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SF Gate Article about Love Fest
Loud, lively LoveFest lets S.F. get groove on
Verne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Dancing fanatics wearing boas, fluorescent wigs and tutus took over downtown San Francisco on Saturday for a parade celebrating love amid the uncertainty of war, financial meltdown and impending presidential elections.
San Francisco LoveFest, an annual Mardi Gras for techno music, drew tens of thousands of spectators who bopped to the blaring beats coming from the floats - semi trucks stacked with speakers and festooned with gyrating women in bikinis.
"Everyone has come together to be themselves and forget about their problems," said Cassie Mandeville, a restaurant hostess and college student from Sacramento who dressed as a sort of pink-haired Pippi Longstocking.
The event featured 28 floats, essentially mobile dance clubs that inched up Market Street. Stores along the route emptied out as shoppers emerged to gawk at the spectacle of so much love.
A school bus, turbocharged with orange, blue and pink paint, led the procession, and prompted some in the crowd to yell out, "The Love Bus is coming, the Love Bus is coming!" as if it were Santa's sleigh. A woman carrying a sign advertising "free hugs" marched just in front, though no one seemed interested in taking her up on her offer, instead preferring to jump up and down.
The volume was so loud at times that it vibrated the rib cages of anyone standing nearby. People talking on cell phones ran for cover.
Linda Reilly, who was on a shopping trip from Hayward with her 16-year-old daughter, had no idea the parade was to take place until it started. She watched from the sidewalk and snapped photos, bemused by the proliferation of bare bellies, short shorts and low tops, and declared, "It's what this city is known for - this outlandishness."
Reilly, who was dressed for Macy's, not clubbing, added: "I'm happy to see them so happy. But they seem oblivious to the economy, the wars, the banks."
Later, the outside world did make a brief appearance, even if it did seem like a mirage. A surplus Army truck rolled down the street carrying women in camouflage jackets grooving to music next to a sign above the cab saying "Martial law is coming soon."
LoveFest got its start in San Francisco in 2004 as an offshoot of the Berlin Love Parade, a similarly whimsical celebration that is well-known in Europe. Now independent of Berlin and operated as a nonprofit, the San Francisco event aims to raise money through corporate sponsorships and donations to fund music scholarships for children.
Despite the outward frivolity, Syd Gris, a LoveFest board member, said LoveFest's mission is "to promote peace, tolerance, respect and even love through the platform of dance music." Although spectators may have temporarily forgotten about the nation's ills, he said the organizers are very conscious of them and see the gathering as a way to remind young people that they need to be engaged.
The parade concluded at the San Francisco Civic Center Plaza, where the floats parked and pumped up the volume for the legion of dancers wearing fairy wings, go-go boots and false eyelashes of all colors of the rainbow.
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myspace.com/techno_twins
Love and accept who your are, not who will or should be.
"Never let anyone keep you contained, and never let anyone keep your voice silent."
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