Clusterfest may relocate after chaos, gripes pour in
Clusterfest plans to come back next year, new and improved — even if that means relocating the comedy festival from San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza to a different site.
Comedy Central, in partnership with Superfly and Bay Areabased Another Planet Entertainment, has brought the threeday event to downtown since 2017. But after complaints of overcrowding and an online reservation app that didn’t work as promised during the third annual festival last weekend, the coproducers sent out a survey on Wednesday vowing they are “committed to incorporating your thoughts into next year’s festival and beyond” and told The Chronicle that they are mulling over a move.
“We will be evaluating the location for sure,” said Jonathan Mayers, cofounder of Superfly.
Mayers said it’s too early to name a new location for 2020, but Golden Gate Park — known for hosting the city’s largest outdoor festivals like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and Outside Lands music festival, another Superfly festival coproduced with Another Planet — is not on the short list. While Outside Lands includes
comedy as part of its annual lineup at its popup club known as the Barbary, Mayers and his fellow Clusterfest organizers are in search of a space with a more permanent, indoor venue.
“Comedy is different than music,” Mayers said. “Intimacy is part of the medium.”
That was the impetus for moving most of Clusterfest’s main attractions indoors to three stages inside the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium for the first time this year, said Jonas Larsen, Comedy Central’s executive vice president and cohead of talent and development. He said they learned “comedy works best in an enclosed venue” after hosting Clusterfest headliners on a large outdoor stage facing City Hall the last two years. It was a beautiful backdrop that allowed up to 45,000 of the festivals paid attendees over the weekend to catch marquee acts like Jerry Seinfeld, Kevin Hart and Amy Schumer under the stars, but it meant comics and fans had to brave San Francisco’s cold summer nights and adhere to strict curfews.
Simply moving the main attractions indoors for the third annual festival June 2123 seemed like an easy fix. Unfortunately, the logistics of fitting this year’s 45,000 weekend crowd into 8,500seat Bill Graham Civic Auditorium — even with additional designated standing areas, two popup comedy clubs and an online app that allowed people to reserve their spot indoors — didn’t add up.
It became even more apparent that the strategy wasn’t going to work on the festival’s soldout second day. Starting with Bay Areaborn comedian Chelsea Peretti’s Saturday evening set on the Bill Graham Stage, fans flooded the main auditorium, many staying after her set to save seats for the first of two shows featuring John Mulaney. That led to an overflow of people indoors blocking aisles and stairways, and long lines outside where some festivalgoers reportedly waited up to three hours to see Mulaney perform.
“Security came to try and clear the aisles and nobody budged even though they were told they needed to create a walkway,” said Sarah Evans, who drove up from Huntington Beach (Orange County) with her husband for Clusterfest.
Even after Clusterfest officials tried to urge Mulaney fans to catch his second show by broadcasting a notice on the festival app and social media platforms, no one dare moved.
A fire marshal was onsite all weekend and notified security to keep the aisles clear, according to San Francisco Fire Department Public Information Officer Jonathan Baxter. He said that the Fire Department received no calls for safety issues during the festival and that the overcrowding in pictures posted on Twitter was mitigated in a timely manner — though maybe not timely enough for Evans. Evans said she couldn’t even use the bathroom because ushers warned her she wouldn’t be able to get back to her seat if she moved. “That was hard especially because I’m pregnant,” she said by phone the day after the festival.
The ire from Saturday night sparked social media backlash that got the festival the nickname “Clusterfyre,” a reference to the failed music festival cofounded by Ja Rule in 2017. But promoters said that some of these problems are endemic to any confined event with open seating.
“From our standpoint, if you go to any festival where you don’t have an assigned seat there is that risk of losing your seat,” said Larsen. “It is firstcome, firstserved.”
That explanation doesn’t satisfy Nick Nuñez, who flew out from New York to attend his first Clusterfest, where the tickets ranged from $119 for a singleday pass to $1,250 for a threeday platinum pass that promised unlimited fries. He bought the general admission ticket for the weekendlong festival in hopes of catching the headliners and some choice acts, but said he was only able to enjoy a handful of shows. Even with the online reservations festivalgoers were encouraged to use to get access to the more intimate events at the Larkin and Polk comedy clubs or the set replicas of “The Office” and “Seinfeld,” Nuñez said it was nearly impossible to see what he wanted to watch.
“For the $300 I paid I saw the last half of Whitney Cummings and the first half of Todd Barry. That was it,” Nuñez said. “I got to watch some network specials on stand up on the flight back to New York. That was the best comedy I saw.”
Nuñez said from the first day of the festival, he noticed the Clusterfest app kept crashing. Even when he got it to work, comedy shows would be fully booked within minutes, he said. The only way to get in was through standby, which required lining up outside the auditorium. He was unable to get into either of Mulaney’s shows on Saturday night and became so frustrated that he tried to sell his pass for Sunday’s closing night. While many festivalgoers did report a much smoother finale to the festival on Sunday, for fans like Nuñez it was too late. He doubts he’ll make the trek back out west for Clusterfest 2020.
“The intention was to give everyone a fair shot at seeing the acts, but there probably is a different way to do that,” said Mayers. “The whole process is looking at, ‘Where are the friction points?’ and ‘How can we make it a better experience?’ We want the audience to come back next year.” The Chronicle’s Senior Digital Arts and Entertainment Editor Mariecar Mendoza and freelance writer Kevin
L. Jones contributed to this story.