San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour

Some festivals happen because a city needs them. Others because one guy walked into a bar in Louisiana, saw someone playing accordion with their whole body, and never recovered. And thankfully, the latter is how Gator by the Bay became San Diego's largest Louisiana-themed festival. It returns to Spanish Landing park May 8 through 11. On this week's Happy Half Hour, co-founder Peter Oliver explains how a trip through Lafayette and New Orleans in the late '80s turned into a lifelong obsession with Louisiana music, dance, and culture. Its first version launched in 2001 with eight bands, a gospel tent, and about 2,000 people showing up more or less out of nowhere, Oliver shares. It also lost money. So they did it again. Then again. Somewhere along the way, the true believers stuck, they folded the blues community in, and the city got itself a waterfront party, Louisiana-style. Today, it features more than 100 performances across seven stages, dance lessons, parades, a musical petting zoo, and 10,000 pounds of cra