Piedmont This Week: A Choral Festival, a New One-Way Street, and the Small Print Locals Should Read

The center of town is still catching its breath from the Fourth. The bunting is down, the Scouts have packed up the grills at Piedmont Park, and Highland Avenue is quiet again. Look closer and the week ahead is anything but quiet. Between July 13 and July 19, Piedmont hosts an international choral festival, finishes settling into a rebuilt Civic Center traffic pattern, and sits under a coastal flood advisory with a side of dry-thunderstorm watch. 

Piedmont behaves like a small town almost every week of the year, and then a handful of weeks it behaves like a venue. This is one of those weeks.

This week the children's choirs come to town

The Golden Gate International Children's and Youth Choral Festival was founded in 1991 and is sponsored every three years by the Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir. This is one of those years. More than 450 choristers, adjudicators, and chaperones from around the globe arrive for a week of performances hosted by PEBCC from July 13 through 18.

The scale is worth pausing on. PEBCC is running the festival at four venues across the East Bay and San Francisco, with a "Sing-Off" opening concert, five "Spotlight" concerts with free admission to the public, and a closing celebration and award ceremony. If you have ever wanted to hear a choir from Georgia or Shanghai in a Bay Area sanctuary without buying a ticket, this is the week.

The participating ensembles include Bel Canto Children's Choir, Cantabile Vocal Ensemble, the Chamber Singers of the Fairfield County Children's Choir, the Choir of E. Mikeladze Central Music School from Georgia, Emmanuel Vivace from Australia, the Portland Boychoir, Shanghai Little Star Chorus, and St. Stephen's College Choir, alongside four PEBCC choirs. Public venues include the Scottish Rite Center at 1547 Lakeside Drive in Oakland, First Congregational Church at 2345 Channing Way and First Presbyterian Church at 207 Dana Street in Berkeley, Old First Presbyterian Church at 1751 Sacramento Street in San Francisco, and the Oakland Interstake Center at 4780 Lincoln Avenue.

Artistic Director Eric Tuan framed the point of the whole thing to the Piedmont Exedra last week. "These young people gather unmediated by screens, unmediated by preconceptions about each other. They're literally synchronizing their breath and heartbeat," Tuan said. "They show how different cultures, musical styles, and traditions can come together in harmony."

The most-anticipated night is the closing. The Closing Ceremony on July 18 in Oakland features selected award-winning choirs and soloists sharing the repertoire that distinguished them during the Festival, building toward a massed-choir presentation with more than 400 young singers united on one stage. The Interstake Center holds it. If you have never sat through 400 voices in one room, that is the ticket to buy.

What actually changed downtown

While the festival was being staged, the Civic Center finished a rebuild. It is worth reading the details because they affect the way you get to school pickup, the pool, and every concert this week.

The reconfiguration of Bonita Avenue between Oakland and Vista Avenues is now complete. Permanent "one way" and "do not enter" signage has been installed at the Oakland Avenue intersection, with temporary flashing signs on both Oakland and Bonita warning drivers of the changed conditions. One-way traffic on that stretch of Bonita officially began July 6.

Details:

• A new drop-off zone on Highland Avenue across from Havens Elementary was added in January.
• New time-limited parking spaces on Bonita and Magnolia followed in April.
• New diagonal parking spaces now add capacity in the downtown core.
• New ADA spaces are complete, though the city has noted that some drainage work behind the re-graded sidewalk area remains.

This was the final step in the Civic Center parking reconfiguration approved by the City Council in May 2025. Previous phases included the Highland drop-off across from Havens in January and the time-limited spaces on Bonita and Magnolia in April. Fourteen months from vote to finished street. That is fast for a public works project, and it means muscle memory is the enemy for anyone who drove the old pattern for years. Approach Bonita from Oakland Avenue expecting to turn left, and the sign will stop you.

The practical version for the week ahead: if you are dropping a chorister at rehearsal or a kid at pool camp, the Highland drop-off across from Havens is the path of least resistance, and the diagonal spaces on Bonita give you options that did not exist last summer.

Piedmont Community Pool, and why July registration is a chess game

Summer at the pool is not walk-in the way it used to be. The Fourth of July schedule was a useful preview of how the facility runs on any high-demand day.

The Piedmont Community Pool operated on a modified schedule for the Fourth, with lap swim available in the morning and two reserved recreation swim sessions in the afternoon featuring holiday-themed activities. Hours were 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. for lap swim, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for reserved rec swim, and 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. for a second reserved session.

The number that matters is capacity. Each session was limited to 125 registered participants. The reservation ladder ran in stages: passholders opened at 6 p.m. on June 30, residents at 6 p.m. on July 2 if space remained, and non-residents at 7 a.m. on July 4 if any capacity was left.

The sky, the shoreline, and the fire watch

Two things are happening outdoors that a resident should hold in mind for the next ten days.

The National Weather Service issued a coastal flood advisory for the greater San Francisco Bay Area, forecasting up to 1.7 feet of flooding in low-lying areas near bay shorelines and along the coast. The advisory runs from Thursday through July 19 in the shoreline areas of the San Francisco and San Pablo bays, with the coastal-area advisory running Saturday through July 15. If your weekend plan involves the Berkeley or Emeryville marinas, or the Bay Trail at high tide, allow extra time for flooded stretches.

The second is a fire note that reads gently but should not be skimmed. The National Weather Service is monitoring the effect that recent increases in atmospheric moisture will have on wildfire potential this weekend and early next week, with a weather pattern favoring dry thunderstorms absent of precipitation that, combined with gusty winds, can start and spread wildfires. This is the week to walk the perimeter and make sure you are taking steps to trim vegetation and clear debris.

Then, at the end of the month, a small reward for looking up. The Buck Moon peaks on July 29 at 7:36 a.m., often glowing amber through the summer haze above the Oakland Hills. The best seats are the same ones locals already know: the ridge trails off Blair Park, the higher stretches of Crocker Avenue, anywhere with an eastern sightline over the ridge.

Why any of this belongs in one post

A choir festival, a one-way street, a pool reservation system, a flood advisory, and a moon. These items look unrelated until you notice they share a pattern. Piedmont's public life this month rewards the specific. The generic version of each of these stories exists on ten Bay Area sites. The version that helps you actually attend the free Spotlight concert, park on Bonita without a U-turn, book the 11 a.m. rec swim, and get out of Havens carpool in five minutes lives in the details.

If you or a neighbor is thinking about the next chapter, whether that is preparing a longtime home for market or finding a first Piedmont address, Shoshanna Marks is glad to talk. Let's Connect.