Berlin’s WHOLE Festival has become known for drawing a crowd of alt muscle gays in budgie smugglers and jockstraps – but did you know there’s a FLINTA enclave holding down the fort too? That’s who Lucy Nurnberg and Ali Wagner were catering to this past weekend, when they brought their Uhaul Dyke Rescue concept to the festival’s 2026 edition. “There’s a big FLINTA population at WHOLE, but it’s definitely the minority and it can be hard to find your people in a sea of muscle gays!” Nurnberg says.

Back in the summer of 2023, when Nurnberg was fretting about a dystopian future in which queer rights had been rolled back, she came up with the idea of an emergency rescue service run by lesbians who are called out to different queer emergencies. One of those emergency vans was a ‘Mobile Dyke Bar’, and so the Uhaul Dyke Rescue was born, its name inspired by the Lea DeLaria joke: “What does a lesbian bring to a second date? A Uhaul truck.” In the summer of 2024, Nurnberg built the van for real, fitting out the shell of a Luton van with the help of her ‘right-hand dyke’ Ali Wagner. Since then, the Mobile Dyke Bar has been to Glastonbury, Field Maneuvers, Mighty Hoopla and even the Victoria & Albert Museum.

After a ‘mini-takeover’ at WHOLE last year – where they were in charge of the Lemonaid pick-up truck – Nurnberg, Wagner and co asked for a permanent space this year, to create a dedicated destination for their community. “A small crew of us from London came down early to build the space, making it look like a used car showroom with amphitheatre tyre seating and a stage where our hosting staff ran arm wrestling and oil wrestling tournaments,” she says.

Fashion wise, Nurnberg refers to the crowd as “equal parts sexy and silly” and says that there’s no strict dress code, but rather a “come as you are” attitude. “We wanted to create a space where people are empowered to be as sexy and comfortable in themselves as possible,” she says. “Uhaul has always leaned punk in spirit and the fashion has always grown out of who was in the room – we’d never want to engineer it.”

Despite the “many forms of dyke identity,” on show, the fashion at the festival often leans towards automotive and DIY references, which makes sense given the name. Elsewhere, high cut bikinis, classic tank tops, baggy basketball shorts and latex hot pants with ‘horny’ printed on them also proved very popular, while a couple of revellers cheekily dressed as ‘Beaver Scouts’. “Being able to express our identities and styles outside of the cis-normative male gaze is so liberating,” concludes Nurnberg. “One of the reasons I started Uhaul Dyke Rescue was to celebrate the style, sexiness and humour of this community. The world should take note!”

Scroll through the gallery at the top of the page to see all the looks from the festival