Photos: From 420 to a naked bike ride, this was the most San Francisco day ever

Saturday, you may have noticed, was an exceptionally busy and spectacularly beautiful day in San Francisco. 

Not only was it 420, but Taylor Swift fans embarked on a pub crawl, low-riders were out in the Mission and the World Naked Bike Ride was busy weaving around town. On top of that, the city’s oldest queer bar, The Stud, reopened in a new location after a four-year sabbatical.

Instead of allowing ourselves to become paralyzed with what-should-we-cover indecision, a Standard reporter, photographer and video producer gave themselves an assignment: Let’s see if we can do everything, from bongs to songs and buns to (drag) nuns. It was like a San Francisco pentathlon.

If you want to have the Best Day Ever, you better start out with your full recommended daily allowance of tortilla chips smothered in guajillo sauce and cotija cheese. 

Lines at Primavera, the long-running, cash-only Mexican stand that pops up behind the Ferry Building every Saturday, tend to run long. But this absurdly delicious plate of chilaquiles might contain the city’s richest-tasting refried beans, and organic eggs make all the difference. Washed down with a jamaica (or hibiscus) agua fresca, they’re enough for two to share.

As San Francisco as it gets, the Earth Day edition of the World Naked Bike Ride brought almost four dozen cyclists—many fully disrobed, others in various states of relative immodesty—on a slow-moving, 16-mile cruise from the Embarcadero to the Castro, by way of North Beach’s Washington Square.

Although one or two passersby screamed in horror, the reactions from most people along the city’s busy waterfront ranged from amusement to awe. A lot of people whipped their phones out to record the parade of those who had whipped it all out.

Paul, who’s lived in San Francisco for a year, was among those who were entirely clothing-free. Although biking is his primary way of getting around, he’d only heard about the ride a few days prior. 

“It’s a cool way to bring awareness to having alternate modes of transportation,” he said, exactly as the Ferry Building’s clock struck the noon hour. “And expressing your body!” 

The annual 420 smoke-out at Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park was canceled this year—technically. 

A struggling cannabis industry means promoters were unable to secure enough sponsorship money for stages and entertainment. But thousands of cannabis enthusiasts descended on the rise adjacent to Robin Williams Meadow anyway.

The city’s Recreation and Park Department set up volleyball and kickball tournaments so there’d be something wholesome to do, while the cannabis-centric Church of Ambrosia stepped up to donate medical staff, water and port-a-potties. By mid-afternoon, the scene was much like prior years: drum circles, vendors hawking edibles and plenty of people getting absolutely baked.

Wearing pot leaf leggings and bright purple lipstick, Karina Ochoa—and her pups, Honey and Diva—came to the park from Marin County, as she does every year. 

“They tried to cancel it, but we’re still here!” she exclaimed.

If Golden Gate Park was chill, Dolores Park in the much-warmer Mission District was anything but. If anything, The Standard found it nearly as packed as it was for Easter’s Hunky Jesus and Foxy Mary contests three weeks ago. 

The sheer number of people selling bacon-wrapped hot dogs—catnip for anyone with the munchies—rivaled the impromptu night market that springs up outside the exits from Outside Lands every August. But for anyone looking for something a little less processed, Academy of Art University student Saloni Patel had a tasty alternative: dahi puri from Pani Puri SF.

For $12, Patel was serving six fried cups of semolina filled with a citrusy, peppery mix of potatoes, chickpeas, various chutneys and Greek yogurt that she topped with chaat masala.

“It gives it that umami flavor,” she said, calling it a “way of eating that will make you forget your phone.” 

“Anything for Selena,” the San Francisco Lowriders Council’s flier read.

Some 29 years after pop star Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was shot and killed by the head of her fan club, the legacy of the Queen of Tejano somehow only continues to grow.

Starting at around 4 p.m., customized and effortlessly gleaming lowriders came out in force along Mission Street between 24th and Cesar Chavez streets, some with impossibly jaunty hydraulics. Although more than a few cruised up and down the drag, it was less a proper parade than a vintage auto show, with Chevy Bel Airs, Ford Fairlanes and Cadillac Eldorados displayed by Mexican American clubs from around the Bay Area parked at rakish angles for maximum showing-off. 

Barely a day after Taylor Swift dropped her hourlong, two-volume album The Tortured Poets Department, the extraordinarily prolific singer-songwriter with the extraordinarily devoted fan base was feted with a late-afternoon pub crawl across Cow Hollow.

Like Catholicism’s Stations of the Cross, this devotional made 14 stops and involved a lot of tears, with karaoke at Silver Cloud on Lombard Street and friendship bracelets and glitter tattoos at Westwood. 

Swifties could throw back a Cruel Summer Cocktail (vodka and pink lemonade) at Del Mar and an I Knew You Were Trouble (a whiskey and ginger with lime) at Trinity. The timing was musically fortuitous, as Saturday was also Record Store Day. And The Standard can confirm that there were lots of wedding dresses, too.

If you’d spent the afternoon taking hits from the bong, pedaling in the buff or bouncing in a tricked-out Buick, you could be forgiven for calling it a day by 5 p.m. But the climax of our Best Day Ever was a truly poignant occasion as 57-year-old queer bar The Stud reopened on Folsom Street with a humongous rager after a four-year closure.

The 17-member collective that runs the beloved dive saw the writing on the wall early on in the pandemic and made the painful decision to shutter a venue they’d saved only three years before. Saturday night’s eight-hour marathon saw DJs and drag performers pay homage to every era of the bar’s hedonistic history, from disco to new wave to the club kids.

See The Standard’s full rundown of The Stud’s jubilant renaissance here.

Long live The Stud—and long live San Francisco, this eternally magical city where any Saturday will always be whatever you make of it.

Correction: This story was updated with the proper spelling of late pop star Selena Quintanilla-Pérez’s name.