Bittersweet Melodies

I enjoyed my Friday night in. Something neat came out of it. I tweeted about the book I was reading, "The Story of Beautiful Girl" by Rachel Simon, and the author tweeted back at me! She told me she's going to be in Toronto at the end of the month to do some readings, and I'm totally going to go. I love how Twitter allows some interaction between you and the artists/authors/musicians/etc. that you love.

On Saturday, I met up with a neighbourhood pal for some shopping and coffee. I got some nice bird earrings, and some stuff at the Body Shop. I also picked up this clock at Indigo since it was Teacher Appreciation weekend so I got 20%. Unsurprisingly, I've had my nerdy eyes on it. It now lives by my desk.


Saturday night was Nuit Blanche. Nuit Blanche is an all-night art event in Toronto where the city is supposedly transformed by installations. Jason and I decided to go for a good sushi dinner, then have a nap, and head out at about 10 pm to hopefully beat some of the crowds.

We followed a plan of attack that was printed in a weekly newspaper. We started at Wychwood Barns Community Gallery which was away from the downtown sites, but supposed to have some stuff. There were a few installations there and some artists had their spaces open, but nothing particularly worthwhile. At least we had to walk through a nice neighourhood to get there.

We headed to Zone A, the north part of downtown, from there. We went to quite a few installations, but found very little that we liked. Too many of them were video installations, which don't particularly lend themselves to photographs. The only video installation that was somewhat remarkable was the upside down Niagara Falls. The only other thing I liked in Zone A was the installation in Bay Street subway station.

Bay Street station has an unused "ghost" station located below the regular station. It's apparently used in the filming of lots of movies. Anyway, the installation turned the ghost station into a TTC slumber party. The station was decorated with lights, and had yoga mats lying around everywhere for you to nap on if you wished. There were trains on either side of the platform that were pitch black, and had sheets hanging over some seats to create forts. It was pretty neat, but too dark to take any photos.

When we got to Zone B, the mid part of downtown, the closed-off portion of Yonge St was insanely busy and not overly pleasant to stroll down. We decided to cab out to the Distillery District which had a few installations, as well as some food trucks for the event. By that time we were both hungry, and got some snacks. I got a maple bacon donut (yummy, but definitely a sometimes food, ha-ha) and we split a grilled cheese sandwich. We went to the Distillery location of Balzac's coffee for hot chocolate.

After feeling better after food and warm drinks, we found the installations in the Distillery District which included a "circus" although it wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped. By this time it was 3 am, so we made the decision to go home as opposed to heading to Zone C. I think we were both cold and tired, and Zone A, where we'd spent most of our time, had been so disappointing that we'd lost our momentum.

I've done Nuit Blanche twice before, and both of these previous times I'd only stayed out for 2-3 hours. Both of those times I saw many more memorable installations as opposed to this year. I think next time I go, I'm going to start in Zone C, since maybe this year that's where all the good stuff was?

We slept in this morning, and after breakfast and some TV, we went out to Soundscapes Records on College St. so that I could buy my copy of Feist's Metals a couple of days early. They were also doing a Willy Wonka contest where tickets to a tiny Feist show next weekend were hidden inside one of the albums in that store. I didn't get the tickets, but I was actually glad since I couldn't really go since I'd already booked my tickets home for Thanksgiving weekend next weekend.

After that we wandered to Sonic Boom records in Kensington Market. I found the coolest thing there: an indie rock colouring book! It has things like a Stars connect-the-dots, a page where you can colour in Hayden's friends, a maze where you can help members of Broken Social Scene get together and make a new record, a page where you can draw the proper hair on the band members of Rilo Kiley and more. How could I not buy that?

After Kensington I headed out to meet up with my friend Elaine to see the movie "The Help" again, so we could see the ending. You might remember that we saw the movie a couple weekends ago, but got evacuated from the theatre due a fire alarm before it ended. The ending was really good, and worth seeing the movie again to see it.

And now it's time for me to crawl into bed with my book and read until it becomes to go to sleep in preparation for Monday. However, the great thing about this week is that it precedes a long weekend. Woot!