By Victoria Nguyen
Flickr photo by Janice Myint
In a little more than 72 hours, San Francisco’s Crissy Field will be the site of a mass massacre when 45,000 live crawfish meet their death in heavily spiced pots of boiling water.
It’s going to be chaotic. It’s going to be messy. It’s going to be absolutely friggin’ delicious.
This Saturday, a little bit of the Bayou Country comes to the Bay Area at the 6th Annual San Francisco Crawfish Boil & Ho-Down. According to event coordinators, this year’s turnout promises to be their largest to date, with expected attendance doubling from last year’s. The Crawfish Boil, which runs from 11am-7 p.m. at the western end of Crissy Field, will feature a live jazz band with approximately 3,000 pounds of spicy Louisiana crawfish and all you can drink beer.
The event began modestly in 2003, when two guys from Mobile, Alabama hosted a crawfish boil for a group of 25 in Golden Gate Park. Five years later, that group became 500. This year, they’re capping off the event at 1,000 folks.
“The great thing is we never started this with the intention of what it has turned into,” said Jonathan Wiggins, one of the co-founders of the event. “I think this crawfish boil event has the potential to be another big festival here in San Francisco.”