Kiosk Fest To Transform 30 Empty Market Street Newsstands With Art, Music, More

Kiosk Fest To Transform 30 Empty Market Street Newsstands With Art, Music, MorePhoto: Courtney Riddle
Camden Avery
Published on July 21, 2016

Almost exactly a year ago, Courtney Riddle went into business as The Grand Newsstand, a Market Street news kiosk she made over to sell zines and other printed matter.

"I love the zine community in SF," Riddle said in an email, "and I wanted to give artists and writers another place to put their work out there. Especially where we're located, at Market and Steuart, we get a lot of foot traffic from people who would never otherwise see this kind of stuff!"

This weekend, Riddle has teamed up with a slew of artists, bookstores, and other organizations to host Kiosk Fest, which aims to bring some life to Market Street's other news kiosks, many of which have long been in disuse.

Born in part as a celebration of Riddle's first year in business, Kiosk Fest will bring a new, different kind of energy to the kiosks, which will host art displays, live music performances, and independent press sales. 

"I was inspired to launch Kiosk Fest because I thought it was such a shame that all the other newsstands were going to waste," Riddle wrote. "There's something like 60 of them around, and only a handful are occupied. So I wanted to change that, and hopefully inspire people to start similar projects and transform wasted space!"

The full schedule of vendors—which include Green Apple Books and San Francisco Public Press—events, and happenings is available here. The festivities run from 10am-6pm on Saturday and Sunday, with a kickoff party at the Grand Newsstand tomorrow night from 7-9pm.

If all goes well, this could be the first Kiosk Fest of many, Riddle said.