The Juice Box

The season is slowly winding down, but not without a crazy weekend in San Francisco. Check out my reviews of the scene from this weekend. I only feel like I could write up Love Evolution because I spent time at that event. I spent very little time at the actual Castro Street Fair, and more time at a very fun house party, but the neighborhood was a bit overwhelming this morning stepping over the remains of the day to get my pup out for a walk. I hear the fair was fun and that folks had a great time and the music that occasionally wafted into my windows sounded good. Next year I must make a better effort of getting out on the street for a longer period of time.

SF Love Evolution

2 Out of 5 Bottles of Water

by Jim Hauck

The only version of this electronic-techno-music festival in SF I have missed was the first year. However after this year, I am just not sure I will plan to go back again.

The overall premise of this join-in-the-fun parade and music festival is that you walk up the parade route with the musical float you enjoy most. You can then spend the parade dancing and bouncing along until you get to the Civic Center area and start the process of checking out the different floats and music. This year, we chose to meet the parade in Civic Center and see how things look as they arrived. I was surprised to see that in order to deal with 3 years of bankrupt events the suggested donation to get into Civic Center was $10, but overall it is a steal if you want to just party all day in the outdoors. The event was rather strict about bringing in open containers and confiscated some of my parties water bottles and not others, it seemed rather random and that randomness just bothers me. Set a policy and stick to it, rather than it being some power trip from a rent-a-cop security at the gate. From the get-go, not impressed and not starting off on a good foot.

Clearly marketing and branding have hit this event in a big way, and I guess someone has to underwrite the event costs to make it happen. The grounds were full of costumed revelers ready to enjoy the day, but something else was a bit odd. Most of the revelers seemed to be underage, and already well on the road to a messy day. In fact it appears that love parade has turned into a kiddie rave full of underage drinking and drug use and not a music festival at all.

We roamed from large sound float to large sound float in a peripatetic fashion, hoping that some music would interest us and one or two did for show periods of time. But it was hard to find that sweet spot to hear the music from the float you liked with out a tremendous bleed over from the others. I guess they have so many entries now that they have to stack them up pretty closely so it is just going to be a bit more challenging to find the musical hit you want.

Great event for the young and crazy, but maybe this raver is just getting to old to enjoy it anymore. I hope they can fix the issues with slow entry on the gates and the random search and seizure as well, because that is certainly one reason I would not come back.

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