SAN FRANCISCO:
CIGAR BAR AND GRILL, "SABOR DE LA ISLA" IN VACAVILLE, AND ROCCAPULCO -
August 25 and 26, 2007
Our plan was to drive up to
Vacaville to attend the "Sabor de la Isla" event on Saturday, which
promised performances by the Latin Rhythm Boys, Orquesta
Boriquen, Los Pleneros de Severo and the headliner Johnny Rivera, but of
course, a drive like that deserves taking advantage of every single
minute.
Therefore, we started our weekend right after work on Friday and
made it to San Francisco just before midnight, to enjoy some drinks, a
cigar, and the music of "Oriente" at The Cigar Bar and Grill, on
Montgomery St, downtown S.F. The Cigar Bar is the coolest place,
quite popular, with a small dance floor that gets very packed and a
large outdoor patio for cigar smoking and hanging out. Very nice
place, especially if you can appreciate a cigar every so often.
A few dancers were there, but the large majority are just people having fun.
Cover charge is $7. The website is
http://www.cigarbarandgrill.com
The following three pictures are inside of The Cigar Bar
and Grill.
On Saturday the "Sabor de la Isla" festival started at 10 am and continued
until 7 pm. We were there most of those hours and got to see the
Latin Rhythm Boys, who play "musica jibara", traditional Puerto Rican music.
I loved this group. They are from Hayward, CA, and can be
checked out at
http://www.myspace.com/latinrhythmboys
The Pleneros de Severo, from Puerto Rico, performed
their bomba y plena. They are very good, and will soon be in Los
Angeles, as they are scheduled for the Boricua Festival at the L.A.
Fairplex in October (see my main calendar.)
Johnny Rivera
performed last, backed by an all Bay Area star band, which included
Armando and Jeff Cordoba, Luis Morales and Karl Perazzo from the Avance
Band, and pianist Christian Tumalan, (this last one very busy on
Saturday as
we saw him again that evening at Roccapulco, playing with the Julio Bravo
band.)
The following pictures are from the "Sabor de la
Isla" event.
Latin Rhythm Boys
Orquesta Borinquen
Los Pleneros de Severo
Luis Medina, radio show broadcaster, 94.1 FM in the Bay Area
Johnny Rivera
Roccapulco
Saturday evening was fun. I've always
thought Roccapulco to be the San Francisco equivalent of the Mayan,
always busy, whether the "super" dancers go or not, always the happening place.
Julio Bravo and Sonsabor were on stage, and DJ Luis took care of the
mixes in between band sets. I normally don't like mixes, yet, this
DJ mixes were good. Roccapulco's information is at
http://www.roccapulco.com
DJ Luis - (check out the sticker on the wall!) ;)
It was a great little trip to San Francisco! Sure glad we made it.
Below are a few video clip of what we saw.
