Copenhagen is once again slowly gearing up for Distortion Festival, where thousands of young people are expected to descend upon the city for a week of debauchery.
But while the Nørrebro and Vesterbro districts can look forward to hosting upwards of 90,000 people at each of their massive street parties, the city centre will this year be spared the hordes.
“Distortion welcomes a free harbour party in 2013 but says temporarily goodbye to the street party in the city centre,” a Distortion press release stated.
According to Distortion, the decision to skip over the inner city is because the organisers want to create something new together with many of the businesses from Studiestræde – the street at the heart of the inner-city party – that normally co-operate with Distortion.
“Distortion will be holding the harbour party together with a number of the street hosts from Studiestræde. The ambition is to take the good parts of Studiestræde out to the waterfront,” the press release said.
Despite the slight change of programme, Distortion will otherwise proceed as usual with a range of free street parties during the day followed by ticketed club events running late into the night.
The festival, which bills itself as a celebration of ‘club culture’, will be held from Wednesday, May 29 to Sunday, June 2.
The street parties will be held in Nørrebro on Wednesday and Vesterbro on Thursday, while Refshaleøen will host Friday's street and night parties as well as Saturday's final party. Sunday is set aside for ‘chill’.
Distortion – whose director, Thomas Dalvang Fleurquin, is a co-founder of The Copenhagen Post – has suffered from enormous popularity but limited economic success. This is largely because the festival has to pay for toilets and clean-up for the enormous free street parties that end up tiring out the party goers prematurely so they forego the ticketed club nights in the evening.
To generate some extra income, the festival issued voluntary ‘street armbands’ costing 100 kroner that contributed to the cost of holding Distortion and provided the wearer with extra privileges such as cheaper drinks.
The idea was such a success that it is being reintroduced this year. Tickets for the night parties and the street armband are now on sale at a discounted price until March 4.
In the run-up to the summer festival, Distortion is also holding a series of monthly ‘Dark Distortion’ nights. Visit https://www.facebook.com/cphdistortion for more information.
