The Weekend Top Ten — October 1–4

<p>There is a version of this weekend that costs nothing. Eighty bands in Golden Gate Park without buying a ticket. Museums giving away admission across three days. Two closed Main Streets, a parade, and two beer festivals you walk into for free.</p> <p>And there is a version that costs a great deal, because the first weekend of October is when the wine country stops selling tours and starts selling the crush.</p> <p>Both are below.</p> <p>1. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass — and you do not need a ticket</p> <p>Fri Oct 2 – Sun Oct 4 · Hellman Hollow, Golden Gate Park · Free</p> <p>Eighty acts across six stages. The organiser puts it in capitals on their own FAQ: "Since this is a FREE EVENT (NO TICKETS NEEDED)." No wristband, no RSVP, no donation table, no residency test. After a year of free-events-with-an-asterisk, this is the one without one.</p> <p>Gates open at 11 AM Friday with music from 1 to 7. Saturday and Sunday the gates open at 9 and the music runs 11 to 7. Gates close at 7 sharp.</p> <p>Friday is led by My Morning Jacket and Lukas Nelson. Saturday brings Old Crow Medicine Show, Steve Earle and the Hardly Strictly Dukes, and Rilo Kiley. Emmylou Harris closes things out on Sunday. Robert Plant appears with Saving Grace and Suzi Dian — a late addition, announced only days ago.</p> <p>One thread worth listening for: at least fifteen artists have agreed to work a Dolly Parton song into their sets this year.</p> <p>Before you go: four entrances — JFK and Transverse, Fulton and 30th, JFK and 36th, and the South Polo Field at Middle and Metson. The banned list is long and enforced: no glass, no hard liquor, no umbrellas, no tents, no tables, no high-back chairs, no drones, and no bringing your own instrument. Dogs on leash are fine.</p> <p>Take transit. Parking near the park is effectively gone by mid-morning on Saturday, and the festival's own guidance is to arrive by bus, bike or on foot.</p> <p>2. Free museum admission on three days this weekend</p> <p>Thursday, Saturday and Sunday each carry a free day, and each has different conditions.</p> <p>Thursday Oct 1 — BAMPFA, free all day, 11 to 7. Not a free hour, the whole day, which means it works after work. Normal admission is $18.</p> <p>Saturday Oct 3 — de Young and Legion of Honor, free for residents of the nine Bay Area counties, with photo ID or a postmarked envelope checked at the desk. Permanent collection only. This runs every Saturday, not just the first — worth knowing year-round.</p> <p>Sunday Oct 4 — OMCA, free, including special exhibitions. Their own wording: "free admission to OMCA — now including all Special Exhibitions." No surcharge on anything. Walk-ups are fine; booking is encouraged, not required. Free architecture tour at 1 PM.</p> <p>Sunday Oct 4 — Asian Art Museum, free general admission, by timed slot. Book an arrival window — earliest 10 AM, last 4 PM, closing at 5. The adult ticket rings up at $0.00. From 10:30 there's free-Sunday programming on top: drop-in art making, storytelling, performances. Special exhibitions are discounted, not free.</p> <p>And one more, on different hours: the Museum of the African Diaspora reopened September 30 after six weeks closed, and opens free on Thursday evening, 4 to 8, as part of Downtown First Thursdays. Worth knowing that its regular free day is the second Saturday — October 10, not this weekend — so Thursday evening is the window.</p> <p>3. Choose your Oktoberfest: Oakland or Clayton</p> <p>Two versions of the same idea, both free to walk into, both the same weekend.</p> <p>Oaktoberfest in the Dimond — Sat Oct 3, 11 AM – 7 PM; Sun Oct 4, 10 AM – 5 PM, at Fruitvale and MacArthur. Two hundred-plus craft beers, five stages of music and dance. Free and all ages; you pay only if you drink. Sunday starts an hour earlier and ends two hours sooner.