I couldn’t ignore LoveFest. Even two miles away and three stories above the action, I felt its presence in the form of incessant ppffffs of hairspray and splashes of glitter spilled over the bathroom counter and into the sink, glimmering, wet. I rubbed my bleary Saturday-morning eyes as my roommate emerged from her bedroom, sheathed in purple sequins.

“Oh good, you’re up,” she says. “Come to LoveFest.”

The party’s official website said that LoveFest was the nation’s largest single-day electronic dance-music event. Starting with a parade that runs from 2nd & Market streets to Civic Center, the festival culminates in a massive street party.  I—a naïve Boston transplant—thought LoveFest sounded like a claustrophobic convergence of too-hip hipsters, ultra-loud music, and sweaty bodies. But then—maybe because I was half-asleep, maybe because I couldn’t come up with an excuse quickly enough—I decided to let the love in.  


Two gold revelers bound by my roommates.

Learning the extent of my new roommate’s sparkly sartorial selection, I borrowed a sequined gold dress, drank two pomegranate mimosas, and left for the parade. Days before, I had considered going to LoveFest, but under a different guise: I would stop by for 30 minutes in jeans and a T-shirt, carefully maintaining an ironic distance from the mayhem, and filtering everything through my skeptical East Coast lens. But there I was, dancing through the entrance gates with 12 quasi-acquaintances, five of whom wore full-body snowsuits and all of them gushed with a surfeit of love.

The energy was infectious, the diversity of the crowd liberating, with positive vibes forcing out all inhibitions and apathy. Competing music from DJ booths mingled in the air in a haphazard but harmonious symbiosis; when one beat began to die down, the other picked up, with no break in the rhythm.



Animal prints, tutus, and boobie tassles (above) passed by in waves of brightness. People danced in cages on floats, in large pulsing groups by the stages, or by themselves in a rare open spot, eyes closed, communing with the music. Hula hoopers girated next to a group of scantily clad girls covered head-to-toe in gold body paint. “You’re fun!” a guy in a purple fedora declares after briefly dancing with us. “I’m coming back to find you later!” Good luck, buddy, I thought.

To lose a friend in the throbbing crowd was to relinquish hope of finding them. Searching for lost comrades became a significant time investment (only at LoveFest could you send a text message saying “I’m next to the naked guy on top of the stoplight”), and eventually you accepted that they were gone, enveloped by the love, and dancing their hot-shorts off somewhere in the sea of people.  

Hours passed, and our feet began to ache and our stomachs started to growl (no way were we spending $10 on a sausage), but physical nuisances seemed trivial and ephemeral; what was real, what lasted, was the dancing. At one point, I looked up to see City Hall silhouetted against a blazing late-afternoon sun that dropped heavily and lazily toward the horizon (rain had been predicted, but blue skies prevailed; “It doesn’t rain on love day,” my roommate declared). Looking at the domed edifice of power and stability, I thought about how our frenetic dancing, our white pimp-hats, and multi-colored tights fit into the current national crises. “Now more than ever we need to take over the streets and City Hall to express and share the values of culture, peace, love, unity, and respect,” Joshua Smith, a founding board member, said about LoveFest. Joshua’s vision, it seemed, was realized.


That's me, second from right, as the sun goes down and the energy rises.

As we danced between the Tantra and Green Addicts floats, I looked at the group of friends around me: a high school friend from Massachusetts, college friends from Philadelphia and New York, and new friends from Vermont, San Diego, and the Bay Area. We jumped and spun and generally rocked out; my six feet, four inch, Brooklyn-bred, investment-banker friend wore tie-dye and grooved uninhibitedly. “Only in San Francisco could we be doing this,” he said, leaning down so I could hear him over the thumping beat of Estelle’s “American Boy.”

No other city in the world, man.