San Francisco LoveFest: A Dance Music Parade and Festival

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All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.

You know, it sounds so simple and so cliché, but it’s so true.

As the country crumbles around us, now is the time to come together and love our fellow human. If we can’t control the Government and the horrible economy, at least we can control how we react to it all.

Last Saturday (October 4th), it was all about love at San Francisco LoveFest: A Dance Music Parade and Festival (and yes, some people even wore flowers in their hair).

“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,” said Joshua Smith, SF LoveFest founding board member. “There is no better time for an event of this scale and intention. Our community needs to come together, enjoy life and hold onto the good things.”
“In this time of economic and political turmoil, a celebration of love, peace, justice, and tolerance is just what our country needs,” said Dr. Syd Gris, board member. “We do not dance in the streets to escape the reality of our times – we dance to face them as a community, pointing the direction to a better way, set to beats and the full color of our expression. We gather to inspire and motivate social action by us, the youth, the people who will inherit this mess and have to do something about it to turn the tide.”
Sparked

This year was my second time at LoveFest, and I can honestly say I had way more fun this time around. Since I didn’t know what to expect last year, I don’t think I was really able to take it in and truly appreciate all that was around me. But this year was a different story!

My boyfriend and I took BART since finding parking would have been excruciating, and the party started there. As we sat in the car waiting to go, a couple stepped in and asked if that train was going to LoveFest, which I thought was hilarious since it was so obvious that was where about 80% of the car was going. You see, LoveFest is one of those festivals where people express themselves in many colorful ways. Basically, the folks on our BART train looked like this:

We arrived at the Civic Center BART Station in San Francisco and made our way with the crowd to the gates of LoveFest. Before we could get there, however, we came upon this: