This combined calendar of contra, English, traditional square & Irish dances in the SF Bay Area was created by subscribing to the public iCal URL of the following dance organizations:
BACDS (central Bay Area): iCal URL (see below for additional info)
NBCDS (North Bay - Marin & Sonoma counties): iCal URL (results are limited to 30 events)
SF Bay Queer Contra (Circle Left, Improper English): iCal URL
and subscribing to the public URL of a couple of personal Google calendars:
A personal calendar (iCal URL) created by David Brown containing manual entries for misc contra, ECD, & square dance series & events:
Feral Friday Square Dance San Francisco (2nd Friday)
Hayward contra (2nd & 4th Sunday 4pm-7pm)
Special events missing from NBCDS calendar
Santa Cruz contra (2nd Sunday 3pm & 4th Friday 7pm) iCal URL
A personal calendar (iCal URL) created by David Brown containing manual entries for Irish dance series & events:
Starry Plough Berkeley: Monday night ceilidh
Plough & Stars San Francisco: Thurs night set dancing
Irish dancing listed in Scéal Eile (newsletter of the SF branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann)
Alhambra House Redwood City: set dancing (last Sunday of the month)
SonoMarinIrish (Sonoma & Marin Irish set dancing) iCal URL
If you select Add to Google Calendar in the calendar above, it will offer to add the above calendars to your personal Google calendar; you can choose which of the calendars to add or not add. For instance, if you are not interested in Irish dancing, you can deselect the checkbox for that calendar.
I decided to not subscribe to the following dance series that are farther away or because they are already included in one of the above calendars, but I am providing the iCal URL's here for folks who want to create their own calendars:
Palo Alto Contra (2nd/4th/5th Sat) iCal URL
Santa Cruz contra (2nd Sunday 3pm & 4th Friday 7pm) iCal URL
General Hints:
To use an iCal URL in your Google calendar, select the Plus sign next to Other calendars, select From URL from the dropdown options, and paste in the value. You will automatically receive updates (updated every 8 hours, unless you unsubscribe and re-subscribe). You can change the name of the calendar by selecting Settings from the 3 vertical dots next to the calendar name.
To use an iCal URL in Apple Calendar (Mac desktop), select New Calendar subscription from the File menu, and enter the URL. On the next screen, you can customize various options, including the name of the calendar, the refresh interval, and whether it is stored in iCloud or just on the local machine.
To use an iCal URL in Calendar on an iPhone or iPad, see Add calendar subscriptions in iCloud.
To use an iCal URL in Microsoft Outlook, see Import or subscribe to a calendar in Outlook.com or Outlook on the web. Follow the instructions for Subscribe to a calendar (rather than Upload a calendar from a file)
BACDS hint: To add a customized dance calendar to your personal calendar, use The Dance Finder at the bottom of the bacds.org home page and select a subset of the full BACDS calendar. For example, if you select a couple of locations and a dance style (e.g. Berkeley & San Francisco and contra), an iCal URL appears at at the bottom of the results. Right click on "this iCalendar link" and copy the link address.
Note that calendar events from some groups (including BACDS & NBCDS) disappear from the calendar after an event passes.
For instructions on to use Google Calendar to create a public calendar containing multiple calendars (i.e. how the above calendar was created), see
How do I create a public viewing link that shows multiple calendars at once?
Questions, comments, corrections, additions - please email bacds@bacds.org.