The Blue Angels beat SF's fog Saturday. Sunday is the last show

At 3:07 p.m. on Saturday, six blue and gold Super Hornets swept in over the bay, and for 41 minutes nobody along San Francisco's northern waterfront looked at anything else. Friday's show had fizzled. Low fog cut the Blue Angels to a few passes before the team called it, CBS News reported. By late Saturday morning the fog had burned off, and the crowd got the full program: loops, crossing passes, the diamond and the delta, jets flying 18 inches apart.

Sunday is the last air show of the year, and the forecast calls for the best weather of the weekend. This post covers what Saturday looked like from the ground and the water, the one viewing spot the internet discovered, and what changes on Sunday. If you still need a place to stand, our guide to where to watch Fleet Week in San Francisco walks the waterfront and the hills spot by spot.

Saturday, from the crowd

Thousands packed Marina Green and lined the shoreline from Crissy Field to the Wharf, ABC7 reported. Mary Breen of the Air Show Network called Fleet Week "the Super Bowl of air shows." San Francisco resident Pat Smith told the station the noise is part of the appeal. Jennifer Flores came back from Oakland with her father after catching only a quick glimpse on Friday, and when her kids were asked to sum up the Blue Angels in one word, they said "America."

The Redman family of Concord has come for about a dozen years and sat out last October, when a federal shutdown kept the Navy's team home. Ten-year-old Dominick gave CBS his review in four words: "Loud and the speed."

On X, the posts from the waterfront read like that all afternoon.

Colin Zhou pointed out what none of the videos capture: the ground shaking under the afterburners. Another, Ryan Kelly, named the part of Fleet Week that outsiders miss: the pilots come back to party in the city and get treated like celebrities.

Saturday also had a loser. San Francisco's fog has a parody account, Karl the Fog, and at 6 a.m. it promised a 2,000-foot wall of gray that would turn the show into "a blurry game of Marco Polo." By 3 p.m. the sky over the bay was clear blue. Karl gets Friday. The Blue Angels got Saturday.

When it ended, the crowd did what crowds do. Thousands poured onto Marina Boulevard at once, and traffic out of the Marina slowed to a crawl, ABC7 reported. Plan for that on Sunday.

The seat everyone wanted by dinnertime

The most shared Fleet Week post of the day did not come from the Marina. Sam Saliba climbed a ridge in the Marin Headlands and filmed a Super Hornet streaking past at eye level with the whole city behind it. Two days earlier another X user had asked for "the hands-down best place" to watch. Saliba answered with video, and by late Saturday it had passed 145,000 views.

The spot is Slacker Ridge, also called Slacker Hill. It sits 930 feet above the water, about half a mile from the roundabout on Conzelman Road and about a mile from the Golden Gate Bridge, according to the National Park Service. Saliba described it in the replies as a 400-foot climb at a 25 percent grade on loose gravel, and he said the jet wash up top hit harder than the noise. The Park Service says the trail is steep and slippery and suggests parallel parking on Conzelman or leaving the car at Fort Baker.

We think it was the best seat of the weekend. You look down on the Golden Gate Bridge instead of up at it, the Blue Angels cross the city skyline in one frame, and nobody is sitting on your blanket.

The Headlands side also comes with a catch worth knowing before you hike. Wolfback Ridge, the Sausalito hilltop neighborhood that backs onto this parkland, scores 5.0 out of 5 for curb appeal and 4.5 for public spaces on Houseberry's Wolfback Ridge page, and 0.6 for nearby merchants. That is the trade on this side of the bridge. There is no corner store, so pack lunch and water before you start up the gravel.

What changes on Sunday

The lineup is nearly the same as Saturday's, with one addition and an earlier start. Here is the posted schedule. Times can shift with weather, and the Blue Angels slot is the one most likely to move.

The bigger change is on the ground. Sunday is also the Italian Heritage Parade, and the two events share the northern waterfront for the afternoon, according to the SFMTA's parade advisory.

• Streets near the Wharf close for parade staging from 7:30 a.m., including Beach and Francisco between Mason and Stockton and Powell from Chestnut to Beach.
• The route rolls from Powell and Beach through North Beach to Washington Square from about noon to 5 p.m.
• The Powell-Hyde and Powell-Mason cable cars switch to buses from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. If your plan was to ride a cable car to Aquatic Park or Francisco Park, take the bus or walk.
• The 30 Stockton, 45 Union-Stockton and 39 Coit are rerouted for most of the day, and the F line turns back at Pier 39.
• Muni adds extra 28 and 49 buses from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., with a temporary 28 stop at Van Ness and North Point, and runs a post-event shuttle from Powell between Beach and North Point from 4 to 7 p.m.

If you watch from Russian Hill or Telegraph Hill, the parade is a bonus. The bands and floats finish at Washington Square, a short walk downhill from either one. North Beach scores a 5.0 for nearby merchants on Houseberry's North Beach page, so dinner after both shows is easy to find. Getting a table on Columbus Avenue at 4:30 on parade day is another matter.

The other side of the bridge, by the numbers

Saturday's best video came from Marin, and the Houseberry data makes a quiet case for that side of the water. Eight of Sausalito's nine ranked neighborhoods score 3.8 or higher overall. The Marina, the center of the air show, scores 3.6 and ranks 43rd of 92 San Francisco neighborhoods, held back by a 3.3 for schools. Sausalito's Old Town-Hurricane Gulch, the steep historic core a few miles from Slacker Ridge, scores 4.2 for schools.

The Marina wins on what you need during an air show: a 5.0 for nearby merchants against Old Town's 3.1, and flat streets you can walk home on. Both sides earned their crowds on Saturday.

Our call for Sunday

Go, because the weather is supposed to be the best of the three days and it is the last Fleet Week air show until next October. Take transit or a ferry, give the parade streets a wide berth if you are crossing North Beach before 12:30, and if your legs are up for loose gravel, be on top of Slacker Ridge by 2:30. From up there you can pick out half the city, and if you want to know how those neighborhoods compare once the smoke clears, Houseberry's San Francisco ranking scores all 92 of them, the Marina included.

Sources

• CBS News: Blue Angels roar back over San Francisco after weather threatens Fleet Week show
• ABC7: Blue Angels roar back over San Francisco Bay after Friday fog delay
• NBC Bay Area: Fleet Week 2026 air show schedule
• KTVU: San Francisco Fleet Week, guide to 2026 events
• SFMTA: Fleet Week, October 9 to 11, 2026
• SFMTA: Italian Heritage Parade, Sunday, October 11, 2026
• National Park Service: Slacker Ridge