Ani DiFranco performs at the Stern Grove Festival on June 26, 2022 in San Francisco, California.
Steve Jennings/Getty Images
Not to be outdone by cities across the country cloyingly renaming themselves in honor of Taylor Swift and her record-breaking “Eras” tour, San Francisco will be making a proclamation to celebrate the visit of a much smaller artist this weekend.
This Sunday will apparently become “The Flaming Lips Day” in San Francisco, as the cosmic indie veterans close out this summer’s Stern Grove festival concert series. What’s more, Mayor London Breed will be onstage before the show to give the city proclamation at around 2 p.m., making the stunt somewhat “official.”
The choice was “meant to honor the legendary rockers who have developed deep roots in the Bay Area for over the past two decades,” according to a press release from the fest. Those deep roots include the band’s first-ever performance outside their home state of Oklahoma way back in 1985, when they played at the historic and long gone I-Beam on Haight Street.
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Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips performs during the Granfalloon Festival 2023 in Bloomington, Indiana.
SOPA Images/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett
“We’re very grateful to embrace August 20 as The Flaming Lips Day in San Francisco,” the band’s frontman Wayne Coyne said in a statement. “We’ve had many shared moments in this city and we feel grateful to be a part of the creative and eclectic fabric of the San Francisco music scene that makes this city so special.”
San Francisco’s much-loved Stern Grove Festival returned this summer for its 86th season with a 10-week run that included performances from Patti Smith and the Indigo Girls, among many others.
While tickets cost nothing, this Sunday’s show — that also includes a DJ set from Neon Indian aka Alan Palomo — is sold out. Some tickets will be released at random this week for those who registered at www.sterngrove.org.
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Honoring touring artists by dedicating days and renaming cities became a somewhat exhausting trend this year, largely thanks to Taylor Swift and the mega-hype surrounding her tour. In March, the mayor of Glendale, Ariz. renamed the town “Swift City.” Other cities followed suit. In the Bay Area, Santa Clara stepped up the cringe when Swift visited Levi’s Stadium — the singer was named mayor for a day, and the city adopted the name “Swiftie Clara.”