I could have asked a few other members of the media or staff, but that would really delayed my otherwise somewhat carefully planned itinerary. And since no staff seemed to know anything otherwise I thought it best not to risk it and try to experience as much of the festival as possible.
If you look at a map, you could see all of the wasted and constrained walking space. The biggest grip I had was the path to get to the more intimate and greatly used Lindley Meadow (housing the Presidio and Sutro stages). On the map it looks small and in real life it was small.
By Saturday, many of the metal fences were either pushed back or strewn on the ground because so many people had a hard time getting to where they wanted to go without feeling bumper-to-bumper.
It's ironic how constrained the festival seemed when so many of the tents and stages felt so scattered (with the exception of the Lindley Meadow section).
That's a planning issue that really shouldn't have existed. There is that alternate northern path, but that brings me to my third issue, which was the lack of readily available information.
Even paper signs stapled to trees or taped to poles would have helped tremendously but nowhere around the neighborhoods could I find one. Did they expect non-residents to be able to find it that easily? There could have been a some staff members stationed at a few key entry points to the park to help direct and assist people, but I guess they were really needed on the main grounds.
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