When he saw that the date for this year’s spring edition of the SoFA Street Fair coincided with Easter Sunday, organizer Fil Maresca decided to just roll with the holiday.
In addition to the usual lineup of artists, vendors and scores of bands that’ll be playing on more than a dozen indoor and outdoor stages in downtown San Jose, this year’s festival will include an Easter egg hunt aimed at the 21-and-over set.
About 100 eggs will be scattered around the clubs, galleries and restaurants in the downtown arts district, which stretches along South First Street from San Carlos Street to Reed Street. About half will be filled with jelly beans, but the rest will contain tickets for beer that can be redeemed at the festival’s craft beer garden. There is one catch: you have to purchase a beer-tasting kit to redeem your golden (ale) ticket.
By the way, the beer garden will have a bigger emphasis this year on local beers, with offerings from San Jose brewers Uproar, Camino and Strike — which makes those tickets even more valuable.
The festival starts at 2 p.m., and the entertainment on the main stage in front of the California Theatre kicks off with Cado at 2:30 p.m. followed by Barely Funktional, Magick Blues Band, Soccora, El Guapo and Sweet HayaH, all starting on the half-hour. The full lineup is at http://sofaspring19.sched.com.
A noteworthy addition this year, though, is the 455 Jazz Room, which will feature Wally Schnalle‘s band Idiot Fish in the recently remodeled former home of Heroes Martial Arts at 455 S. First St. “We have never had a stage devoted entirely to jazz before, and we are kicking it off in a big way,” Maresca said. “To make it more exciting we have hand picked some of our favorite local vocalists to be the lead singers for Wally’s band, and they’ll change every half hour like the rest of the venues.”
