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Our path through Nuit Blanche began in Yorkville, where I gave a tour of some secret and not-so-secret parts of Yorkville early in the evening. On the subway to Bay Station, I was a little angry that it was raining. Why does God hate Toronto? The rain though didn’t deter anybody though (and made it almost cozy), and there was a big group waiting to walk around, and most of them stayed until the end — and we gained more as we went. We started at the Yorkville rock — I invited other people to share their thoughts on places we stopped at. One woman said that when they put the rock together (it was shipped from up north and all the pieces were numbered, like a puzzle) they kept getting it wrong and starting over again. Zanta made an appearance behind me on top of the Rock. It was interesting to watch the faces of the tour folk change from curious to shock as they looked up above me at the shirtless one (though covered in a see-through orange plastic rain jacket) — I explained what I knew about Zanta, and he told everybody his website address, then moved on.<\/p>\n
It was, I think, a wonderful night. The amount of people out in Yorkville and around OCAD between 9pm-2am was amazing. It had the feeling of a house party that stretched over many city blocks. Around 11:30pm, in the fog of philosophers walk, there was a loud SPLAT as a young woman slipped at the top of the hill (she was impatient with the crowds and tried to detour along the slope) and slid down the mud on her bum. The crowd went “Oh!” with the first splat, then a long “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” as we watched her slide to a stop. She raised her hand in victory at the end, and everyone cheered.<\/p>\n
So many pieces addressed, took advantage of and\/or just had fun with public space. Many overlapped with each other, and addressed similar themes. At Yorkville and Hazelton Avenues, I started talking about the Myna Bird and Penny Farthing coffeehouses that were there, and a few feet away the giant video installation I am Curious<\/em> showed archival clips of those café’s — a nice, unplanned overlap.<\/p>\n It was also neat how we were able to zig-zag through public and semi-public spaces throughout the night (and all those pools — Hart House & Fastwurms, Harrison Baths & the sad and tragic story of Roy & Silo’s gay penguin divorce and eventually the Trinty Bellwoods pool). We felt like Billy in the Family Circus, leaving a hash-marked trail on the map of downtown Toronto, in and out of buildings, with a hundred impromptu meetings along the way. By 4am we were standing outside of the Gladstone, no energy to wait in the short line to get inside, so we dispersed.<\/p>\n Usually big, civic events have a certain awkwardness to them — a sort of lowest-common-denominator entertainment that either won’t offend or that tries to appeal to greatest number of people. This night didn’t feel like that. It was spread out and decentralized, and we got the feeling that power and planning was put into the hands of the right people, and that trickled down to a bunch of artists who did some really neat things — and still, a load of people came out to see it. People are smart, and if you do something good, they’ll come out and see it.<\/p>\n Nuit Blanche needs to happen every year. More zones! Suburban zones too! Not to put too fine (or happy fuzzy) a point on it, but it seemed to capture the wonder and joy of the Blackout night, but without the thawing meat and people trapped in elevators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"