Ep. 29 Diana Ross at Stern Grove 2025 – A Short and Sweet Recap

Diana Ross closed out San Francisco’s Stern Grove Festival with a free, unforgettable show. At 81, Miss Ross dazzled with three costume changes and timeless hits like “I’m Coming Out” and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Stern Grove remains a Bay Area tradition — world-class music in a stunning outdoor setting.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Festies Podcast
• 0:50 Explaining Stern Grove Music Festival
• 1:52 Diana Ross Performance Highlights
• 5:11 Festival Experience in the Meadow
• 6:12 Shuttle Issues and Miss Ross
• 9:07 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Transcript

Sunny: 0:00

Hey Vanessa,

Vanessa: 0:01

yeah Sunny?

Sunny: 0:02

What do you call two best friends that love music festivals?

Vanessa: 0:06

Hmm, I guess you'd call them Festies.

Clark: 0:33

Music. Festivals. Friendship. Festies

Sunny: 0:42

welcome back to festies.

Sunny: 0:43

Thanks so much for being here. This episode I would like to recap for Vanessa Stern Grove Music Festival. Have we talked about Stern Grove before?

Vanessa: 0:53

Oh yeah.

Sunny: 0:53

We have, okay, just a little overview of what Stern Grove is. It's a festival in San Francisco, but it's a recurring festival throughout the summer. It's every Sunday. They get really big name artists and it's free.

Vanessa: 1:07

Isn't it Saturday and Sunday? Or is it just Sunday?

Sunny: 1:09

The last weekend is Saturday and Sunday. It's like the big picnic, which is what I went to.

Vanessa: 1:14

Can I just say that I do not like the lottery they did this year.

Sunny: 1:18

Oh, oh, yeah

Vanessa: 1:19

I think I applied for like five of them and I only got one.

Sunny: 1:23

So I am about the lottery

Vanessa: 1:26

because you got a lot of them.

Vanessa: 1:28

I didn't get a lot of them.

Sunny: 1:30

There was another box office, too, that you could go to the day before to get tickets if you didn't win the lottery

Vanessa: 1:36

hmm, I wasn't gonna do all that,

Sunny: 1:38

so but if you didn't win, then someone you knew won, right,

Vanessa: 1:43

uh. Yeah, I guess.

Sunny: 1:46

So in a sense we all won. It used to just be a big free-for-all. You could just show up, and then the pandemic happened and they changed it to like a ticketing system

Vanessa: 2:01

through eventbrite

Sunny: 2:02

Yeah, and you could just go on there and get a ticket.

Vanessa: 2:06

You didn't always get a ticket, but if you were like online the moment they went on like you had a better chance.

Sunny: 2:11

That's true.

Vanessa: 2:12

And we got a lot of tickets like that last year.

Sunny: 2:15

It was funny because I just applied for all of them and then won most of them, except for the one that I was going to go to, which was Diana Ross. Oh yeah, I don't even think I said that the grand finale for Stern Grove this year was Miss Diana Ross.

Vanessa: 2:30

Nice

Sunny: 2:30

who is a legend in her own right. August 17th was the final day of Stern Grove. I went with my stepmom. I got there super early to get in line, which is what we usually do, but I extra wanted to get there early so we could take the shuttle down because it is a trek to walk down that hill when you get there.

Sunny: 2:50

So I wanted to make sure we got on that shuttle, which we did. Joan met me there around like 11, I think it was perfect. Maybe 30 minutes later we got on the shuttle. I don't know all of Diana Ross's solo music. I don't know all of the Supremes catalog, but of course I know you know the big hits, which there are a lot of them. I knew most of the music. The big one she really started with was I'm Coming Out

Vanessa: 3:15

Nice.

Sunny: 3:16

Other songs she did were Baby Love. You Can't Hurry Love. Stop in the Name of Love. And then she did Ease On Down the Road, which was a tribute to Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones. Now that I think about it. And then she closed with Ain't No Mountain High Enough and I Will Survive

Vanessa: 3:34

yeah, that sounds like that would have been so much fun.

Vanessa: 3:36

You took a lot of videos of the crowd and everyone looked ecstatic

Sunny: 3:41

yeah

Vanessa: 3:42

to be there. Everyone was so happy, smiling, dancing, like reaching for the stage, like we love you, queen, like I feel like that's what it seemed like everybody was like so mesmerized.

Sunny: 3:54

Yeah, it was like that. I don't know what she does to cast this like spell over the audience. She just is like can you feel me out there, do you feel me? It's like, yes, I do feel you,

Vanessa: 4:08

Isn't she like 80.

Sunny: 4:09

Yeah,

Vanessa: 4:10

oh my god, she looks so good,

Sunny: 4:12

I think she's.

Sunny: 4:13

I think she's 81. Let me look it up.

Sunny: 4:16

She's 81

Vanessa: 4:17

I think I saw something somewhere that said she was 80. I was like oh my god, she looks amazing for 80

Sunny: 4:21

yeah, she.

Sunny: 4:22

She had three costume changes.

Vanessa: 4:25

I had to like look up who opened, because I was like, is this the same lady? Like she's not wearing that yellow dress. I was like I got to make sure before I post the video that it actually is Diana Ross, Because there was like three costumes that I saw in the video.

Vanessa: 4:39

So

Sunny: 4:40

yeah, she had an emerald gown and then she had like a blush pink feathered gown and then she had like a silver dazzling outfit.

Vanessa: 4:52

Yeah, she looked good.

