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From: DeepBlue <dan.koren@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical.recordings
Subject: Re: The San Francisco Symphony is in financial trouble according to the NY
 Times
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2024 22:32:19 +0000
Organization: novaBBS
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DeepBlue wrote:
>
> Roland van Gaalen wrote:
>>
>> https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/arts/music/san-francisco-symphony-esa-pekka-salonen.html
>
> As usual, the article either misses or
> deliberately ignores the root causes of
> the problem, which have less to do with
> Finn fashion models than with economics.
>
> San Francisco is a relatively small city,
> barely one tenth the size of NYC, on the
> West side of the SF Bay Area. Access to
> the city is limited to 2 bridges, and 3
> highways. Traffic into and out of the
> city often backs up, making driving to
> Davies emotionally taxing and difficult
> to plan and execute. Public transport in
> and around the SF Bay Area is not as well
> connected as in other major US cities. For
> most people taking a bus and/or a train
> into SF for a concert at Davies does not
> save any time over driving there.
>
> Parking is scarce and expensive. To make
> it to a 7:30 pm concert from outside the
> city one must leave no later than 5 pm.
> Over time this has eroded willingness to
> purchase season subscriptions. I stopped
> buying subscriptions in the early 2000s,
> as did so many other people. In the past
> two decades I cherry picked the concerts
> I attended and car pooled with others.

One fact I forgot to mention is that the
SFS has stopped performing outside of SF.

In past years, the SFS used to perform a
fraction of their programmes in the South
Bay at Flint Center in Cupertino, in the
East Bay at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley,
the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek and at
the Concord Pavilion in Concord, in the
North Bay at the Green Music Center at
the Sonoma State University in Rohnert
Park, and on the Peninsula at Stanford,
thus losing a significat fraction of
its regional audience.

Ciao!