The history of Zurich is as long and complex as any of the streets one might cross and get caught up in while enjoying the incredible event that happens here every summer. The streets are mysterious and inviting, as enticing as any chapter or channel in the history of the region, where the multiple cultures pile up over time, reflecting and refracting each other in multiple directions.
In some senses, the Street Parade is full of metaphors that are impossible to split open with the tools found in a box that is as heavy as common sense. In another sense, there is only this present right here, and the present only lasts for nine hours. It’s enough time to find one’s way into a party, and to find one’s way into a moment that keeps evoking a past that needs more water because it’s hot. It’s also summer, and even here, everyone needs to keep hydrating, which is how people sometimes refer to drinking water. The terms don’t matter after a certain point.
Although the choices of fine hotels are more complex to manage in August, they are not as complex as the streets, which mirror and mock history, and become something altogether more certain when the music is loud. House and techno are here, and they all speak to a sentiment that this is truly it. It has to be, because in Zurich, the party people understand that this is what we all wait for.
Love Parades might come and go, ebb and flow with the changing times, where changing sponsorships suggest an end to an era that began before the wall fell in the other city. There are new walls here, and new eras, and for this moment, Zurich starts to rise again, its own wall to contend with in the history of all things. This is the street party that people wait for, and every year, there is a new sense that these complex beats do move on and over each other, like bodies that dance in the sun, watching the summer disappear and invoking another season where art is made in the hands and the eyes of another stranger.
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