The Tenderloin has the highest concentration of children in San Francisco.
It’s also a tough place for families because they have to navigate homeless encampments and open-air drug use on the sidewalks.
When October rolls around, child care centers in the neighborhood usually take young kids to a pumpkin patch miles away, to the Sunset District or Half Moon Bay.
This year, the staff at Compass Family Services considered chartering a bus for the annual autumn journey.
“But every time you rent a bus to go on a field trip, that’s a couple thousand dollars, even if it’s nearby,” said Erica Kisch, CEO of the nonprofit organization. “And then I started to think about it and was like, ‘Why do we have to go to the Sunset for a pumpkin patch?’ Let’s host a pumpkin patch here.”
When she asked a few organizations to sponsor an autumn festival for kids in the Tenderloin, they responded with gusto.
The city’s police department donated a bouncy house, the San Francisco Opera offered puppets and music, jugglers and magicians raised their hands, and a few players from the Golden State Valkyries women’s basketball team wanted to meet the kids.
“It was kind of incredible how much interest and enthusiasm and support we got,” Kisch said.
And so on Wednesday, about 800 children converged on Civic Center Plaza to pick their own decorative gourd, get their face painted, jump in a bouncy house, and get treats like beignets from Brenda’s French Soul Food.
“We donated about 150 beignets to this event. They are almost gone. Everyone is loving it,” Alicia Stamps, the restaurant’s general manager, said.
Stamps said the festival gave everyone a chance to come together during uncertain times.
As the federal shutdown drags on, the Trump administration will stop funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, when funds run out Saturday.
That will affect some 112,000 San Francisco residents’ access to food in November.
“I think it’s important for each of us to show up for one another, for the community, to let people know that they are not alone, that we see them and that we are with them,” Stamps said.
Kisch said she started planning the festival a month and half ago, and when the government shutdown began on Oct. 1 she worried whether moving forward with it was “tone deaf.”
“But I kind of keep going back to the importance of joy as a form of resilience, and we’re not going to sacrifice one for the other,” she said. “We’re going to feed our families, and we’re also going to have some fun.”
Saucy Fainga stumbled onto the pumpkin patch when she was on her way to the farmer’s market with her 1-year-old daughter, Reign.
“My husband and I were literally just talking about how far we have to go to visit a pumpkin patch,” Fainga said. “I’m so glad I found this.”
She said she planned to come back with the rest of her family to take photos on a haystack positioned in front of City Hall and the inflatable marshmallow man from the “Ghostbusters” movies.
Other parents walked through the Tenderloin with their kids and teachers from GLIDE’s Family, Youth and Childcare Center to get to the festival.
Patrice Clark, a supervisor at the center, said she was glad they got to feel safe walking in the neighborhood.
“Parents rush through because they’re nervous about walking through their community,” she said.
Clark hopes the experience empowers parents to take back the streets and lets kids feel a greater sense of belonging.
“Because we live in the Tenderloin and it has a bad rap, they still have a right to feel proud about where they go to school and where they live,” she said.
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