Night market season is officially here, and the Bay Area is going all in.

From the Castro Night Market running monthly through September, to the Alameda Point Night Market celebrating Malaya's 7th anniversary, to Off the Grid's massive Fort Mason kickoff featuring over 110 vendors — there's no shortage of places to spend your Friday evenings browsing street food, local crafts, and overpriced boba.

And look, we love night markets. They're one of the best things about living in the Bay. Small vendors get a low-barrier way to reach customers. Communities come together in open-air spaces that don't require a $47 parking garage or a two-drink minimum. It's free enterprise at its most vibrant — entrepreneurship you can taste.

But let's be honest about the elephant in the room: the prices. As one Bay Area resident put it bluntly, "Everything is fine except the prices have gone up by a lot." A single plate at a night market booth can easily run you $18-22 now, which starts to erode the whole "accessible community gathering" vibe pretty quickly. Another local nailed it: "How you're doing here really depends on your income."

That's not the vendors' fault. They're dealing with the same crushing cost environment as the rest of us — permitting fees, ingredient costs, SF's labyrinth of small business regulations, and the general reality that operating anything in the Bay Area requires a minor miracle of margins. The vendors showing up at Fort Mason with a grill and a dream deserve your respect and your dollars.

What we'd love to see is the city making this easier, not harder. Streamlined permitting for pop-up food vendors. Fewer bureaucratic hoops for small operators who want to set up at community events. Maybe — and this is radical — actually reducing the fees that get passed along to you in the form of a $9 elote.

Night markets represent something the Bay Area desperately needs more of: organic, community-driven economic activity that doesn't require a government program or a nonprofit grant cycle. The Castro, Fort Mason, Alameda Point — these events prove that when you give people space and freedom to trade, good things happen.

So go. Eat the skewers. Buy the candle from the lady who hand-pours them in her Sunset District kitchen. Just maybe bring a budget.