Pacific Coast Fog Fest

Palmetto Avenue in Pacifica runs one block from the Pacific Ocean, north of Sharp Park Golf Course. On the last full weekend of September the city closes it to traffic at four o’clock Friday afternoon. By Saturday morning the stretch between Shell and Montecito streets holds more than 200 arts, crafts and vendor booths: jewelry, soaps, floral arrangements, pottery, oil and watercolor paintings, glass, leather, wood, metal wall hangings and one-of-a-kind sculpture, brought by local and national artists. Admission is free. The 2026 festival, the 39th, was held September 26 and 27, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day.

Palmetto Avenue on the last weekend of September

The parade opens the weekend. It leaves the south end of Palmetto at 10 a.m. Saturday and ends at IBL Middle School, with floats, marching bands, dance groups and classic vehicles, and a marching band competition. The 2026 theme was “Happy 250th Anniversary, America.” Its Grand Marshals represented Pacifica’s original Ohlone inhabitants and local veterans. Students, families and staff of Good Shepherd School met at 8:45 a.m. to march in it. Prizes of $100 and a certificate go to the best float, best mini float, best costumed walking group and best music or dance group. They are handed out at the Center Stage at 10 a.m. on Sunday.

There are three stages. The South Stage stands at Montecito, where the local station, PCT TV 26, records the performances for replay. The Center Stage stands at Santa Maria, and the North Stage at Shoreview has a lawn in front of it. The festival bills its music as running from blues and jazz to hard rock and reggae. In 2026 the band Proud Mary was booked on the North Stage at 11:15 Sunday morning to play Creedence Clearwater Revival songs.

Sunday begins early on the shoreline. At 9 a.m. the city’s Parks, Beaches and Recreation Department starts the Fog Jog, a five-mile run and a three-mile stride along the coast, held rain or shine. From 1 to 4 p.m. the same department runs the Family Fun Fest on the Ingrid B. Lacy School field at 1427 Palmetto. It is a play festival of competitive and cooperative games staffed by city workers, trained volunteers and students from San Francisco State University. According to the festival, the Fun Fest existed before Fog Fest and the two merged. Winners of the photo contest, judged by members of the Sanchez Art Center, hang at the Art Corner through the weekend. The 2026 contest added a division called Pacifica Pier Memories.

A police command post, first aid and lost and found share the corner of Salada and Palmetto. Block Captains in orange safety vests answer questions. Pets, skateboards, bicycles and smoking are kept off the grounds. Visitors parking at Oceana High School cross Highway 1 on the pedestrian overpass. There were no ATMs at the 2026 festival, and the smaller of the two souvenir booths took cash only.

Fog Cutters and fried calamari

The food booths stand in two clusters. At Santa Maria Avenue in 2026 there were tacos and quesadillas, potato spinach knishes, teriyaki chicken, corn on the cob, bacon-wrapped hot dogs and kettle corn with a caramel glaze. At Shoreview Avenue there were key lime calamari, gyros, crab fries, coastal fish and chips, barbecued oysters, pupusas and shrimp quesadillas. The festival’s list also names Grey Hounds, 805 and Firestone Walker beer, jambalaya and turkey drumsticks.

Two booths on Palmetto pour the Fog Cutter, which the festival calls a “secret signature drink” served nowhere else. According to a 2015 history, it was created the first year. Wine, beer and Fog Cutters can be had in keepsake glassware, and some regulars keep a collection of the glasses year to year. The 2026 poster, by the Pacifica animator, illustrator and art teacher Mark Bredall, showed the coastline, its wildlife and the Fog Fest mermaid.

A pin worn in San Francisco

The festival came out of the 17-member Commercial Development Task Force, a citizens committee the city council appointed to plan for more business in Pacifica. Its account of the origin was written for the Pacifica Tribune in 2015 by Ginny Jaquith, a former council member and Fog Fest board member. A subcommittee of Mayor Peter Loeb, Jaquith, Jean Headley and Al Malick proposed a festival to draw tourists. Headley had noticed that whenever she wore her “I Love Pacifica” pin in San Francisco, she heard, “Why do you love Pacifica? It’s always so foggy!”

