Who Wants a Sunset Night Market?

By Supervisor Joel Engardio

While visiting my husband’s family in Taiwan, we ate our way through Taipei’s famous night markets. Now we’re bringing a Sunset night market to San Francisco!

The pilot night market will be September 15 on Irving Street from 5p to 10p.

It is produced by Sunset Mercantile with support from Avenue Greenlight and San Francisco Parks Alliance. Click here to get involved.

Imagine lots of food stalls, entertainment, games, and arts & crafts filling the street along Irving from 20th to 23rd Avenues.

A night market in the Sunset was such welcome news that the San Francisco Chronicle put the idea on the front page!

Why we need a night market
When I originally posted pictures of the Taipei night market on social media, I asked everyone to imagine the possibility of a Sunset night market.

The response was amazing. San Franciscans of all ages and backgrounds said they want this. The outpouring of excitement tells me that people don’t just want a night market. They need it. Why?

Because as we address all the serious issues facing San Francisco, a night market creates joy. We need more joy in our lives. A night market celebrates all the fun things in life. It reminds us why our city is worth fixing — and that it’s possible to create our best San Francisco.

Yes, we need more public safety and we need to revive our local economy. A night market helps accomplish these goals. I told the Chronicle “this night market is fun and joyous, as it should be, but it also is accomplishing many of the goals that our city needs to achieve.”

A night market brings people together, makes streets safer, and gives small businesses a boost. The Sunset night market will:

Support small businesses and revitalize neighborhood merchant corridors.
Foster stronger community and public safety by activating streets and bringing people together.
Cut through city bureaucracy to form a blueprint for innovations that can be applied across San Francisco.
Give tourists a new destination to explore in San Francisco (the Sunset!) and draw more tourists to revive our local economy.

I also told the Chronicle that “San Francisco has a lot of daunting issues to fix, but we have to remember that we are not a dystopian city. We have a lot of joy in San Francisco. We need to celebrate that joy and create more of it.”

Read the full report on our night market.

Tony and Emily Lee (pictured below) are the owners of Sun Maxim’s on Irving Street. They look forward to participating in the night market.

Join the night market
Do you want to be part of the Sunset night market? Event producers are currently booking vendors, artists, and musicians. They’re also seeking more sponsors and community volunteers.

Send a message here to get more information on how you can participate.

The pilot is September 15 and the goal is to produce more Sunset night markets, perhaps monthly in 2024.

Meet celebrity chef Martin Yan
My idea to bring a night market to the Sunset always envisioned celebrity chef Martin Yan from “Yan Can Cook!” on PBS. Then I met Chef Yan by chance in January. I mentioned the idea to plant a seed. Now that the night market has become a reality, Chef Yan has agreed to attend and do a cooking demonstration of his famous dancing chicken.

Irving Street mochi donut shop owner Theresa Tom and Chef Martin Yan with Supervisor Joel Engardio

I wonder what other celebrities with San Francisco connections we can envision participating in the night market. Will it manifest with them joining Chef Yan?

Only a handful of curmudgeons have pooh-poohed the night market idea. They often say it’s too cold and foggy in the Sunset for an evening event. Chef Yan offered the perfect rebuttal: a warm bowl of wonton soup or pho.

As for safety, the night market is a priority event for the police department and the captain overseeing the Sunset is creating a plan to ensure everyone has a good time without worry.

Overcoming roadblocks
Going from an idea to reality isn’t easy. Especially when something hasn’t been done in a new way before. That’s why I’m so proud to partner with innovators like Sunset Mercantile who is bringing the night market to life, the San Francisco Parks Alliance who is providing support, and Avenue Greenlight who made it fiscally possible.

We believed in the idea and overcame roadblocks with creative solutions.

Here’s one example: I asked a city department if they could streamline a permit process. They said “no” because a state law was in the way. So I called Assemblymember Matt Haney and said “we need to change state law!”

I appreciate Assemblymember Haney introducing a bill that will make it easier for every city in California to benefit from a night market.

Assemblymember Matt Haney with Chef Martin Yan and Supervisor Joel Engardio on Irving Street, home of the Sunset night market.

Another example is the effort to put the booths in the center of the street. Typical street fairs in San Francisco place the booths against the curb with people walking in the middle of the street. This creates a wall of booths against the physical businesses, which discourages exploration and discovery of everything a merchant corridor offers.

With booths in the center of the street, people can move freely between the booths and the businesses along the sidewalk. This configuration required approval from the fire marshal. We met on Irving Street and measured the street to figure out how we could make center-street booths work while still maintaining a fire lane.

My inspiration
Here’s what my husband Lionel and I experienced at the Raohe Street Night Market in Taipei:

So much yummy food prepared fresh on the spot.

Fried treats, healthy treats, and traditional treats.

Lionel says the delicacy of “stinky tofu” is a must!

Night markets aren’t just for food. Artists and artisans offer all kinds of items.

There are games for kids of all ages.

Tables are set up so you can sit for a meal or snack.

The variety of choices at the night market is endless and each stall creates its own world.

By day, the night market street is an active street with parked cars and traffic.

Notice the painted lines and numbers in the street that direct vendors where to set up every evening. Pedestrian pathways between stalls are also mapped on the street.