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Interview with George Ridgley: Castro Street Fair Executive Director
Castro Street Fair CEO George Ridgley says the theme for this year’s event is “Get Hitched.” The fair will take place on October 4. (photo: Bill Sywak)
The Castro Street Fair is a showcase for local artists, craftspeople and businesses to display their products while helping to raise funds for non-profit agencies across San Francisco. The event has grown in its 36 years of existence to a phenomenon that now raises over $86,000 for charity and has its own Wikipedia page.
In an interview with George Ridgely, executive director of the Street Fair, the Courier aims to discover this question:
What’s going to be different about this year’s fair?
“Well, we’ve actually added a couple of new things. The San Francisco Artists Guild is going to have a huge set up on Castro Street near 19th Street where they’re setting up their A-frames, and it’s kind of like not the traditional 10 by 10 booth but kind of a walk-through festival to see their art. Barneby’s World of Wonderment is coming back to the lower part of 18th Street by Hartford. It’s their second year in a row and there’s definitely a much more carnival atmosphere to that.
The theme this year is come get hitched in the center of the gay universe so all the stages are going to have commitment ceremonies, and in Barneby’s World of Wonderment they’re going to have Dr. Seuss-like characters who are in an imaginary chapel. It’s going to be super fun down there.
We’re sticking with the community stage on Castro and Market where we’re doing a wide variety of entertainment. The stage on 18th is the Red-Rock stage, which is more rock and roll pretty much throughout the day. We’ll have our nice dance area behind Walgreens, and the country and western stage will be where it’s been behind the Castro Theater. So you’ll find a lot of stuff that you’ll recognize that has been year after year but some new things as well.
A $4 suggested donation is at the gate. All that money goes directly to our beneficiaries, and there are 30 different ones. Since 2001 we’ve given back over $500,000 to those organizations, and last year alone it was close to $86,000. We’re raising a lot of money.
Hopefully, the weather will be great and it will be a crazy good time.”
— Interviewed by Bill Sywak
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