A larger committee took the idea up with Terry Pimsleur, a festival producer. Bill Drake, then owner and publisher of the Tribune, served on it. “We were operating on the theory of ‘what was our crop?’” Drake said, noting that other towns had festivals for garlic, strawberries, pumpkins, butterflies and squid. “We decided to make fun of the weather.” He recalled that the committee chose late September because the Farmer’s Almanac named it the best weather on the Coastside. The committee also wanted to honor the area’s Spanish heritage, and so the first program included rides to Sweeney Ridge, a Fandango dance at the Sanchez Adobe and a Discover Pacifica Parade. Not without controversy, the council approved the plan 3 to 2. The Pacifica Historical Society records that the new festival followed Frontier Days, the rodeo-era event that ended in 1984, as the town’s next major special event.

The first Fog Fest, in 1986, fell on the sunniest weekend of the year. Its producers joked that it was a “dismal failure,” since not a drop of the “mythical mist” appeared. The only fog came from a machine they had rented. It was so hot, Jaquith wrote, that one attendee was overheard to say, “It’s so hot! I wonder why they call it the Fog Fest!” Some 30,000 visitors walked Palmetto Avenue that weekend. They shopped at 100 craft booths and heard harmonica, blues and jazz. They ate clam chowder, oysters, jambalaya and “Fog Dogs.” There was also a surfcasting contest, a God and Goddess of the Fog contest, a 7K beach run, an ocean kayak race and the Concours D’Pacifica. Six community groups worked the booths.

Lions, Rotarians and the Moose Lodge

The city kept producing the festival with Pimsleur’s firm. Two staff coordinators worked under the names Dr. Fog (Jim Therrell) and Misty Morning (Barbara Parker). The Human Fog Horn contest started in 1992. Jaquith writes that city leadership ran through 1992. Rep. Jackie Speier, honoring the festival in the Congressional Record in 2015, put the city’s last year at 1993.

In 1993 the council decided the city could no longer sponsor the event. Three Lions Club members, Rudy Pickell, Monti Montelero and Joe Gibbs, went to other groups, and the Rotary Club and the Moose Lodge joined them. Over eight months they formed Pacifica Festivals Inc. Each founding club put in $750, and the board elected Tribune publisher John Fearing president. PFI kept the parade, the Friday Fandango, the classic car show, the Sunday Fog Jog and the Historical Society’s display of old Pacifica photographs. Radio station KRQR began broadcasting from the street. The Fandango added “A Taste of Pacifica” and later became the Fog Cutters Ball. Food booths staffed by local groups served seafood and the Lions Club steak sandwiches. Jaquith and Speier both say PFI ran the festival for seven years. The festival’s own page says six.

When PFI disbanded, residents led by Jean Headley-Darmody formed the Fog Fest Organizing Group early in 2000. They elected Fred Howard president and produced the 15th annual festival that September. They began with no money and raised $5,000 in seed funds from around town. Jeff Cambra of Festival Productions was retained to bring in the craft booths, and he still handles vendors. In the years after, FFOG added the Great Sand Sculpture by world champion sand sculptors, a Surf Art Experience and a third music stage. It also started a recycling campaign with Recology of the Coast and a tobacco education program that made the grounds non-smoking.

By 2015 Speier counted 60,000 visitors and 49 community organizations at work in the booths and behind them. “Locals know that fog in September is almost an oxymoron,” she told the House. Proceeds go to the participating groups. That sum stood at almost $900,000 after thirty years, and the festival now gives it as more than $1.25 million. The board today is led by co-presidents Theresa Gio and Reannah Karstedt, with Kathy Johnson as vice president.

In 2001 FFOG began a Gift to Pacifica Fund. Jaquith and Speier say it bought the original painting for the 2004 poster. The festival’s page describes a painting of life on Linda Mar State Beach, funded in 2005. Either way, a painting now hangs in the Community Center. In 2012 the fund bought a bench for Rotary Plaza at the Center for the Performing Arts.