“We’re always living in fear of the day it rains,” says Castro Street Fair Board President Juan Garcia. “The moment it started it raining, we were all looking at each other. We knew it was doomed.”
So it was with last October’s Castro Street Fair, which as a result of several factors, including some unseasonal rain for early October, pulled in just a fraction of the door donation and beer sales that it typically does, creating a financial crisis for the fair’s board of directors after several tight years. It was the 43rd annual outing for the neighborhood festival founded by Harvey Milk that pre-dates Folsom Street Fair but is now dwarfed by it, traditionally scheduled for the Sunday following Folsom, and some on the board, including Garcia, thought it could very well be the las