“Where were you when the lights went out?” There’s about 100-150 of us amassed in front of Central Tech as local jazzer-about-town Richard Underhill leads the crowd through a few refrains of this tune, which he’s written for the fifth anniversary of the Big Blackout. It’s nearly 9pm, and the extensive horn section, goth-punk circus performers, costumed eccentrics, fire dancer, Streets Are for People enthusiasts, photobloggers, filmmakers and random curious citizens have just been joined by a legion of Critical Mass cyclists, all ringing bells and post-ride glow.
We’re waiting for the go code — the word from on high. We’re waiting for a man in a full Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey Mouse costume to lead us on a quest to reclaim the intersection of Bloor and Spadina in celebration of that one impossible day when Toronto (and most of the eastern seaboard) went dark.
The crowd has been growing steadily since the scheduled 8pm meet-up time. With a number of community groups participating — the aforementioned Streets Are for People and Critical Mass, along with Newmindspace, Reclaim the Streets, Drummers in Exile, Take the Tooker, Bike Pirates (you get the idea) — the word is out and everyone is in great spirits.
Even when I first arrived and people started getting calls about a huge storm over Dufferin Street, everyone seemed to be trying to ignore the impending doom-rain by watching the sky melt through a few layers of threatening hues: orange, rust, blood. The massive bursts of lightning that scraped across the westward Bathurst skyline at unreal angles elicit much cheering and awe. It’s almost as electric as the pent up energy of a crowd of people preparing to illegally parade though the main street of Canada’s biggest city.
Chatting with people as we wait, most were in the city for North America’s biggest power outage. The few who were out of the area say they were sorry to have missed it — I guess this is one disaster that qualified as being pretty fun. One guy recounts how he was off that day hanging out in a park when all of a sudden scores of people started showing up and having picnics. It took him a little while to realize what was going on. I, like many people, was working that day and delighted in being set free well before my shift at a Queen Street home-furnishings shop was due to end. I still remember just hanging out on the curb with the rest of the staff and chatting with passersby, trying to piece together what was going on and what it all meant.
At 9pm, Mickey Mouse (who is actually Streets Are for People’s Shamez Amlani) gives the crowd its final instructions: the parade will creep along Sussex Street and up Robert. “And then when we hit Bloor, the shit busts open wide.”
As we begin to March and the crowd stretches out like a many-celled organism, I try to gauge just how many people are out here. We are rounding corners and Sussex Street is appropriately dark, but I can see people peering out their windows, shocked that the strange noise out on their quiet residential street is actually a parade in progress. I’m surprised that more of them don’t come down and join in. I mean, who wouldn’t want to join a seemingly random late-night parade?
As soon as Bloor Street is in sight, the big whoop-up begins. Underhill (pictured above) leads the band through a wicked Mingus-styled jam on his “Where were you?” theme, which works perfectly for the oddball ensemble now comprised of djembes, bagpipes, a percussion corps and a considerably expanded version of the Kensington Horns.
We overtake Bloor and Spadina for about 15 minutes. There’s so much dancing and drumming that it’s hard to decide what to do. A picnic table supporting a kiddie pool full of water is now a dancing station for three girls and a hose. Shamez/Mickey is scurrying around the intersection setting up pylons to divert the traffic. A bunch of young maple trees are posted around the perimeter. Eventually the police show up, but it’s already speech time and Shamez is explaining that we just demonstrated that this intersection could be a piazza with a fountain where people could hang out.
The intersection is clear within minutes and the crowd either disperses or joins up with the not-so-silent Street Rave beside the domino sculpture in the Art Park. I manage to corner Shamez for a few minutes to get his thoughts on the evening. “It went off without a hitch,” he says, “although we couldn’t get all the streetlights off. But this is fun and quirky. That’s why the costume: you can’t put handcuffs on these big mitts.”
“For a brief 10 minutes a hole opened up in the space-time continuum,” he says, explaining that it’s wrong to think that this intersection is static and can’t be changed. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a park where people can fall in love and hang out. The subway is still running below us. “Cars have enough streets,” he adds. “We need more streets for people.”
If ever there was an appropriate occasion for thinking outside the urban box, the blackout certainly qualifies. If only we could make Aug. 14 some kind of civic holiday.