This years San Francisco Love Parade, organized only for the second time, has turned out to be a massive success. A success owed not only to the work of numerous volunteers, crackerjack organization, but first and foremost a fantastic crowd, tens of thousands of music-driven lunatics, who, by foot, car or plane, came or arrived to be here for the Love Parade, for a wallow in their self-indulgence. They were people of all ages and varying degrees of personal beauty, all dressed-up in fake furs or without anything on (like in: “v e r y m u c h without anything on”). And they sure had plenty to choose out from: 24 official floats playing musical genres ranging from hip-hop, through funk, dnb, breaks, progressive, electro, to NRG trance and housey italo-disco and a number of un-official ones in the form of shopping or baby carts with fancy-shmancy decorations and a portable stereo playing everything, including country & western.
Does it really make sense to once again try to implement an idea which in Europe may, at least to some, seem to have burnt out long ago? Where quite recently the Love Parade Berlin had to be, officially due to financial reasons, cancelled? Sean Norris, who is on the Love Parade San Francisco Board and the treasurer, and who we had a chance to talk to before the parade, is positive about that:
Dr Motte’s idea - (whose one of birthday parties started the Love Parade Berlin – editor’s note) that music is a universal language, which can be understood by all people, is still alive. We didn’t care about any political or other messages but that was his idea which appealed to me at the time when we first started thinking about bringing the Love Parade to San Francisco.
It all started over six years ago when Sean and a group of his friends and SF club owners decided to bring the parade to the US west coast. It took them five years to convince officials, administrators and others who had something to say that it was worth it and that San Francisco is the best of all places to organize the parade in. Finally, when the first parade took place in October last year – it was a success, a success measured by the number of participants which, as it turned out, doubled compared to the pre-parade estimates.
It took us sooo long to convince people and to explain to them, how it’s going to be. They couldn’t quite understand the concept of people dancing around floats. We also had to convince them that the parade was not intended to promote any behavior uninhibited by morals – Sean smiles – and only when they finally saw the 2004 parade, they nodded: “ah, now we know..”.
The City recognized the success and in fact made the parade board accept a move to a new location in 2005 – from one of lesser to the main street of San Francisco. As a token of recognition, the City also allowed the parade organizers to use the capitol building as the VIP and press area.
We weren’t really prepared for the move to Market Street. We thought we needed some more time to grow but finally we accepted. And the City makes us pay plenty for everything. – Sean ends with a grin.
Well, the money had to come from somewhere and yes, even though it cost you nothing to take part in the parade itself (not including the cost of whatever you were consuming), if you wanted to get access to the Civic Center plaza you were kindly asked to pay a donation of $5 which was nonobligatory but expected and it was rather hard to evade the toll. That and the price you had to pay for beer (which was $6, a little on the expensive side compared to price in local clubs) caused the crowd to groan and complain that the parade was being turned into a money-making machine. Complaints which seemed grounded if you realized that sponsors were in abundance and all DJs, starting from the superstar ones all the way to local ones, played for free.
Sean confirms, they had no problem in attracting DJs to play during the parade and that the initial number of floats allowed them to comfortably select only those which met very strict criteria.
And those who decided to play was quite impressive: Carl Cox, Above & Beyond, Lee Burridge, BadBoyBill, Desyn Masiello, Mark Farina, Lee Coombs, Ferry Corsten, John Tejada, Blank & Jones, Habersham & Numinous, Jondi & Spesh, Hyper, Evil Nine, Markus Schulz, Scott Carelli, James Lauer, Kai.. all in all over 150 DJs playing all electronic music genres. Differently from the Berlin parades, San Francisco parade organizers did not decide to promote any particular genre of electronic music, leaving it to time (and chance) to work it out for them. Mate – I said to one of me mates ringing me on the parade day from London to ask me what party in London (sic!) was worth going to – no use going anywhere, all those worth listening to are now in SF.
And so it was! Pre- and after- parade parties and the parade itself were all pure musical bliss! The pre-parties and other events started early in the week but for me it all started with a three-hour set by Lee Burridge @ Mezzanine (check our gallery), who just a day before had started his 365 two-month residency in New York. His set, filled with electric groove, tweaky sounds and a frantic explosion of dancefloor energy kept me shaking it from the beginning to the very end. Cox, who also had just boarded a bus in San Diego to tour the US and Canada in anticipation of his long-awaited album “Second Sign”, played three amazing times during the San Francisco Love Parade weekend! During the parade I sort of tended to drift around the “ElectroCelt” float where Desyn Masiello floored me with an almost three hour set of beautiful sounds many of which came from the soon-to-be released fantastic “Balance_008”. Or “Opel & Cool” where a happy crowd bounced to the sounds of DJ Hyper and Jondi & Spesh. Or the Bay Area drum & bass float where if not the music then a relaxed atmosphere filled with a sweet smell of fresh weed was the main attractor.
The fantastic end to a fantastic weekend was Desyn’s party @ Anu (an hour only set left me still wanting more), DJ Hyper’s set @ Terra (geez... can they have fun!) and chilled set by DJ Three who played in a warehouse which I don’t think I could find my way to by myself again (many thanks – you know who!).
Great fun and general good mood allow to make a short only mention of Paul van Dyk’s last-minute withdrawal from the parade and the resulting disappointment to many of the parade participants. Well, Paul did not play at the parade but… played at one of the after-parties.
A friend once told me every single day she spent in SanFran, she would get up in the morning and then walk through the town, and she would smile to people or herself without even being sure of the reason (and yes, she’s sane). All I know is that since the parade weekend I’ve kept grinning and can’t decide if that’s because I’m dumb or happy. What a party that was!
Many thanks to Betty Kang from Plexi PR for making this review and interviews possible
pau-uau (October 5th, 2005):
very much so! and apologies for the mix-up. I guess that's because I wasn't fully recovered from an after-after-after party at the time I was putting it together...
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