Hardly Strictly Bluegrass
An awesome (and free) music festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. I just went this past weekend and it was awesome. A lot of big names (highlight was: Old Crow Medicine Show)
I was wondering why it was free and it turns out, it is funded, every year by ONE guy!
Warren Hellman is the kind of billionaire investment banker who makes it hard to hate billionaire investment bankers. Every year, Hellman — a successful venture capitalist and an amateur banjo player — organizes something called the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, a three-day celebration of picking and strumming in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. It’s open to all and 100 percent free — and every year, Hellman picks up the tab. Since its inception eight years ago, with two stages and nine bands, HSB has grown into perhaps the largest free festival in the country: Over the weekend an estimated 500,000 fans crammed into this year’s installment, more than Coachella, Lollapalooza and All Points West combined.
