum said. With so many merchants of different kinds — from restaurants to grocery stores, massage studios to hardware stores — it’s “a huge undertaking” to get everyone on board.
It’s still possible that the market could happen later in the fall, added Birnbaum, cautiously. But for now, “It’s up in the air.”
“Sunset Night Market was a big, beautiful success,” Birnbaum said. “But that success made it harder to figure out how to move forward.”
How many hundreds of thousands of dollars has Sunset Mercantile received at this point to run events where they charge vendors to participate. They have run many, including events on the Great Highway during the compromise period.
They abuse the Farm Market system to hold an event that’s over 3/4 vendors and food providers, taking up a block and a half and a only a handfull of actual growers in the last 1/4 block. It’s a shame since people have been trying to open a market there for decades and the Outer Sunset could really support a quality market with quality growers. One has to wonder if there is actual illegal use of funds, grants and street access.
Schools have fundraising. Inconvenience for anyone living,shopping or working nearby.Waste of $.Recall Joel,Bilal is next.Open the Great Highway.
$120k is the difference between having this night market or not, so about 2 drug tourists worth of annual public health spending.
Or one police cadet made officer.
Tons of kick back to charities but no investment for events that actually benefit the people. I suppose the funding will come if they are willing to take on a political tone. Fly some flags and throw some anti king rhetoric maybe ?
“The Sunset Night Market was started in 2023 and spearheaded by District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio.”
No, he 1:1 copied the idea from other places. Joel Engardio is a hack and deserves zero credit for anything the neighborhood actually organized and brought to him as an idea, which he then pretended was his own. He’s a liar.