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.

Transcript

Introduction to Festies Podcast

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

Explaining Stern Grove Music Festival

Sunny 0:50

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

Diana Ross Performance Highlights

Sunny 1:52

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

Festival Experience in the Meadow

Vanessa 5:11

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

Shuttle Issues and Miss Ross

Sunny 6:12

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

Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Sunny 9:07

. 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 .