Love Fest 2008: Float construction

  in San Francisco, we're known for our wacky parades and street faires.  there's the Pride parade, Haight Street Faire, Howeird Festival, the Folsom Street Faire, Carnival...and then there's Love Fest.

Love Fest originally came to SF in the form of the Love Parade, a fully sanctioned off shoot of the famous Berlin Love Parade.  that was back in 2004.  we had it again in 2005, but in 2006, the organizers of the Berlin Love Parade decided to take the name back.  San Francisco still wanted a massive parade so now we have Love Fest.

the event starts with a parade down Market Street.  each float has a sound system with DJs and performers.  the difference between this parade and others is that people are encouraged to join in and march along with the floats as they go down the street.  at the end of the parade route, all floats park at the Civic Center and a massive party continues until sunset.

in 2005 and 2006, our crew was part of an effort to put together a float for the parade.  in addition, we also put on an afterparty...both years.  those two years nearly killed us.  incredible amount of fun, but also an incredible amount of stress and energy.  last year we took a year off.

but this year we're back and working as part of a group effort for a float.  and no afterparty!  yeah!

yesterday we had our first work day to begin assembling the pieces we'll need for the float.  our float's theme is pirates, which is slightly ironic considering it's Love Fest.  but pirates need love too, right?

here's the front of the DJ booth:

here are some of the waves that will be set up in front of the float once we're parked at the Civic Center:

some shots of the boys constructing the deck:

and reallly i only included this photo to show Lee's pimp ass Impala in the background:

for a little history, here are some photos of our floats from past years.

2004 we were the Bay Area Breaks Brigade, a loose coalition of several breaks crews and DJs.  in addition to our local DJs, we also had a pretty stacked lineup of out of town talent:  Future Funk Squad, High Eight, Carbon Community, J-Break, Myagi, Odeed and Wish.

some photos from that year.  our float was a giant boombox:

manning the scratch decks once we parked:

we set out some linoleum for the breakdancers:

and even the kids busted some moves:

i think i'm telling people to go home:

and a video shot and edited by High Eight:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVPdudFzNNo

this blog is getting way too long, so i'll continue next time with what we did for Love Fest 2006.