And just like that, it’s been five years of Portola Festival filling Pier 80 for two days of rollicking dance and pop music. While everyone has an opinion on the lineup, this past weekend may have been the best-run event yet.
I walked 50,000 steps over two days to soak up all the highlights and quirks that only insiders will know. Consider this a cheat sheet for the FOMO crowd, or maybe a walk down memory lane if you were at Portola with me.
Waiting for Despacio
I’ve never found a stage like Despacio at a music festival: An intimate, dark tent filled with a joyous, writhing mass of humanity, grooving to funk and house beats under the glittering lights of the biggest disco ball I’ve ever seen. Its novelty is perhaps why I’ve also never witnessed a line as long as the one to get into Despacio. Without exaggeration, the line was a quarter-mile long during the weekend, coiling like a snake through metal barriers and toward the food and drink booths beyond.
Last year was the debut of Despacio, with very little line control, and I struggled to keep my mouth shut as countless people cut in front of me from all directions. This year, I didn’t have to confront anyone at all. Security operated like SEAL Team Six: Eagle-eyed, efficient, and remorseless. Every person who cut the line, usually to join up with friends, was quickly (if gently) ejected. One girl let out a warble of disappointment like a dying Pac-Man after being caught.
The reality is that the Despacio line also moves quite quickly, and I entered the tent just about 25 minutes after I joined the quarter-mile snake. The rest is history: I made dance-floor friends, twirled to oldie hits, shrieked when the lights exploded onto the disco ball, and stayed there for four straight hours.
A taste of Coachella (literally)
Portola sits along the water at Pier 80, which subjects it to hard-blowing winds from the west. Nothing a jacket can’t handle, but this year, there was an unexpected side effect: Tiny specks of black dust flying in the air, landing on everyone and everything. I first noticed the sandstorm (pun intended) near the VIP section between the Crane and Ship stages. The grit in my eyes was one thing; the dose of black dust in my $19 cocktail was worse.
My best guess is that the dust is the result of so much chipped asphalt at Pier 80, which erodes into a possibly carcinogenic sprinkle as tens of thousands of people walk over it. It could always be worse: Coachella is infamous for massive dust storms that require goggles and masks to comfortably navigate the grounds. It was, however, incredibly disconcerting to get home and see my face dotted with tiny black spots.
A sad soju swap
Music festivals are not known for affordable drinks, so I was gobsmacked to discover on Saturday that Portola was selling full bottles of Soonhari soju for $14, which is pricey, but on par with a lot of restaurants in the city. At about 12 percent alcohol by volume, soju is much stronger than a beer or seltzer but goes down easy, making it an excellent value proposition.
Then, to my absolute despair, everything changed on Sunday. I was shaken to my core when I again purchased a $14 bottle of soju, only to find they were no longer giving the whole bottle, instead pouring a miserly half-bottle into a cup crammed with ice to the rim. Outraged, I asked my bartender what had happened; she claimed that the cops came by to scold the entire operation about giving out bottles. Okay, fine, but why the hell are you ripping me off with half the amount of alcohol?
Nepo baby discourse strikes again
If you could make a hot-girl DJ in a test tube, the result would look a lot like Zulan. That’s why the young Argentinian-American is both a rising star in dance music and the most criticized DJ in the scene today.
Admittedly, the case against her is strong. Zulan’s mother, Deborah Dugan, isn’t merely in the music industry: She was the first female president and CEO of the Recording Academy, served as president of Disney Publishing Worldwide, and was executive vice president of the record label EMI. Dugan is the final boss of music nepo mommies, and you can imagine just how many favors were pulled for her daughter to play a bunch of basic Brazilian funk and tech house at the world’s biggest festivals. Zulan has done so despite barely having any musical presence before 2025, when she went viral with her one single, "Forever."
I showed up to her 4:45 p.m. set at the Crane stage, wondering whether I would witness evidence of the accusations repeatedly lobbed at her: that she uses prerecorded sets instead of mixing live, that she’s an industry plant with no taste, that the crowd energy is fake. Instead, even though I’m a pretentious music nerd, all I saw was a good time.
This set was less haute cuisine than comfort food: Solid and satisfying, if lacking spice. Is she pumping the algorithm to shove endless clips of her friends/paid associates dancing to “Forever” on my social media? Likely. Is her distractingly photogenic beauty suited for all things marketing? Definitely. By the time she closed the set with “Forever,” though, I was too busy singing along to care.
It’s Campari time
Speaking of industry plants and psyops, I cracked up when I strolled by Mind Enterprises’ 2:30 p.m. set at the main Pier Stage and saw a curious image on the screen: A close-up shot of a bottle of Campari next to a can of seltzer.
Mind Enterprises, aka Andrea Tirone and Roberto Conigliaro, are Euro to the core: They specialize in Italo-disco and bleep-bloop electro tunes that make me want to roll up the sleeves of my pastel-pink blazer and party on the Amalfi Coast. Not only do they look like the kind of Italian boys that regularly drink bitter, refreshing Campari sodas, they literally have a song called “Negroni Love." But what I found odd is that I didn’t see any drink cups near the DJs, just one solitary Campari bottle with the logo perfectly pointed toward the crowd (and the festival cameras.)
The reason why every bar now serves an Aperol spritz is because Campari Group, which owns Aperol and Campari, launched a massive campaign to push the apéritif on bar owners and install distinctive orange-and-white branded umbrellas on every bar patio. Campari was not an official brand partner of Portola, but I sense a psyop, and an effective one: I spent the rest of my Sunday craving a Campari soda.
Can you hear me now? No
It’s been five years of cell reception at Portola being absolute garbage, and I am begging Silicon Valley to do something. I just want to meet up with my friends and send the occasional cheeky photo, for crying out loud! Hey, Sam Altman: Want to convince me to embrace AI in every fiber of my being? I really could not give less of a shit that OpenAI found a solution to the legendary Navier-Strokes fluid-mathemetics question. Please partner with Verizon to amplify its bandwidth in a big crowd, and I’ll publish whatever pro-AI drivel you want, Sam!
Double feature
I shouted out SF native underscores in my preview for Portola, and her performance on Sunday at the Crane stage was everything I wanted: A coronation of a hometown hero; a romp through one of the very best albums of 2026; and a showcase of her growing gravity as a performer.
It is challenging to command a stage with just background visuals, a mic, and nothing else, yet underscores, aka April Harper Gray, kept all eyes on her as she twirled and punched and belted tunes like “Tell Me (U Want It)” and “Music.” The crowd was one of the best of the weekend, bouncing and screaming with abandon amid the frantic thump of drums and stuttering basslines.
I love this city, and I felt a huge swell of pride when underscores peered out at the crowd and remarked, “There are so many of you.” The eruption of noise in response affirmed one thing: underscores is officially a star.
Reppin’ the streets
Shoutout to the guy who just kept screaming “Daaaaaly Ciiiiiiity!!!” at the Crane stage during quiet lulls. See you at Serramonte, brother.
