Unscene Berlin

Parade passes by the Berliner Dom When was it: Sunday, September 21st at 2:00 p.m. Where was it: Alexanderplatz to Brandenburger Tor, in Berlin's Mitte What happened: Several thousand Berliners donned headphones and danced their way through the streets while listening to live DJ mixes and short speeches about climate change, that were being broadcast over the headsets.  Organizers also coordinated a 'crowd tsunami'... basically, that's a giant version of the Mexican wave.  By that point the parade had covered the whole length of Unter den Linden and the effect of the wave was pretty awesome.   Everything at the parade was environmentally-friendly, too, from the electric tuk-tuk vehicles used by the DJs and drink sellers, to the balloons and even the toilets at the end of the parade.  Why was it : The UN conference on climate change starts on September 23rd in New York.  September 21st was therefore chosen as a global day of action, when 2,808...

  Before heading out to F*ck Parade last Saturday, I saw a tweet that described the streetparty-demonstration as being 'anti-everything'.  I don't think that's necessarily true.   It's true that FuPa (as it's also known) was founded in 1997 as an antidote to the Love Parade; as a way for Berlin's underground ravers to extend a middle finger at the hyper-commercial parade that had branded their city.  It's true that the Fuck Parade sometimes attracts a few macho types who think that it's an excuse to barge through dense crowds, instead of dancing.  And it's true that the parade's political message usually consists of a series of banners with words like 'Tourismuscheizze' and 'Gentrification' crossed out on them.  But I think that the Fuck Parade pulls loads of people to Berlin year after year because of what it stands for, not because of what it stands against .   It stands for the no-frills unity tha...