After a three-year break due to the pandemic, the queer Hans-Sachs-Straßenfest will take place again for the first time this Saturday – albeit on a smaller scale than before. Before Corona, up to 10,000 people celebrated on the street in the Isarvorstadt, for the 30th edition only 1500 people have been registered. A larger festival would have been difficult to organize, says Kai Kundrath, the managing director of the organizing gay communication and culture center (Sub), “because the costs are so high and we don’t want to pass them on to the innkeepers and guests”.
The costs have even risen after the district administration department (KVR) issued new requirements at the beginning of the week: access must be restricted by means of barriers and controlled by a security service. Because of the short notice, the CSU city council faction applied to Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) on Thursday for “financial and organizational” support for the organizers.
As parliamentary group spokesman Manuel Pretzl explained, the main thing is to get the administration to find less bureaucratic and less short-term solutions. “I do hope that the mayor will react,” said Pretzl. The Munich CSU has been trying for a long time to present itself as a partner of the LGBTIQ community.
Sub-Managing Director Kundrath points out that the festival would have been smaller one way or the other due to changed framework conditions. Because the sidewalk cafés and bicycle racks installed during the Corona phase cannot simply be dismantled, there would not be as much space available as before anyway.