Gothurday

REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Revellers attend the Wave and Goth festival in Leipzig, on May 25, 2012. The annual festival, known in Germany as Wave-Gotik Treffen, features up to 150 bands and musicians playing Gothic rock and other styles of the "dark wave" music subculture attracting a regular audience of up to 20000, according to organizers. The festival runs through May 28.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: Culture • dark wave • Entertainment • goth • lifestyle • photography • pop culture

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ciacontra

Can the attendees properly be called “revelers”?
- oasisob1
  
  You can get kicked out for smiling.
RJ

Looking at those kids makes me want to listen to Jimmy Buffett as a counterbalance.
SoItBegins

Shouldn’t it be “Gothursday”?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002304720365 David Howard

Yes. Oh my god yes, can they be called revelers. You clearly have never been to a goth/darkwave festival.
- daen
  
  I was just about to say how much fun WGT is! I miss it!
deeceegee

Let This Be Your Last Battlefield…
rhodian

Wow. I lived in Leipzig in ’97 and remember the sudden early-summer happening of a weekend full of goths; I didn’t realise it was a regular thing. Cool!
allium

I wonder if the guy on the right is named Lawrence.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=865070110 Travis James

sometimes people get the chance to forget their world and enjoy life and what they think is right…
enjoy your cubicle.
http://anthonysteele.myopenid.com/ StrawberryFrog

I’m catching some wi-fi in a hotel lobby in Leipzig; it is my first visit to the city. I’m having a great time; the city is beautiful and the festival is great. As far as I know, there are 3 big German gothic festivals: Amphi (Cologne), M’era Luna (Hanover) and WGT (Leipzig). Nothing in the UK comes close to their scale. I’ve met people who have come here from near and far (USA and South Africa).

My main problem now: deciding which of those I can afford time, money and energy to come to next year!

Also: for fans of “New Aesthetic”, face paint seems to be a trend. Blocks or stripes, dazzle camouflage against the face-recognising machines.

A funny thing happened on the late tram last night. I ended up sitting next to the only 2 non-goths on a very full carriage. He turned to me and asked in German if the festival was international. I stammered out that Why yes, I came over from London, and my German is poor. He switchd to English and asked if Goth was at all political. I was about so say that it agreed with my politics, then I remembered some bands use sexist and/or right-wing images and words, and some of them seem to not be joking. So I replied “no, not political, but it is tolerant.”. This is true I hope.
http://twitter.com/Derek_A_B Derek B

Richmond Avenal approves of this message.
thermoplasticity

I wonder if the guy on the right has ever seen Star Trek TOS. Or knows who Frank Gorshin is.
Cowicide

Looks like Gimpday to me.
- http://anthonysteele.myopenid.com/ StrawberryFrog
  
  Some are kinky. We don’t care.