Festival of Lights 2018

[sabotabby]

As you may know, the Kensington Market Festival of Lights is my absolute favourite event in Toronto. It's a solstice parade of giant puppets, activists, musicians, and weirdos that culminates in a giant burning in the park. Defiantly grassroots, anticapitalist, and anticolonialist, it is a light in the darkness—literal and metaphorical—and a wild, utopian vision of what the city could be if we allowed it.

Below the cut is my annual attempt to capture what the parade is like. One of these days I'll bring my actual grownup camera, but it's always too crowded for a short person like me to get good shots anyway.

Happy solstice, everyone.





















You can't see what was truly hilarious here, which was that as we were passing by, one of my friends noted that there was only one Doug Ford piñata, and it would be destroyed in seconds. Then the people running it handed the contestant a pool noodle, which is an apt metaphor for the resistance to the Tory regime.

Comments

[franklanguage]

I too am a short person (cue Randy Newman) and although I've never used a selfie stick in public, I did order one off eBay so I could photograph the serial number on my ceiling fan.

There is a reacher for camera (and, truthfully, many others in all different price ranges) that could enable you to take photos as if you were seven feet (2.333 meters) tall. Since this is a recurring event for you, you might want to look into that.

[sabotabby]

This is tempting. Though my actual camera is heavy as balls and adding to the weight just seems unlikely.

[franklanguage]

Yeah, it's really holding it aloft and balancing it that would be the tricky part.

I wear my Canon G9X on my belt so that it's with me over 99% of the time; for a parade or other event, I'd probably use a monopod—if I had the foresight to do this. which what a selfie stick is essentially just a monopod anyway; they weren't invented especially for tourists.