Summer Arts Fest at Liberty Station

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A decommissioned Navy training base is a strange place to feel at home, and yet once a month the plaza at the center of it turns into the closest thing this end of San Diego has to a town square.

The booking is the point. No corporate stage, no national act passing through, no sponsor logo behind the drummer. San Diego musicians only: Whitney Shay and her blues-soul catalog, Kogee Soul Reprise with Kori Gillis out front, Bambu Sound Exchange bringing an analogue dance collective to a lawn full of families who did not see it coming. Three months, three genuinely different afternoons, and a crowd made of whoever lives nearby, plus their dogs.

The North Promenade at Liberty Station on Roosevelt Road, second Saturdays, afternoon into early evening, no ticket needed. Come with nothing planned afterward. That is the version of this that works.