Sunny: 4:52

She rocked it. She also had her daughter on stage with her for a little bit, and that was really sweet. Who is also, of course, an amazing performer and great singer Effortless, just like her mama.

Vanessa: 5:04

And so this time you didn't go in front of the stage or like in the woods, like we normally go up in the trees. You were like in that little area on the side that has a screen, the meadow

Sunny: 5:15

the meadow.

Sunny: 5:16

Yeah, my goal for this time at stern grove was just to be as calm as possible, stress-free

Vanessa: 5:24

yeah

Sunny: 5:24

because sometimes it can be a little bit of a shit show when you get in there

Vanessa: 5:28

yeah,

Sunny: 5:28

so I just made the decision let's go to the meadow. We'll lay out a blanket and enjoy it from the screen. It sounds better over there because you have your own speaker tower,

Vanessa: 5:37

yeah.

Sunny: 5:37

And then at some point in the middle we got up and walked through the rest of the venue and got to see her and I was a little starstruck. Honestly, I was just like shit, she's right there. We had, we had an amazing time. It was really fun, if I must say, a low of the day. We needed to take the shuttle to get out of there. We were waiting for, I want to say, two hours, an hour and a half like way too freaking long.

Vanessa: 6:02

Oh no,

Sunny: 6:03

they need to have a separate ADA shuttle because there's people here who are like in walkers and in scooters or whatever who cannot wait here this long.

Vanessa: 6:14

Yeah,

Sunny: 6:15

so that would be my main complaint.

Vanessa: 6:18

Were people that could have walked, taking the shuttles like it wasn't just ADA people.

Sunny: 6:23

Anyone who could walk probably walked because it was such a long wait.

Vanessa: 6:27

Oh, I see

Sunny: 6:28

Anyone who needed to take the shuttle.

Vanessa: 6:30

Really needed to,

Sunny: 6:31

needed to take the shuttle.

Sunny: 6:32

When we were waiting for the shuttle to leave, one of the staff was telling us that their friend that was working in the green room said that Diana Ross says to call her Miss Ross,

Vanessa: 6:42

Miss Ross.

Vanessa: 6:43

Okay.

Sunny: 6:45

That's Miss Ross to you. I don't know if she said it like that. Hopefully that's something they fix next year

Vanessa: 6:50

yeah, just have more shuttles

Sunny: 6:52

that was our hiccup for the day, but didn't erase all the fun that we had. Diana Ross actually performed at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga. tickets were like $150, $175. It's like, oh, we got this for free, but you have to put the work in

Vanessa: 7:10

you need to wait two hours afterwards

Sunny: 7:12

yeah.

Sunny: 7:12

Yeah, you gotta get there early, sit in line. It was kind of rainy, I'm not complaining, though. It was worth it, and I just want to say a big thank you to Joan for taking me. She could have taken anybody, and she took me

Vanessa: 7:24

oh, she's the one that won the tickets

Sunny: 7:26

yeah, yeah, not me

Vanessa: 7:27

yeah I was gonna ask how you got tickets.

Vanessa: 7:30

You said that was the only one you didn't get

Sunny: 7:31

yeah, so joan won, and then aaron's family, they didn't win, but they released more tickets and they ended up winning and then they had an extra ticket and I was like you have an extra ticket and they weren't really gonna find anybody to take the ticket and I was like I'll find somebody. So I was just like calling everybody I knew because I didn't want this ticket, this golden ticket, to go to waste. But I couldn't find anybody. There ended up being somebody walking up the line being like does anyone have an extra ticket? And they gave him the ticket.

Vanessa: 8:02

Oh, nice

Sunny: 8:02

he was ecstatic.

Vanessa: 8:06

That's nice.

Sunny: 8:06

Yeah, that's pretty much my wrap up for Stern Grove.

Vanessa: 8:09

Sweet,

Sunny: 8:10

just one day, short and sweet. Highly recommend making it out to a Stern Grove show. They really are special, the venue is beautiful, everyone's just in such a good mood.

Vanessa: 8:21

I do like it. I just would say if you are the type of person that needs to go to the bathroom all the time, do not sit up in the trees.

Sunny: 8:28

Oh, yeah, yeah

Vanessa: 8:29

it's a hassle to get down and up from the trees. That's my only downside for that place. But even when you're sitting up there, though it looks awesome, it's just you can't go anywhere once you're there

Sunny: 8:41

it's not very accessible

Vanessa: 8:42

no, it's not very accessible

Sunny: 8:44

that was the other pro of sitting in the meadow is the bathrooms were right there,

Vanessa: 8:47

right there, yeah.

Vanessa: 8:48

Smart,

Sunny: 8:49

Good point, though I agree. So we'll see what next year's lineup brings. It seems every year it gets more stacked and stacked, so we'll keep an eye out for that. Thank you again, Joan, for taking me. That was super fun. I really appreciate you bringing me with you. Let's do it again sometime. All right, Vanessa. Close us out.

Vanessa: 9:07

Okay, Festies, we hope you enjoyed that nice and short episode on Stern Grove and Miss Diana Ross. Please follow us on Instagram, tiktok and YouTube at festiespodcast, and leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to us. We do have a Outside Lands vlog up on our YouTube that you guys should check it out. We have now an Outside Lands and a Coachella vlog that you guys can watch, so make sure you check that out and we'll catch you on the next one. Adios,

Sunny: 9:34

bye

Clark: 9:44

Festies.