</p> <p>Clayton Oktoberfest — Sat Oct 3, 11 AM – 8 PM; Sun Oct 4, 11 AM – 6 PM, on Main Street. The small-town version: downtown closes, a street band plays 11 to 2 both days, then the Bavarian Dancers Saturday and Polkageist West Sunday. Free parking at the Clayton Community Library and Diablo View Middle School, with a shuttle.</p> <p>Admission is free. What you buy tickets for is drinks, at booths inside the festival — and the organisers put a warning in capitals on their own site: "TICKETS ARE ONLY SOLD AT THE EVENT. DO NOT BUY TICKETS FROM ANYONE ONLINE." They go further: "If you are asked to purchase tickets or send money/Venmo to someone, please report it as fraud."</p> <p>So nobody needs a ticket to walk in, and anyone selling you drink tickets online is running a scam. Beverage service stops at 7:30 Saturday and 5:30 Sunday.</p> <p>There's also a carnival, and it opens a day earlier than the festival — Friday Oct 2, 5 to 10 PM, then Saturday noon to 10 and Sunday noon to 6. Carnival ride tickets are a separate thing from the drink tickets above, and the organisers don't publish their prices.</p> <p>Oakland if you want range. Clayton if you want a street where people know each other.</p> <p>4. The 52nd Oakland Black Cowboy Parade</p> <p>Sat Oct 3 · Parade 10 AM · Festival 10 AM – 6 PM · DeFremery Park, West Oakland</p> <p>Fifty-two years, and the theme this year is "Preserving Our Heritage, Inspiring Our Future." Riders come down the street on horseback, then the festival runs all day at DeFremery with live entertainment, line dancing, pony rides, youth activities and community vendors.</p> <p>Up to one in four cowboys in the Old West were Black. The Oakland Black Cowboy Association has been making that point since 1974.</p> <p>One honest note: the organiser does not publish an admission price anywhere — not on their poster, not on their own pages. It is a community parade in a public park and has always been free to attend, but we are not going to print a number they haven't stated. Parking near DeFremery is difficult; BART to West Oakland.</p> <p>5. Pleasanton closes Main Street for two days running</p> <p>Sat Oct 3, 11 AM – 4 PM · Sun Oct 4, 10 AM – 2 PM · Downtown Pleasanton · Both free</p> <p>Main Street shuts from Friday afternoon to Monday morning, and the Downtown Association fills it twice. Saturday is Pleasanton Palooza — live music, family activities, vendor booths and a BMX show. Sunday is Porsches on Main, with more than two hundred cars on the same closed street, DJs and a live band.</p> <p>Two free street festivals on consecutive days, in the same four blocks.</p> <p>6. Two stages where you name the price</p> <p>Theatre this weekend has two ways in that don't depend on what you can spend.</p> <p>Seeds of Time Festival opens at Marin Shakespeare's Downtown Theatre in San Rafael — Shining Somewhere on Saturday Oct 3 at 1 PM and Sunday Oct 4 at 6:30, Edward III Saturday at 7:30, and a festival programme Sunday at 1. Admission is choose-your-price.</p> <p>Worth knowing: the company's own festival page is still serving last year's content, so the dates above are easy to get wrong. This is opening weekend.</p> <p>King Lear runs all four nights at Z Space in San Francisco, 7 PM. Tickets go up to $100, but the bottom of the ladder is pay-what-you-can at $20 or $10. Four chances to see it, at a price you set.</p> <p>7. Two free days on one lawn at Yerba Buena</p> <p>Sat Oct 3, 11 AM – 4 PM and Sun Oct 4, 11 AM – 4 PM · Yerba Buena Gardens Great Lawn · Both free</p> <p>Saturday is the sixth African Arts Festival — Emmanuel Nado, Diamano Coura West African Dance Company, Fua dia Congo, Arenas Dance Company, Unique Derique — with interactive drum and dance lessons, so you can be in it rather than watch it. African food and craft vendors.</p> <p>Sunday the same lawn becomes Litquake Out Loud, with twenty-five independent presses and literary magazines and poetry readings weighted toward BIPOC and LGBTQ+ writers.