Lovefest continued....2006

to follow up on my previous blog about Lovefest, here's our story from 2006.

our original plan was pretty badass.  we were going to rent a giant scissor lift like this:

our design would be pretty basic with a huge painted tapestry of the san francisco skyline.  during the parade, we'd keep the lift lowered and then when we parked at the Civic Center, we would raise it up.  great plan, right?

wrong.

we started painting weeks before the parade.  i came up with the initial design on paper according the measurements of the scissor lift.

lining out the grid:

note the Rotten Tomatoes tshirt:

2 years later, and i still have paint on those shorts:

everything was ready to go until the day before the parade.  the company that we had reserved the scissor lift from informed us that it had no more large models available.  we made reservations weeks ago!  the closest model they had was several feet shorter, but we figured we could make it work.

the afternoon before the parade, we picked up the scissor lift.  we took it to the staging area where we were going to load up the sound equipment and....it broke.  there was some kind of fluid leaking and the thing just stopped.

back to the rental company and we learn that the only scissor lift they have left is tiny.  and not only that, it's electric (not gas like the larger ones).

so we're screwed, right?  everyone is stressed out trying to come up with a solution and after yelling at each other over the phone, we come to a compromise.  we rent flat bed truck to drive during the parade and park the scissor lift at the Civic Center.  we cut our tapestry into pieces:  one for the scissor lift, one for the truck and the extra piece we ended up stapling to some extra lumber.

the scissorlift:

the truck pulls up:

the lift goes up:

and i'm DJing 20 feet above people's heads:

we brought out the linoleum again.  here's our friend Natalie poppin' and lockin':

for more photos from Lovefest, check out our friend Faern's photos here.

our float's lineup was equally as heavy as the previous year, with General Midi, J-Break, Carbon Community and our local crew.

for the afterparty, we teamed up with Opel, Tantra and the Ambient Mafia for an all night rager at SomArts with Rennie Pilgrim, Hyper, General Midi and more.

however, the highlight of day was after the day party and before the afterparty.  we (meaning I) had to drive the scissor lift 2.5 miles from the Civic Center to a parking lot by the ballpark.  if you're familiar with San Francisco, you know this is a very urban route.  also remember that the scissor lift is electric (not gas powered like we originally wanted) so the maximum speed was about 3 miles per hour.

try driving in San Francisco on a Saturday evening at 3 miles an hour!  there were times when we couldn't even make it through an intersection during a green light.  the drive took us about an hour and to top things off, when were were only a few hundred feet from the parking lot....the battery died.

we had to run to a buddy's house and grab a gas powered generator to charge the battery and drive it one more block.

after that year, we vowed to NEVER ever do a float again.