Sunrise Skylights: Luca Hänni and the breakdown service for pop culture
31.7.2020
Translation: machine translated
Luca Hänni performs in front of a car park, I drink Bilz, a girl climbs around on a pick-up truck bed. Festival romance is redefining itself as a car park party.
A little girl next to my pickup can't see a thing. She can't climb onto the roof of her parents' Jeep Grand Cherokee, even though the promise was apparently made beforehand. I open the pick-up area of my Dodge Ram 1500, she climbs up and can watch Luca Hänni. She's here for Loco Escrito, but Luca is currently performing. She is one of the maximum 1500 people at the Sunrise Skylights Festival, where 300 cars are parked in the car park in front of the stage and listen via the radio.
The concept of the Sunrise Skylights festival is both new and old at the same time. Essentially, it aims to combine the romance of a drive-in cinema in the United States from the 1940s to 1960s with the Swiss people's spasmodic need for concerts under the open sky. In order to comply with the social distancing guidelines prescribed by the federal government, there are no big speakers on stage. You have to set your car stereo to FM 89.5.
The theory sounds good. So does the music, depending on the car. But the atmosphere remains off.
Pop culture must not stop
The 299 cars and the one pick-up seem a little lost. The concert atmosphere feels different. It lacks the exuberance, the togetherness, the lukewarm beer from the PET bottle and someone shouting "Helga!". Or alternatively: the cocktails at the unspeakable glamping, a bastardisation of camping, but with glamour. This is the idea of a tent without a tent.
The travel and entertainment industry is never too shy to come up with new ideas. Glamping was invented by the British in 2005 and 15 years later, drive-in open airs are the proposed replacement for mud baths in the Sittertobel or high heels at the Frauenfeld Open Air.
Environmentalists hope for the electric revolution. Sunrise Skylights hopes for more petrol. The lakeside promenades with their e-bikes are closed, the car park is open. Ticino number plates, Thurgau number plates and Vaudoise number plates have arrived. They seem to want to make up for the biggest drop in CO2 emissions worldwide triggered by the pandemic on their own. Plus my white driving environmental disaster, which I love dearly despite everything.
The Dodge Ram is a crowd-puller, because the loading area is high enough for everyone to look over the 300 cars on the square and see the stage. The stereo system in the car is loud enough that it can shoot good sound towards the loading area when the roof and rear windows are open. The loading area of an 18.1-litre US pickup with a V8 engine. Energy efficiency class G, baby!
Breakdown service not just for cars
CO2 opponents are grumbling. Doctors are worried. The entertainment industry is spinning and inventing. Perhaps the Sunrise Skylights are not the solution to all our social problems. Maybe the organisers' idea was the stupidest ever. But at least it's better than nothing, assuming that the culture mob has to meet up again every now and then.
The event also functions well as a breakdown service. For pop culture fans who like to meet up for a joint event. For the airport, which is suffering from the cancellation of air traffic and has probably rented out the car park with the resonant name P17 at a profit. For Luca Hänni, both his career and his desire to meet his fans.
And not least for the cars on the pitch. Because what the audience doesn't think about, the organisers have considered: A car battery is not made to power an entire car for an evening. The concert on FM 89.5 needs electricity. Lights to search for a lost M&M, but then declare it missing, too. As a result, some cars don't want to drive off at the end. The battery of the Dodge survived. About 25% still remain. Not everyone is so lucky.
Against the booze
It's not just the cars that are running out of juice, the visitors are also mostly stranded here. Where at the St. Gallen Open Air, boozing - not drinking - guests bury a supply of beer in the grounds before the festival starts, the question doesn't even arise at Skylights. If you drive, you don't drink. That's it.
There are cans on the dashboard of the Dodge. Brewdog brand non-alcoholic pale ale. Punk AF. Good stuff. Plus a few cans of Bilz. The non-alcoholic brew from Feldschlösschen, which has survived for 30 years without a redesign, is pure nostalgia. I remember the Denner on Rorschach's Fliederstrasse, where my grandfather bought me a can for the first time. That was a long time ago. Early 1990s. Tasted better back then, I think.
So the Skylights do have their charm and the nostalgia makes me think. Luca Hänni announced in advance that he misses the stage, the interaction with his fans. Is this how he imagined it? "Bella Bella" in front of the avalanche of metal? Would Loco Escrito like to give more concerts like this? How did DJ Tanja La Croix find it? The world owes me no answers as I sit comfortably in the driver's seat, sipping Bilz and eating M&Ms. The rain is pattering on the windscreen and I can no longer see the stage. Instead, I see people in orange safety waistcoats with holdalls hurrying through the rain to cars with baffled drivers. No matter. Because someone can say what they like, for me there are definitely worse ways to spend an evening.
And next door in the Grand Cherokee, a little girl with a gap in her teeth is sleeping. She crawled into the back seat of her parents' car before Loco Escrito and fell asleep. That's why the Skylights don't end with a motorcade from P17 towards the motorway, but rather with people with holdalls in orange safety waistcoats hurrying through the rain to cars with baffled drivers.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
