another love/fuck parade review

I’ve got mixed feelings about the love parade, but I was glad to see it happen, and hope it continues to happen and grow over the years. however, I think it may only get better if San Francisco's musical taste gets better. I only got into the music for about 10 minutes total, and I was there for a while. maybe I'm just picky (yes), but...what can I say? I did hear some good techno on the DEFSF float, but it was one of the smallest and worst sounding sound systems there. And I heard KJ play some decent acid as he went by on the Thump system, and a bit of decent house from a woman on I think the Sunset system. I didn't have high expectations, but I guess I expected to wander among the systems at the end the parade, and get turned on to some new electronic music. Oh well.

Another problem was the fact that all the systems were jammed in so close together at the end. Sound clash hell. I know there's always sound clash at events like this, but it was overwhelming and ridiculous. Also, nowhere to sit down, hardly any curb areas.

On the plus side, I did enjoy being out and about, smiling at people, and all the dancing in the streets. It was no Reclaim the Streets, but still, it was fun. And I appreciated people’s creativity in dressing up (particularly the clowns.) Well, some people I wanted to photograph for "Don’ts" for a Disco Do’s and Don’ts spread, but luckily I didn’t have my camera. There was some of cheesiness, like I would look at some floats and ask myself, "Are they from Vegas?" but overall it was ok. I wasn’t too happy about the corporate sponsorship, and the high price for getting a float in, but I was willing to overlook it and have some fun.

But I began to get a bit melancholy while there. Partly it was the onset of autumn (along with the frigid, frigid wind), and partly because I got nostalgic for my time in Barcelona earlier this year, when I went to a free, 3-day long techno party in the city, outside SONAR, an international techno festival. SONAR was great, and the "alterni-SONAR" outdoors was amazing as well. It was overwhelmingly hard acid techno, not my favorite genre, but with about 10 systems there, there was some diversity, and some really good music. And thousands of people dancing, all free, unsanctioned, renegade-style. Fucking amazing. I thought of it Saturday because it was in a similar kind of outdoor space as the SF Love Parade, an industrial district near the docks, with corporate office parks, in the east of the city with the hills rising to the west. I remember standing at the festival in Barcelona, looking west, and thinking of how much this mini-"teknival" was like what my friends do here at home, and appreciating them and their efforts. But there were thousands of people dancing at this renegade thing in Barcelona, and here, well, renegade things, if they happen at all, are a lot smaller, and it seems like not as many people dance. And I can't imagine anything like the above happening in the u.s., without severe police repression. I know, I shouldn’t compare – the Catalan (Catalunyan?) people seem to love their techno, whereas in the U.S., I just don’t think that many people understand dancing yet.

Anyway, on to the fuck parade. No police repression that I witnessed (though maybe they were diverted from an original location, I don’t know), but hardly any people either. The fuck parade was the renegade, non-commercial, "hardcore" alternative to the love parade, and I was looking forward to it. Not my favorite genres of music (I expected mainly hardcore and drum and bass, based on the flyers), but I appreciate the spirit. Unfortunately, it was rather difficult to find the location, and by the time I got there the wind was blasting and I was ready to get inside. And it was tiny. When I was there, there were maybe 30 people and four sound systems. Granted, I did go a little late.

So, I do hope the Love Parade continues, and brings more events and afterparties to SF that week. (I was glad to see Stewart Walker in town on Friday night, though I left when I saw the "No Patron Dancing" signs at Rx Gallery. WTF? Should have stayed, though.) And cheesy as it was, I feel kind of proud that the first Love Parade in the U.S. was in San Francisco. I also hope the Fuck Parade continues as well, though hopefully with a few more people.