Week 101: December Nights

Week 101: December 1st-6th, 2024

December Nights is an annual, free (!) event run by the City of San Diego at Balboa Park. It only happens on two nights in December, so this week, my boyfriend and I braved the crowds and went to opening day.

I should first mention the main appeal of December Nights is a general holiday celebration with festivities and free entry to the museums and even the zoo, until 10pm. There are tons of food truck vendors, artist open studios and special performances all throughout Balboa Park. I surprisingly have never been to December Nights, despite living in San Diego for seven years, so I was excited to see it.

We left after we both were off work, and I was excited to wear my very fall/winter outfit I had put together. It consisted of boots, a skirt & tights, and a button down over a turtleneck shirt. Naturally, Friday evening rush hour traffic reared its ugly head but we managed to get to the Balboa Park area in about 35 minutes (it normally takes less than 15...). The frustrations from driving in traffic continued as we realized the absolute shitshow we had driven into. Hundreds of thousands of people attend December Nights, and apparently every single one of them planned to maneuver through stop lights and snag the last available parking spots before us.

Parking was an actual nightmare. Usually all of the parking lots at Balboa Park are free, but this time around they ranged from $25-50 depending on location. Even if we were willing to pay (which I was, just for convenience) most of the lots were blocked off with "LOT FULL" signs. We ended up circling around inside the park for about 15 mins until we decided to try our luck on the residential streets on the outskirts of the park. We found a very tight parking spot off Richmond St. that was about a 35 min walk to the center of festivities by the art museum and organ pavilion.

The sheer amount of people was kind of insane, but it didn't stop us from walking around and seeing what December Nights had to offer. There were many cultural dance performances, photo opportunities (though we unfortunately didn't take any of ourselves), and things to buy. I really liked looking at the artist's open studios as well.

We got to visit the newly renovated and recently re-opened Botanical Garden & Building and saw tons of decorated trees at SD Floral's Festival of Trees. The new Botanical Garden was amazing, and the work they did to renovate the ceiling was incredible.

There were so many people to maneuver through outside that it was basically impossible to get closer to the organ pavilion, but we could at least hear the live music being played.

I recognized many of the vendors as ones that frequently sell at the various farmers markets in San Diego County as well as the County Fair during the summer. There were some of the same food vendors as the ones I saw at Foodieland as well. Its comforting knowing these small businesses are able to have these opportunities, and I enjoy recognizing them at events like this. I hope they make a lot of money. I really liked looking at the artist's open studios as well.

We braved another very long line to try "Grinchy Punch" at the Old Globe Theatre concession stand. It was a fun green color, and was pretty good.

We walked past a brightly decorated booth hosted by our current enemy, SDG&E (our electricity bills are astronomically higher than what they should be and long story short, SDG&E sucks!), and I joked that I would need another drink if we were gonna go in there. We didn't. All they had was a Sock Drive and information about LED lightbulbs...

After a lot of walking (almost 20,000 steps, according to the Health app on my phone!), we didn't want to even try going to the zoo, though the free entry was very tempting.

In the future, I definitely would be willing to get "preferred" parking ahead of time and plan a little better for a December Nights outing. Best case scenario, just take a rideshare service like Uber or Lyft. I didn't mind our trek from the car but it would've been nice to spend more time at the museums or watching performances.