BERLIN -- The Love Parade will go on -- just not on the weekend its organizers and backers had hoped for.
"The second Saturday in July belongs to the Love Parade like the Carnival to Rio," Green Party leader Rezzo Schlauch said. "It must stay that way, if Berlin doesn't want to endanger its reputation as a lively and open-minded cultural metropolis."
But the Love Parade almost didn't happen. The massive annual tech-music-fueled party, which pulled in a crowd of 1.3 million last year, will not be cancelled, as some had feared. The party, which celebrates dancing, drinking and nakedness, is moving from July 14 to July 21.
Berlin's local government initially denied Love Parade organizers a permit to hold their event after another group beat them to the punch and filed for a permit first. The Association for the Protection of the Tiergarten opposes the Love Parade because of the havoc it wreaks in Berlin's central park, leaving grass and other vegetation trampled, urinated upon and heaped with trash.
But Berlin needs the economic boost of the Love Parade, estimated at more than $100 million -- and also likes what it does for the city's image. Hannover and other cities offered to take over the huge event, but organizers weren't interested.
