The Death of Festivals

[Drunk Monk]

After headliner drops out, hyped-up San Francisco festival scrubs social media

The event is still happening, but it's changed names, moved to a smaller venue and gone incognito

By Timothy Karoff, Culture ReporterJune 25, 2025
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FILE: Kehlani performs at Stormzy's 'This Is What We Mean Day' during All Points East Festival 2023 at Victoria Park on August 18, 2023 in London, England. 
Jim Dyson/Getty Images

For a moment, [url=https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/massive-pride-music-festival-announced-sf-20263395.php]SoSF looked like it was going to be San Francisco’s next big music festival.
When promoters announced the Pride-themed event in early April, all the indications were positive. SoSF featured an impressive lineup of local talent, with pop juggernauts Kehlani, Kim Petras and Tinashe as headliners. The event would take place on Pier 80, the sprawling grounds of San Francisco’s 45,000-attendee Portola Festival.
Now, less than a week out from the big day, SoSF’s digital footprint has all but vanished. At a moment when any comparable event would be mounting a last-minute social media push to sell tickets, SoSF has instead deleted every single post from its official Instagram account. Kehlani, who was one of the event’s co-presenters and headliners, has dropped out, as have two performers, one of whom was listed as one of the event’s organizers.
SoSF has even changed its name, rebranding as SF Pride Block Party, and moved from Pier 80 to an outdoor area of the Midway, a venue across the street and one of the event’s organizers. SFGATE reached out to SoSF and the Midway and did not receive a response in time for publication.
The event is still slated to take place on Saturday, June 28, but due to what appear to be political disagreements between talent and organizers, the event will look very different from the festival announced in April.
‘This is supposed to be a Pride event’
The trouble began in May. Kehlani had been vocal in their support of Palestinians since the start of the war in Gaza. In 2024, the artist posted a video on Instagram, in which they said, “It’s f—k Israel, and it’s f—k Zionism and it’s also f—k a lot of y’all too,” referring to artists who stayed quiet on the war in Gaza. One of Kehlani’s music videos uses the phrase “long live the Intifada,” a reference to Palestinian uprisings against Israeli occupation.
In the spring, Kehlani came under fire for their statements. The artist was scheduled to perform at Cornell University on May 7, but Cornell’s president canceled their performance, a decision he attributed to what he characterized as Kehlani’s “antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments.” A few weeks later, the administration of New York City Mayor Eric Adams pressured a nonprofit organization to cancel a Kehlani performance, citing “security concerns.” 
In an attempt to address the controversy surrounding the headliner, SoSF ended up alienating its followers. In mid-May, the event’s promoters released a since-deleted statement on social media.
“While we fundamentally disagree with the kind of language Kehlani has used to speak on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we chose to engage with her team, rather than withdraw her invitation to perform,” the festival’s organizers wrote. 
A joint statement by Kehlani and the festival was also included in an effort to smooth over any new criticism.
“No person should ever fall casualty of a war they did not choose and do not support,” the statement said. “This sentiment extends to Jewish people, the same way it extends to Palestinian people, the same way it extends to all people.”
That statement triggered the chain of events that led San Francisco DJ Adam Kraft, founder of the event company Fake and Gay, to pull out of the SoSF lineup. According to Kraft, SoSF’s words frustrated locals, who took issue with the festival’s decision to align itself, even partially, with Cornell and other groups that had condemned Kehlani’s stances on the war.
“Everybody kind of piled on them in the comments,” he said. “I think there were hundreds of comments like, ‘What do you mean? What language?’”
For Kraft, who maintains a firm pro-Palestinian stance, that statement was frustrating. Recently, he performed at a party with several other DJs boycotting a Boiler Room show that was planned to take place in San Francisco. (Earlier this year, Boiler Room was purchased by Superstruct Entertainment, which is in turn owned by KKR, a private equity firm whose investments are tied to classified ads for Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a data center in Israel and defense technologies.)
