Nuit Blanche
September 29-30, 2007
By Sara Jane Mackenzie
Posted October 9th, 2007My motto for this year’s Nuit Blanche was lifted from the Boy Scouts: be prepared.
Early last week I strolled into the Scotiabank at Bloor and Spadina. The women sitting at the information desk stopped talking and looked at me expectantly. I casually asked them where I could find the Nuit Blanche guide books. To my surprise they told me I’d managed to grab their last copy. It was at that moment that I realized there were going to be a lot of people, not just boy scouts, with the same idea.
I spent Saturday afternoon circling events in the guide book with the broad strokes of my hi-lighter. I was confident. I’d created a sensible route which required virtually no backtracking. I was going to see it all. I assembled a large group of friends and even my seventeen-year-old brother (on loan from my terrified overprotective mother who would, no doubt, have a sleepless night of her own). I was to be their fearless leader. I had single-handedly orchestrated the best night ever. I marched forward with a resolve stronger than the one you used to feel on the first day of class. This year would be different.
We started in the east, making our way to the Eaton Centre. I was so excited to see Anna Madelska’s balloon extension being built inside the mall. Unfortunately I didn’t count on the fact that the balloons take time to inflate. Lots of time. The sculpture was barely six feet tall when we arrived. But we were already behind schedule and had to hurry off to the red light district on Church Street. Perhaps it was just me, but as we strolled along the not-so-scandalous streets I found the disappointingly uncoordinated can-can dancers outside of Lettieri and Pizza Pizza to be an eerie portent. I shuddered. Is this the best you can do, Nuit Blanche? My brother glanced around with a bored look in his eye. He put on his headphones and I began to panic. Some of my friends were jumping ship with “I’ll meet up with you later, call me” flung over their shoulders as they were swallowed by the crowd of leather clad dancers and performers on stilts. My brother must have noticed the crazed look in my eye. “Why do you always have to boss everyone around? Let’s just walk around and cool stuff will happen to us,” he said. I opened my mouth to protest but nothing came out. He was right. I conceded defeat. I realized about two hours into the night that for all my obsessive-compulsive watch glancing, frantic page-flipping and side-stepping of maddeningly slow pedestrians, I was missing the point. And more importantly, I wasn’t having any fun.
I examined my surroundings. Everyone was smiling. I have never seen Toronto smile like this. Although I had often secretly hoped for it, I honestly didn’t think this city was capable of it. It was a tentative smile, its muscles unused to this configuration, but a smile nonetheless. I fell into step with some blue-haired kids with too many necklaces on. Their enthusiasm — which I would normally mistrust or even combat with an irritated scowl — was intoxicating. From the corner of my eye I saw my brother remove his headphones and switch off his iPod. By the time we made it to Trinity Bellwoods for the solemn dismembering of a life-sized chocolate deer, I decided to stop looking at my carefully planned route. I cut my losses. I lounged on the grass. I drank in the fervent sense of excitement and ate some delicious free popcorn. We continued on down Queen Street, our pace set by the ebb and flow of the crowds. I craned my neck.
The night was ending as we approached Noboru Tsubaki’s Giant Locust. The stadium floodlights were jarring in the still-dark morning. We watched as people crawled and scuttled across its back and through its legs, looking like insects themselves. My brother, in a startling display of stamina, broke into a run and launched himself at one of its legs. He fell spectacularly to the ground. The locust was deceivingly underinflated after a night of similar assaults. He got up and grinned sheepishly. “I didn’t think it would... well... I didn’t expect that to happen.” he mumbled. I couldn’t have been happier to agree, and not just because it was funny to see him fall.