Description 45 - Nuit Blanche Plus Tard

The mega-success returns, but can the art really hold out 'til the break of day? I get answers from a church, from under an iceberg and inside a port-a-potty. With cameos by The Gap Band, Clint Eastwood and manicurist furries.

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Associated links
Official Nuit Blanche website again
blogTO review
Torontoist photo album
The real Leonard Cohen quote about the ROM Crystal
The Crystal itself
The Word on the Street
Bravo!FACT
Gardiner Museum
Queen's Park @ Wikipedia

As I'd noted briefly, Nuit Blanche actually started at 7pm the previous night, which was when I got off work. Hobbling up Queen's Park to Bloor, I saw coming in my direction a small group of young people in formal clothes, like they came out of the movie Metropolitan. They were trying to dance, but were somewhat restricted by the fact they were attached to each other by the chest or shoulder, so they were this modest, happy mass of limbs toddling down the street toward me. Fortunately, I had read somewhere there'd be this group "dancing" throughout Zone A, so I said aloud "And so it begins," wished them a good night and went on my way.

I hope you around town heeded my recommendation to check out Nuit Blanche yourself. For me, at that time of morning in my little corner of my zone, it was lamer than depicted in the episode (and I know that's saying something). I cut my trip through a piece at St. Thomas' church that was pretty well finished and cut my discovery that a piece on the front of the Bata Shoe Museum had been taken down by the time I'd gotten there. But I hear other zones were still hopping, and that in the end, the event attracted way more people than last year, which I guess would put the attendance over half a million.

Man. Can you believe that?

I do. I don't think they're lying. But that just blows my mind.

When I got to my work location at the Christie Mansion, the guy I was relieving asked me whether I went to the piece in Lower Bay Station. D'OH! I really wanted to see that! But I later learned that the line to get in was every bit as long as the line to go down there during Doors Open, which was give-up-your-day long, so I wouldn't have made it in anyway. However, those kids at Torontoist (to be exact, Tony Makepeace) did a wicked 360-degree panorama of it! So go here and dig it with QuickTime VR. And one of these days, maybe I'll finally make it into that mysterious abandoned subway station known for its appearances in movies. Ha - maybe I'll have to be on a film crew to get there.