solstice :: kensington festival of lights

[sabotabby]

Since 1987, Red Pepper Spectacle Arts and other local groups have thrown a parade to celebrate Winter Solstice in Kensington Market. Everyone hangs out with paper lanterns and celebrates the coming of spring by -- you're not going to believe this -- dressing up in bizarre costumes and lighting things on fire. This year, I remembered to bring a camera.


This is not a furry convention. This is high culture.



There's also a Green Man beheading, but my pictures of it didn't turn out very well.





Fire eaters. On stilts, no less.


I like how this one came out.


Birds are creepy.


Especially owls.


The parade goes down Augusta Ave.


While there are many children in attendance, some will be having nightmares.




Along the way, there's dancing, theatre, and music on the rooftops, much of which honours the various cultural traditions that make up the city.


Outside Uprising.


The whole thing ends with a dance around the Fire Sculpture in Al Waxman Park. Which then, of course, gets lit on fire.

I like Solstice. Not the hippie neo-pagan shit, but the concept behind the holiday. This is the longest (and theoretically coldest) night of the year. The shortest day. The worst it gets. It can only get better. This goes well with the whole “this too shall pass” attitude I've been copping as of late.

I wrote a Christmas card to Mordechai Vanunu today. (I’m such a squealing fangirl. I didn’t end it with “P.S. Your brother is wicked hot”, at least.) The kick I get from doing something that I think might brighten someone’s day a little is almost exactly the same kick I get from doing something naughty or cruel. Go figure.

Comments

Solar Stillage Festivalista of You Light Up My Life Puppetistas...

[himy.livejournal.com]

Excrement! Fecal Matter! Shit Shit Shit!

I miss the market on puppetista philled nights like this....

For all the talk and wont of OH SO San Francisco, the Bay Area has nothing up on T.O. when it comes to Kensington Market and the Festival of Lights...

Thanks for the photos Rac, they're wonderfully full of wonder.

~ HiMY! ~ at 9:23 pm Pacific time.

Re: Solar Stillage Festivalista of You Light Up My Life Puppetistas...

[sabotabby]

I'm not sure there's much that measures up to Kensington. See what you're missing? Giant fucking puppets.

Re: Solar Stillage Festivalista of You Light Up My Life Puppetistas...

[himy.livejournal.com]

Me make giant puppets, don't'cha'know!

sigh...

me miss night of playing with giant matches, I mean, stilts...

[lopukhov.livejournal.com]

In Photo 5 from the bottom, especially the kid with the reflective tape on his coat. Yeah, he'll have the worst of nightmares.

Nevertheless, high culture or not, it looks pretty furry to me...

[sabotabby]

He'll have nightmares about his parents traumatizing him by wearing really ugly outfits.

It's more papier mâche than fun fur, I promise.

rote is going to flame me, I bet.

[lopukhov.livejournal.com]

OMG that ezekiel33graphics site is going to give me nightmares tonight. Esp. the graphic with him and his family, incl. the lion of Judah.

[sabotabby]

I'm afraid a giant hand will take my shofar.

[rote.livejournal.com]

No!

[sabotabby]

Not even a little?

nightmares?

[himy.livejournal.com]

You want nightmares?



I imagine you'd turn it on and off a few times just because.

Re: nightmares?

[sabotabby]

Hahaha I want one.

Re: nightmares?

[(Anonymous)]

A Steven Wright joke:

"I have this lightswitch in my apartment that doesn't do anything, so I flick it on and off when I'm bored ... The other day I got a letter from a woman in Germany ... It said, 'Cut it out' ..."

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

My aunt and uncle used to have an annual solstice bonfire (Fairbanks, Alaska) to bring back the sun. Eventually, just too many people started coming, and it became way too much work for them, so it no longer happens.

[sabotabby]

Every time I go to this thing someone tells me that it's the second last year because it's getting too commercial.

[sarars.livejournal.com]

that looks like one of the more interesting things to do out of doors. is vanunu in prison again? I haven't been keeping up. it's nice of you to send him a card. I got this sort of funny card I'm sending to a half-jewish friend of mine -- it has a couple of orthodox jews on the cover and inside it says, 'happy holidays two jew!'. that would have been a good one to send to him.

[sabotabby]

No, Vanunu's living in a church in Jerusalem. His freedom of movement and speech are curtailed, they detained him once, and he can't leave the country, but he's not technically in prison. I got his address. If I had that card I would definitely send it to him (hee!), but I sent him a nice print from an Inuit artist instead.

[human-loser.livejournal.com]

The thing that blows my mind in all of this is that Al Waxman has a park named after him.

Sure, sure, he's the king of the place and everything...but...AL WAXMAN???

[sabotabby]

Oh, come on. Not many Canadian neighbourhoods have hit TV shows named after them. (Degrassi being an exception, I guess.) They renamed the park after he died.