</p> <p>Same grass, same walk from Montgomery, two completely different afternoons.</p> <p>8. The Castro Street Fair turns 52</p> <p>Sun Oct 4, 11 AM – 6 PM · Castro and Market · Free entry, donation requested</p> <p>Market closes from Noe to Castro, Castro from Market to 19th, plus parts of 17th and 18th. Smoke-free.</p> <p>Free to walk in — but expect a $10 to $20 suggested donation solicited at the gates. It goes to community beneficiaries, more than $1.6 million since 1998. Better to know before you're standing at the barrier deciding.</p> <p>9. Hasan Minhaj and Ronny Chieng tape a special at the Fox</p> <p>Fri Oct 2, 7 PM and 9:30 PM · Sat Oct 3, 6 PM and 9 PM · Fox Theater, Oakland</p> <p>Four shows across two nights, taped for a live special, under the title Hasan Hates Ronny | Ronny Hates Hasan.</p> <p>It's also the weekend's clearest counterprogramming. While eighty bands play for free across the bay, the Fox has booked four comedy shows straight against them. If Golden Gate Park in October sounds like your idea of nothing, this is the other end of the weekend. Check availability before you make plans — these have been moving.</p> <p>10. The wine country is in the middle of crush</p> <p>Early October is harvest, and the wineries open the doors they keep shut in August.</p> <p>Croatian Harvest Extravaganza, Grgich Hills Estate, St. Helena, Sat Oct 3, 5 to 8 PM, $200. Croatian food and music at Miljenko Grgich's estate, in its long-running annual form. Ticketed in advance through Tock, club members get early access, and it has sold out in past years.</p> <p>Sip and Stomp, PEJU Winery, Rutherford, Sun Oct 4, noon to 4, $50 — $25 for club members. About five minutes barefoot in the bin, a photograph, then a tasting. It's the cheapest hands-on stomp I found open to the general public this weekend.</p> <p>Immersive Cave Tour and Tasting, Alexander Valley Vineyards, Healdsburg, Sat Oct 3, 1 PM, $45. Into the hillside and back out with a tasting.</p> <p>Wente Jazz Festival, Livermore, Sun Oct 4, 11 to 6, $65. Seven hours of jazz on the estate lawn.</p> <p>All four need advance booking. Harvest events sell out earlier than anything else on the wine calendar.</p> <p>Hidden Gem: a hundred pinball machines, and a way in for nothing</p> <p>Thu Oct 1 and Sun Oct 4, 11 AM – 9 PM · Fri Oct 2 and Sat Oct 3, 11 AM – 10 PM · Pacific Pinball Museum, Alameda</p> <p>More than a hundred playable machines from the 1930s onward, in a storefront on Webster Street most people drive past on their way somewhere else. Admission is all-you-can-play — once you're in, nothing takes quarters.</p> <p>General admission is $20. It's $15 for students 13 and up, seniors 62 and up, military, teachers and first responders, and $12 with an EBT, CalFresh, Medi-Cal, SSI or SSDI card.</p> <p>And here's the part almost nobody knows: if you hold a California public library card, you can book a free pass through Discover & Go. The museum's own wording is a complimentary pass for one adult and one child — so it's not a whole-family ticket, but it's two people into a room of working pinball machines for nothing.</p> <p>Two notes. They're closed Mondays for repairs, so this weekend is clear. And the "2 for $22" deal you may have heard about is Tuesdays only — it doesn't apply to any day this weekend.</p> <p>Family Pick: a pumpkin patch where almost everything is free</p> <p>All four days · Petaluma Pumpkin Patch and Amazing Corn Maze · Free entry, free parking</p> <p>October is pumpkin season and most patches charge you at the gate. This one doesn't, and it's specific about what free admission includes. Their own list: free parking, the Lil' Kids Maze, the straw mountain, the corn kernel sandbox, the farm animals, and the run of the patch and produce stand. For a family with small children that's a genuine afternoon without opening your wallet.