Great Dickens’ Christmas Fair

One of our favorite places to enter is called “the Adventurer’s Club.” Set up as a gentleman’s club, it offers a wide variety of presentations, including lectures on scientific discoveries, readings from poets and authors and, as we found this year, a fashion show featuring women’s Victorian dress! Directly following the fashion show was a Christmas carol sing-a-long. I especially enjoyed the singing of “Silent Night,” first in German and then in English.

Not to be forgotten is the food. From savory meat pies to a basket full of fish and chips, or fresh baked cookies and fudge, there is no reason to go hungry while wandering the streets of Dickens’ London. And similarly, there is no excuse to have a dry palate. One can enjoy the finest of teas at the “Tea Shoppe” on Fish Street or, if one is more interested in a fine ale, there is also a pub a few doors down. Still not satisfied? How about a hot chocolate or warm apple cider? 

This year’s Dickens’ Fair is its 20th annual at the historic Cow Palace, a unique and perfect venue for the event. Covering 3 acres with its old London streets, shops, theaters, eateries and pubs, I can imagine of no other site where this superb event could take place. Not only is the Daly City site sizable enough but the old, historic buildings with their heavy timber and iron fabricated roof trusses, the concrete floors polished to a perfect patina by years of foot traffic, all make for the perfect feel of an old London brought back to life!

However, as wonderful an event as the Great Dickens’ Christmas Fair is every year, this past spring, it almost met its demise. State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, had introduced Senate Bill 281 to address what he felt were two imperative issues: housing and gun shows. If the senator had had his way, the Cow Palace would have been bulldozed to make way for more housing and, at the same time, buried the gun shows he argued were inappropriate for the Daly City neighborhood. Fortunately, for the producers of the Dickens’ Fair, the issue of the gun shows was handled separately by the Cow Palace Board of Directors and Wiener’s proposed legislation was otherwise put on hold, at least for now.

In my opinion, to demolish the iconic and historic Cow Palace simply to make way for more housing would be an incredibly short-sighted mistake. I am reminded of a study that the city of San Carlos commissioned during my time on the council. It was done by a consultant who was asked to look at the city’s future plans to develop the downtown core. One of the key elements the consultant emphasized as a priority was to include what he called “gathering spaces.” Unfortunately, the council and staff did not give a great deal of credence to the advice of the consultant. In the case of the Cow Palace, however, a tremendous “gathering space” already exists, not only for Daly City but for the whole Bay Area, as evidenced by its great and storied uses since it opened in 1941. If you are unaware of the history of the Cow Palace or its current and future events, I suggest becoming a friend of the facility and visiting its website at friendsofthecowpalace.org. And if you’ve been a Scrooge and never attended the Great Dickens’ Christmas Fair, not to worry! There is still one more weekend to attend and be redeemed.

A former member of the San Carlos City Council and mayor, Matt Grocott has been involved in political policy on the Peninsula for 17 years. He can be reached by email at mattgrocott@comcast.net.