Funky Fridays summer concert series on hiatus after popular run for Sonoma County parks

A popular summer concert series that has drawn thousands of people to the Hood Mansion outside Santa Rosa each year is likely to be suspended this summer, partly due to uncertainty about the future of the Los Guilicos homeless housing project near the site.

But changes were in the offing in any case with the retirement of Funky Fridays’ organizers Linda Pavlak and Bill Myers, who launched the fundraiser seven years ago to keep Sugarloaf Ridge State Park from closing.

Pavlak, who is wrestling with complications of cancer, moved back to her home state of Ohio last fall to be near family and to get the expert medical care of the Cleveland Clinic.

The couple booked the bands, arranged for lighting, organized volunteers and led set-up and tear-down for 12 or 13 concerts each season, drawing some 600 to 1,000 attendees per show. Nearly 1,500 attended the final performance in August at Hood Mountain Regional Park and Open Space Preserve, home to the concerts for the last four years.

But with the founders stepping back, the Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation and its small staff were looking at a scaled-back summer series with a new name and a more manageable schedule, Executive Director Melissa Kelley said.

“If you look around at the other concert series, nobody does a 14-week concert series, and there are good reasons for that,” Kelley said.

Then Sonoma County supervisors, looking for a temporary shelter site for some of the roughly 250 people who were to be cleared from an illegal, unsanitary encampment on the Joe Rodota Trail, voted to set up a village of tiny homes on the Los Guilicos Juvenile Justice campus. The individual aluminum cabins were assembled on an asphalt lot used for overflow parking during Funky Fridays concerts.

The new community, opened just more than a week ago, is supposed to remain in operation through April 30.

By then, supervisors hope to have longer-term housing options for the people who have moved there. The concerts have typically run June through August.

But the county faced significant challenges on its path to establishing the temporary shelter and has yet to identify an operator or sites for the longer-term shelters.

Kelley said the fluidity of the situation made it imprudent to assume the April 30 closure date would stand firm.

“This is the time of year when we would normally start to book the bands and get ready for the event, but we weren’t comfortable going ahead and doing that,” Kelley said.

If, closer to summer, it appears the county is in position to close the village on time, “we’ll work on planning a new event in the spirit of Funky Fridays,” Kelley said.

In the meantime, the foundation staff is recommending the concert series be put on hiatus, with a formal decision expected from the foundation board on Friday, she said.

“I feel like it’s important to say we’re not complaining, and we really recognize what a challenging situation this is for the county and for the individuals who are involved,” Kelley said. “We will accommodate and accept whatever the county’s direction is.”

But a county spokeswoman speaking on behalf of County Administrator Sheryl Bratton said extending the duration of Los Guilicos Village “was not an option on the table.”

County officials instead are evaluating other sites with plans to offer choices to the board in March so supervisors can choose two alternatives for a more flexible, longer-term, indoor-outdoor shelter for campers currently staying at Los Guilicos.

“We’ve said that it is a temporary shelter and will be there until April 30,” county spokeswoman Melissa Valle said. “Staff is working to provide two other options for those other long-term plans … and that does not include Los Guilicos.”

Supervisor Susan Gorin, who was lone opponent of the Los Guilicos site when the board voted Jan. 14 to put the temporary shelter there, acknowledged the 90-day time frame for the tiny home village could be extended at the board’s direction. She is urging her constituents in the area to demand the other four supervisors hold fast to their commitment.

“My original concern remains that it is far removed from services and public transportation,” Gorin said of the Highway 12 site. “We’ve always promised this would be a short-term, temporary outdoor shelter while we look at more permanent, superior locations for that.”

Gorin, a fan of Funky Fridays, said she hopes there’s some way to preserve a concert series at the site. A crowd favorite, the event has drawn larger audiences every year, quickly outgrowing Sugarloaf, which prompted its move to nearby Hood Mountain Regional Park.

It has raised on average about $50,000 a year for the parks foundation since 2016, last year netting closer to $70,000, Kelley said.

“Our total annual budget is around a million dollars, so, you know, it’s a fairly significant portion,” she said.

While the parks foundation leased the space and provided the liquor license, the event was largely put together by Pavlak and Myers, with help from other volunteers.

But Pavlak “was the fire plug,” Myers said. “She put thousands of hours into those Funky Fridays.”

Myers, who, with his partner, also is retiring this year as co-host of Bill & Dave Hikes after 20 years of leading treks on the trails of Sonoma County’s state and regional parks, said he’s not prepared to continue carrying the same load he did when he and Pavlak ran Funky Fridays together.

But there’s no reason someone else can’t do what the pair once did, Myers said, and several people already have expressed an interest in taking on the mantle and hosting a full summer series.

“I will do whatever I can to facilitate, whether it’s the foundation or anybody else,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.