</p> <p>But there is a midway, and it is à la carte. The big corn maze is $9 in daylight for ages 6 and up, free for 5 and under, or $13 at night — and beyond that, carnival ride tickets are $3 each, the slide is $3, the jump zone is $10 for unlimited on weekdays or four tickets for $12 at weekends, pony rides start at $12 on Saturdays and Sundays, and pumpkins run from about $3 for a mini to $75 for the specialty ones. A maze map is $1.</p> <p>So: free to get in, free to park, and free to spend the afternoon on the straw mountain — but go in knowing what the rides cost, or you'll be negotiating at every booth. Maze admission closes thirty minutes before the gates do.</p> <p>Check the hours, because they change with the day: Thursday and Sunday it's 10 to 7. Friday and Saturday it's 10 to 10 — and the night maze runs 6 to 10 on those two nights only.</p> <p>If you'd rather stay in the East Bay: Science in the Park runs Saturday only, 9 AM to 3 PM at Cal State East Bay in Hayward — water-rocket launches, egg-drop contests and hands-on exhibits, free, put on by Alameda County. It finishes early enough to get to Oaktoberfest afterward.</p> <p>One more thing: Bottom of the Hill is in its last year</p> <p>Deerhoof play two nights on Potrero Hill, Friday October 2 and Saturday October 3. Both are sold out.</p> <p>These are not the shows that close the club — Bottom of the Hill is running through the end of 2026 and will finish on New Year's Eve, after thirty-five years. But they are farewell-season shows, and the venue's own listing notes that Deerhoof had been planning not to come back at all, then agreed to a couple of dates before the closing.</p> <p>Co-owners Ramona Downey, Kathleen Owen and Lynn Schwarz announced the decision in January, citing rising operating costs, shifting demographics and what Downey called the corporatizing of music. "We've had so many good years," she said, "and we want to go out on a good note."</p> <p>There are three months left. If you have been meaning to see something on 17th Street, the calendar between now and New Year's Eve is the last one there will be.</p> <p>Getting around this weekend</p> <p>Golden Gate Park, Friday to Sunday. Hardly Strictly draws crowds that make driving pointless. Transit, bike or walk.</p> <p>Downtown San Jose, Saturday and Sunday mornings. Rock 'n' Roll San Jose runs a 5K Saturday at 7:30 and a half marathon and 10K Sunday at 8, starting and finishing at Market and William. As of this writing the race had not published its road closure map. Expect the downtown core affected — the convention center, Plaza de César Chávez, the San Jose Museum of Art, the California Theatre and the Hammer. Sunday morning is likely the worst of it.</p> <p>Santa Clara County, Sunday. The 49ers host Denver at Levi's at 1:25, a stadium that seats upwards of 65,000, while the half marathon is finishing eight miles away in San Jose. Two large events in one county on one morning. Budget extra time.</p> <p>Berkeley and Palo Alto look clearer than usual. No Cal home football game, no Stanford home game — both are on the road. That removes the biggest parking pressure around BAMPFA, Berkeley Rep, the Freight, Cal Performances, Zellerbach, Bing and the Cantor, though Haas and Maples both have evening volleyball on Friday and Saturday.</p> <p>And a free one on Thursday: the Sharks throw an Opening Night Street Festival outside SAP Center, 3 to 6 PM, free and open to anyone, before the home opener at 7.</p> <p>That's the weekend. Three hundred and fifty-plus events are on the site, across thirty-six cities — the ten above are where I'd start.</p> <p>See everything happening October 1–4 →</p> <p>It's out there. Let's go find it.</p> <p>Find the Magic.</p> <p><a href="sfbayweekend.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">Learn more →</a></p>