Fillmore Street Jazz Festival 2010

One of my favorite July 4th traditions in the San Francisco Bay Area is the Fillmore Street Jazz Festival. This major street fair always gets the best weather of the year (it's like the San Francisco Visitors Bureau spend all its good weather chips on this weekend).

I checked out the street fair on Saturday, but if you're reading this on Sunday morning, read fast and then get out there! It should be another beautiful day to be outside. What's fun about the Fillmore fair is that the neighborhood over the last few years have boomed with destination restaurants, and many of them set up booths at the fair along with the typical BBQ chicken skewers and endless fried foods.

For example, Out The Door (from the Slanted Door empire) has a restaurant on Bush off Fillmore, but at the fair they had a booth selling their pork belly buns (top) and duck buns ($5 for both).

Sugar cane juice being made at the Saigon food booth.

BBQ shrimp and grits from 1300 Fillmore's booth for $7. The creamy grits just stick to your ribs!

Can't have a summer street fair without summer corn on the grill.

This year the festival featured a cooking demo stage (south of Geary Boulevard). Here's Chef Anthony Strong of Pizzeria Delfina on California Street demonstrating a spicy watermelon salad, or what he says the Italian calls crazy melon salad.

A guy wearing a crab hat selling beer from the window of Woodhouse Fish Co. on Fillmore.

Of course, you get to hear a lot of cool jazz musicians. Don't know the name of this guy, but he was singing off the side streets in an impromptu stage (not the official stages) and he was just jammin'. I loved it. It was a real moment listening to this guy singing his heart out.

Hope you all have a great Fourth of July!