{"id":1463,"date":"2009-10-08T10:00:28","date_gmt":"2009-10-08T18:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fogcityjournal.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/08\/2009-san-francisco-lovevolution-a-clusterfck\/"},"modified":"2017-11-02T19:38:44","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T03:38:44","slug":"2009-san-francisco-lovevolution-a-clusterfck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fogcityjournal.com\/wordpress\/1463\/2009-san-francisco-lovevolution-a-clusterfck\/","title":{"rendered":"2009 San Francisco LovEvolution: A Clusterf*ck"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nThe 2009 love festival, renamed LovEvolution, attracted too many
\npeople resulting in a less than enjoyable experience than in previous years.
\nPhotos by Luke Thomas<\/strong><\/p>\n

By William Chadwick<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

October 8, 2009<\/p>\n

First of all, I want to thank all of the people involved in organizing the fantastic Love Parade and LovEvolution. I had a great time at the parade and I was fortunate enough to be helping out Josh Smith, one of the organizers.<\/p>\n

But it all went a bit wrong when I arrived at Civic Center. There was simply too many people, and trying to police and contain the whole event was simply unmanageable. There was a woeful shortage of toilets and the queues were very long indeed.<\/p>\n

Once on the plaza, the growing numbers of people meant that moving around became more and more difficult, until I eventually just gave up and went and sat down on patch of grass in the middle of the plaza, farthest from any of the floats. In the end, I hardly danced for more than ten minutes because there was absolutely no room among the throng and press of people packed liked sardines close to each of the DJ floats. If you tried to dance further away from a particular float, you had to listen to more than one kind of music at once. And then you got mowed down by all the drunk people, pushing and shoving their way around the square.<\/p>\n

On top of this, the vast numbers of people trying to meet up with their friends had no luck at all, as phones had jammed the network, and text messages arrived up to three hours after they had been sent. Trying to stay with a group of more than two people was next to impossible.<\/p>\n

Ironically, for a Love festival, I saw quite a few angry people, and had to sidestep what looked like at least one very heated argument. What’s more, there were some frankly sordid things going on in the crowd that didn’t just involve drugs and body parts, but video cameras too.<\/p>\n

I am told that previous<\/a> love festivals<\/a> allowed for much more room between the floats, and greater freedom of movement, and I would urge the organizers to consider more separation between the floats. As this festival draws larger and larger crowds from out of state and outside the country, next year’s effort can only be expected to get uglier and more out of control than this year if the current format remains the same.<\/p>\n

Though the event did have a distinctly Burning Man flavor to it, it was a far cry from the Black Rock City love-in. In attempting to squeeze a little bit of Burning Man, with its colourful costumes and hippies galore, into Civic Center and then adding a lot of other non-Burners, LovEvolution was trying to do too much.<\/p>\n

It is a shame, but in its present incarnation the love festival was really rather short on love. There was a palpable air of menace hanging over the crowd, which I feared would rear its ugly head once the sun went down. I didn’t bother staying to find out: I had to go to the toilet anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But it all went a bit wrong when I arrived at Civic Center. There was simply too many people and trying to police and contain the whole event was simply unmanageable. 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