San Francisco’s Carnaval festival season has kicked off this week, a string of events that ends with a parade on Memorial Day weekend.

The kickoff began Tuesday with Mardi Gras, also known as Fat Tuesday, in the Mission District at 6 p.m. Carnaval’s dance troupe Esforco showcased an extravagant performance at Kimbara Ritmo y Sabor and then at Bissap Baobab at 6:30 p.m.

FILE PHOTO: Esforco performers activated night spots in the Mission District during Fat Tuesday’s kick off of SF Carnival’s festival season on Mar. 5, 2019. (Terry Scussel via BCN) Credit: Terry Scussel Photography

Live free bands, including King Cheo and the Jaguars of Fire, filled restaurants and other locations throughout the district, including Arcana and Cha Cha Cha and the 24th Street Mission BART station plaza.

More headliners coming

On March 30, King and Queen dance competition will be held at KQED headquarters, where 16 finalists will perform salsa and rumba to win the crowns and be ambassadors in the big parade in May.

The California Academy of Sciences will also host Carnaval on May 16 as one of their Thursday nightlife events ahead of the big event May 25-26. The festival covers 17 city blocks, hosts five performance stages and five block parties, with over 300 vendors and pavilions.

May 26 is the big day, when the Carnaval parade snakes through parts of the street festival. Over 2,000 different artists in 60 different floats and contingencies will shake and pulse along a 1.5-mile route to Latin American and Caribbean rhythms.  

Carnaval San Francisco is supported by the city, state and donors, and it is celebrating its 46th year.

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.