After SoSF’s statement, strangers were messaging him on Instagram and confronting him over his association with the event. Kraft asked SoSF’s organizers to issue another statement clarifying what they meant, to no avail.
“This is supposed to be a Pride event, and you’re not listening to us,” he recalled thinking. “You’re not listening to the hundreds of people in the comments, the whole community that you’re supposed to be representing during Pride.”
In some respects, this episode mirrored an earlier, more minor controversy. When SoSF was first announced, its flyer initially listed Downtown First Thursdays as one of the organizers. Downtown First Thursdays is run in part by Manny Yekutiel, whose cafe in the Mission is subject to a boycott over Yekutiel’s past statements on Israel. In 2017, Yekutiel posted on Facebook, asking for recommendations for “good Zionist organizations in the Bay where I can plug in and help.” 
In 2019, he clarified his stance in another post: “The way I was raised, the word zionism meant a belief in the right of the state of Israel to exist (to the extent that you believe that any ‘state’ should exist in this post-colonial world in what is almost universally stolen land) and not a blanket support of the actions of the Israeli government and/or military.”
In November 2023, Yekutiel stated in a social media post that he supported a ceasefire in exchange for the return of the hostages held by Hamas. During an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest earlier this month, his cafe, Manny’s, was vandalized. Two windows were smashed, and the cafe was spray painted with the messages “F—k Manny” and “The only good settler is a dead 1.”
Kraft said he did not know of Downtown First Thursdays’ involvement until the flyer was released, but he received a flood of Instagram DMs asking why he was partnering with the group for the event. He expressed his concerns about collaborating with Downtown First Thursdays to the Midway. After some back and forth, the Midway told Kraft that the group was no longer part of SoSF.
Civic Space Foundation, one of the nonprofits behind Downtown First Thursdays, did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
‘Two totally different events’
On May 21, the Midway informed Kraft that Kehlani was no longer part of the lineup, and that SoSF would now be a block party at the Midway. Kraft said that the organizers did not explain whether Kehlani had dropped out of the event or whether they had removed her from the lineup. For Kraft and Nicki Jizz, the drag queen who founded San Francisco’s all-Black drag show, Reparations, that was the tipping point. Shortly after they heard the news, Kraft and Nicki Jizz followed suit. Nicki Jizz was not available for an interview for this article.
“We just didn’t want to be aligned with an event that could be even questionably Zionist,” Kraft explained. “Even if they weren’t outwardly Zionist, it just felt very icky.”
An exterior of the Midway, the San Francisco music venue where the festival formerly known as SoSF is scheduled to take place on Saturday.
Google Street View
Two weeks later, on June 5, SoSF publicly announced Kehlani’s departure in a now-deleted Instagram post, stating that “Kehlani has decided to no longer be a part of the line-up” and informing ticket holders that refunds would be available upon request. A spokesperson for the event told the San Francisco Standard that the split was an “amicable decision.” Representatives for Kehlani did not return SFGATE’s request for comment. 
The new poster for the event lists the Berlin DJ Horsegiirl as a special guest.
From there, the organizers’ decision-making process is a mystery. By the week of June 16, SoSF had liquidated its social media presence. It’s possible that the event went incognito after Kehlani dropped out to avoid further scrutiny online. As of Wednesday morning, the cheapest tier of general admission tickets had sold out, per the event’s ticketing page.
On Sunday, after the dust had settled, a Reddit user posted on r/AskSF about the festival under the title “SoSF/Pride Block party status?”
“Can someone update me on what’s happening with the SoSF pride party?” the user wrote. “I followed Kehlani pulling out and some tone deaf statements from organizers but is the whole thing being boycotted or are people still going?”
“Those are two totally different events,” another user replied. It’s an incorrect response, but it’s hard not to get the same impression.

Confusing. I thought this was the Portola Festival, which I've heard some buzz on (some good, some poor - Portola did garner some decent acts and I would've worked it if given the opportunity).