Pink robots tower over San Francisco’s Stern Grove at season finale

If you already did, there’s a good chance you were at Stern Grove this Sunday to see the Oklahoma City psych-rockers play their 2002 opus “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” in full (including their anthem, “Do you Realize”), followed by an encore of old favorites. 

The Stern Grove Festival, a weekly summer concert series that has run since 1938, just wrapped its final show of the season. The festival is one of those treasured San Francisco traditions that grow more beloved every year. If you haven’t been, it works like this: RSVP for a free ticket (a system that began post-COVID-19), show up to the park as early as you can (some begin tailgating at 8 a.m.), make a mad dash into the park at noon, claim a patch of grass along the sloping hillside, unroll a picnic blanket and enjoy an afternoon of free music.

As the midday sun dispelled every preconception of San Francisco weather, Mayor London Breed took the stage around 2 p.m. to proclaim Aug. 20 as The Flaming Lips Day with an unbridled enthusiasm that even impressed frontman Wayne Coyne (although Breed was greeted with some boos from attendees). Alan Palomo, known for his electronic music project Neon Indian, played a crowd-pleasing DJ set studded with disco classics (Instant Funk’s “Got My Mind Made Up”), international hits (Adriano Celentano’s “Pay Pay Pay”) and secret weapons (Social Disco Club’s “Daft Funk”). Then, the Flaming Lips took the stage, and all hell broke loose.

Known for their over-the-top shows, the Flaming Lips did not disappoint, with a Party City’s worth of props that included gigantic inflatable pink robots and so, so much confetti. Coyne looked runway-ready in a perfectly tailored black suit — not bad for a guy who cut his teeth at Long John Silver’s before his band took off. After every song, he amped up the crowd with the type of positive aphorisms that characterize the band’s lyrics, partly a stalling tactic as stagehands switched out inflatables, partly a consequence of the fact he’s never met a microphone he didn’t love. 

The Lips formed in 1983 in Oklahoma City and broke through to MTV audiences with the 1993 single “She Don’t Use Jelly,” the first encore they played Sunday after ripping through the 11 tracks on “Yoshimi.” Although they’ve released several albums in the past 15 years, the most recent song in their catalog that they played was “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” from 2006’s “At War with the Mystics”). They closed with a pair of standouts from 1999’s “Soft Bulletin” (“A Spoonful Weighs a Ton,” “Race for the Prize”), delivered with the bombast of dueling drummers, squirrelly synthesizers and Steven Drozd’s unmistakable guitar virtuosics. As is traditional for Flaming Lips shows, during the last song, they brought out custom inflatable balloons that spelled out “F—k Yeah Stern Grove.”

One of the most heart-warming things about Stern Grove is the broad slice of San Franciscans who attend. You’ll see tie-dyed Haight-Ashbury holdouts sitting just a couple of feet away from families with toddlers, barefoot Burners dancing in the aisles, and brave souls climbing up into the eucalyptus trees for an overhead view of the action. 

One reveler, 72-year-old Steve Moogy of Cole Valley, moved to San Francisco in the Summer of Love and has been attending the festival for 50 years. While toasting the band during “Do You Realize,” he shared what makes the festival so special to him. 

“It’s the image of the real San Francisco because it’s all the neighborhoods coming together. Most of the country hears about San Francisco in a negative way. But all the neighborhoods are very healthy, and that’s what we want people to know about San Francisco. That the people that live here, we love San Francisco, and this is what makes San Francisco.”