Meet the man who helps bring the party to San Jose streets — from World Cup to SoFA

If you’ve been to an outdoor music festival in San Jose, you’ve likely seen Fil Maresca’s work. He’s been creating the kind of events that can help define a season and a community for decades.

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The outdoor festivals started with SoFA Street Fair, which brings bands to multiple stages on South First Street in the city’s arts and culture district downtown twice a year. But his reach goes beyond that.

Maresca first arrived in town in 1984, on a mission to set up a nightclub, the Oasis, near St. James Park.

Opening that nightclub was a two-year odyssey, during which he met key players in city government and the tastemakers of the coffee shops, indie movie houses and record stores downtown. After Oasis ran its course, he co-founded F/X, which became the scene on South First in downtown San Jose in the ’80s and early ’90s. He helped shepherd the San Jose Downtown Association in its early years, serving as its board president for two years.

Then there is SoFA Street Fair — bands, food and more on stages throughout downtown’s growing arts hub — and many other celebrations with his company Filco Events. When COVID-19 arrived, county officials realized they needed someone who understood crowds to help plan testing and later vaccination sites. They tapped Maresca. When organizers of World Cup street parties in San Pedro Square decided to use a new law allowing for open containers of alcohol in the streets of entertainment zones, officials went to Maresca.

“I have decided to do more of the things that I love to do,” Maresca said of the forces that shape his career. “I want to make them more a part of my life. How can I bring more of that into my life?”

Maresca talked to this newspaper about all things free and outdoor, mostly music, including this weekend’s SoFA Street Fair, bands in city parks and his next project, Levitt Pavilion, which includes a series of free concerts in St. James Park.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: With the World Cup, Super Bowl and all of the regular events you do, you’ve had a busy year.

A: My basic wheelhouse is free, outdoor music events. Starting with decades of the SoFA Street Fair, and working with Music of the Park, the Blues Festival and the Jazz Festival.

This summer, we were able to take on a sporting event that has never been in our city before. I was brought in to help with what’s called the entertainment zone. It was a brand new thing. A law was passed allowing people to take drinks outside of restaurants in these zones, and San Jose voted to use that as part of the World Cup celebrations.

I developed a system that fit the law, benefited small businesses and regular people. Those are some of my passions — making sure events are safe, alcohol is served responsibly, and in a family-friendly atmosphere.

Q: Those events were so special. How did that come to be?

A: My feeling is always if you keep people comfortable and you show them respect, they’ll show you the same way. The nice thing about the World Cup is that it is an event based on love and pride. Love for your country. Pride in your team.

That was the beauty of San Pedro Square, and the reason it worked so well. By showing every game on the screens, you knew that if you walked downtown with a soccer jersey on from your home country, you would find your people. There would be 10 other people with the same jersey on who you could have a shared experience with.

Q. It’s funny you talked about making new systems for outdoor events. That’s essentially what you did when COVID-19 hit, but in a different way, helping with testing and vaccination sites, particularly at the fairgrounds.

A. I worked with Santa Clara County Public Health to help design all the testing stations. Those eventually became vaccination stations. What I did for them was figure out a system.

We were in a situation we had never been in before — and learning as we went. I brought what I knew: This is how people act when they’re queuing up; this is the natural flow of a line; this is how people are going to react to you when you ask them to roll down their car window.

We had tens of thousands of people just showing up. They were scared. They didn’t know what to do. We instituted a wristband system with times for appointments. It solved the problem of having too many people to manage.

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I love figuring out how to make a system work better.

Q. How did you get to a place where you could make systems like this?

A: I’ve always been a believer in following your heart. If you are good at something, do it well. Before the event business, I was running bars, nightclubs and music venues. That gave me experience in the entertainment aspect.

Events are just temporary entertainment venues. You have to build it, provide the entertainment and make it a working system for people. When we do the jazz festival, we take a blank park and a bunch of empty streets and create a venue. We have everything that people need inside. We create this whole world and then tear it down and return it to a blank park. I learned those pieces, then how those pieces fit together and, ultimately, that’s designing a system.

Q: All of your events are family-friendly. There’s live music. There’s often a beer garden. There are games for kids. How do you make that work?

A: That’s about creating a vibe. It’s something I’ve worked really hard to do because people who issue permits don’t understand vibe. It’s really hard to say, ‘Oh, it’ll be cool. It’s a really nice vibe.’ No, you can’t say that. You need a proven track record. After decades of doing events that serve alcohol and don’t have problems, I can point to other things I’ve done that are good for businesses and the community.

It’s about checking IDs religiously, putting wristbands on people and having that system in place. Then the community feels safe and enjoys it. It becomes about the experience and takes the focus off the beer.

Q: One popular thing you do at SoFA Street Fair is a big pile of cardboard boxes kids can play with. They love it. How did that come about?

A: I was involved with an arts organization based in New York, Figment, which produces free arts events. It’s kind of like Burning Man for families. Artists bring a project and it has to be interactive. It’s not art until other people show up to experience it.

I traveled to San Diego for Figment and one of the participants owned a UPS store. He was an artist. He couldn’t figure out what to do that year, so he brought a whole bunch of boxes. We realized that people love to play with empty boxes. So I brought the idea to SoFA.

I am always shocked at what kids will build with it. They like to build something tall. They like to build something they can knock over. They like to trap their parents. That’s the number one thing they do. They tell mom, ‘Sit here on this chair.’ They build all these boxes around her, and then they tell mom to break out. It’s become a staple at SoFA Street Fair.

Q: Your newest project is Levitt Pavilion — a plan to create an outdoor stage for live music in St. James Park. You’ve been doing pop shows in the park and fundraising for the pavilion. It will be funded in part by the Levitt Foundation, the city and through donations. Former Synopsys CEO Aart de Geus recently donated $500,000 toward the project to honor his friend Chris Wilder. Tell me about the vision behind the pavilion.

A: Levitt represents everything that I want to do in life. Everything. It is the perfect match of music, public park activation and magic. It’s a fairly simple project. Let’s have some free shows for the community, with top-notch acts and pay the artists well.

It is everything I love, and it is making radical, fundamental change in the community by using St. James Park. We knew 40 years ago that St. James Park has inherent social issues. In every city, there are parks with issues. It’s been going on for so long that many people have decided it’s never going to change.

I take this approach: The only way to change a park with social issues is to change the dynamic of the park. Levitt has a proven track record of doing that in other cities. When they come into a park, they build a music venue and guarantee 50 free shows a year. That stimulates change. The community starts to feel differently about the park. They start to reclaim the park.

For the past 5 years, we’ve been doing pop-up shows on the lawn, following the Levitt model. We are producing magic on the lawn. It is the same kind of magic we will generate with a full-time venue. It’s a proof of concept. We’ve shown the city and the community that we can make this kind of change.

Fil Maresca

Title: Owner of Filco Events

Residence: San Jose

Education: University of Vermont

Five things about Fil Maresca:

1. Is a wonderful uncle
2. Collects and sells comic books
3. Brought bands like No Doubt and Missing Persons downtown San Jose for the first time
4. Mentors young event producers
5. Loves ’80s music

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