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Berlin Looks Set to Pull Plug on Techno Love Parade
By David Crossland
BERLIN (Reuters) - Berlin looks set to pull the plug on the Love Parade after organizers said on Wednesday they had failed to secure funding for the summer festival that used to attract over a million gyrating techno fans.
The Parade, which became a symbol for Berlin's hipness during the 1990s, has waned in recent years, narrowly avoiding financial collapse and drawing smaller crowds as techno music has lost its trendsetting appeal and entered mainstream culture.
Its decline has coincided with a steady gentrification of the city. Gleaming modern buildings have been completed in its center and many of the eastern districts once fashionable for their dilapidation have been refurbished for yuppie families.
"It is with great regret that we have to announce there definitely won't be a Love Parade in Berlin this year," organizer Loveparade Berlin GmbH said in a statement.
Many of its usual sponsors had been hit by the economic downturn in recent years, and talks with the cash-strapped city had not produced a financing deal, with just three months to go before the festival was due to take place, it said.
Berlin's city-owned trade fair company backed the Love Parade in 2003 and made a loss of $615,900 as a result.
Some 750,000 ravers came to the Love Parade last July, half the 1.5 million the festival attracted at the height of its popularity in the late 1990s.
The Love Parade started making losses after it lost its status as a demonstration in 2001, which forced it to pay for a host of services which the city had provided free of charge before, such as blocking off roads and relocating bus stops.
A Berlin city spokesman held out hope of a reprieve, saying more talks were scheduled between the city's economy department and the organizers.
The Parade first took place in 1989, four months before the fall of the Berlin Wall when DJ "Dr Motte" staged what he called a "House Music Demonstration" in West Berlin for tolerance, respect and international understanding.
What started with one truck fitted with turntables and loudspeakers spiralled into an annual music event that drew techno fans from around Europe to crowd around up to 50 trucks that blared out deafening rhythms.
The Love Parade lives on elsewhere. It has been staged in Austria, Britain, Israel and South Africa. Mexico City held one in March and San Francisco and Tel Aviv plan Love Parades this year.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto...de_dc&printer=1
Bad news for all music lovers.
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Just take back our cause and do it again...
