Free Shows Feature Cover & Tribute Bands In Speckles Pavilion
One of the many cool things that happens in San Diego in the summertime are the weekday concerts in Balboa Park.
The city’s beautiful public space holds free shows featuring local bands on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. In 2021, this is restricted to just August but in normal years it also fills up the calendar in June and July.
Okay, the bands and the crowd are hardly anything like you’ll find at one of the many Waterfront Park concerts. They are cover bands and the crowds are mostly what you’ll find at a retirement home. But the shows are free. And you can bring beach chairs and coolers and have a picnic.
It’s a really nice, casual way to spend a mid-evening with live entertainment performing a few songs you know by heart.
The concerts are called Twilight In The Park and the bands range from rock to country to jazz to Elvis and Santana tribute bands. I hear the place is packed for the latter. The link above has the full lineup for 2021.
They take place from 6:30-7:30 at Spreckles Pavilion, the outdoor venue that also has free pipe organ shows each Sunday afternoon (2-3 p.m., donations accepted). Technically, you can’t bring alcohol into the pavilion and must sit on the grass around it to drink, but if you put your beverage in an unmarked container and don’t act like an idiot, nobody is going to say anything to you.
Of course, Balboa Park is a cool place to hang out with our without these free shows. Spreckles Pavilion – which contains the World’s Largest Outdoor Instrument, a real pipe organ behind a retractable door – is just around the corner from the famous Botanical Building with its pond, the Prado outdoor restaurant and the fountain square.
As well as the site of the former Nudist Colony. (Seriously, it was there for the 1935 Expo.)
Give it a try sometime. I pretty much guarantee you’ll go back for another one.
MORE POSTS FROM THE SAN DIEGO BLOGGER
Leave a Reply