Metropolis of Mind.

As we turn towards the darker and colder months of our yearly cycle, I find myself reminiscing of warm and bright days past. One of the hottest, out in the sun all day, was at the all-day rock festival known as SARStock…. 

Toronto, Summer ‘03. Half a million deep sea of souls. Former airfield.  11 hours. Scorching sun. Rolling Stones, AC/DC, et al. Me & S skipping a day of grad school to mingle with the masses.

People everywhere, never ending, many of them with an a-feared look on their faces, worried they might not survive sharing a space with half a million people. Doesn’t happen every day. 

But wanting to enjoy it, tossing your cameras up to firefighters on top of towers taking pics for you of the masses stretching on the horizon forever.

Vast fields of Port-a-potties layed out according to current urban sprawl designs.

Beer gardens: lots and lots and lots of really drunk people. Once you’ve waited to get in, you lost your place if you left to, say, relieve yourself. So, women peeing under the plastic tables for privacy, a man peeing against the side of a car, thinking he was hidden, not realising that S and I were lounging in the field in plain view 30 yards behind him, too drunk to remember to look behind himself when scouting out a “hidden” spot to relieve himself.

S reflecting on how great it is to be living in a country, Canada, where half a million people can come to an event like this and still be peaceful. Meanwhile, I’m watching as, about 40 yards behind her, two guys brawling like the drunken bozos they were, one finally kicking the crap out of the other, lying on the ground, too drunk to really notice or care.

A woman who had made her way to the top of a hosing station, about twelve feet off the ground, getting into the festivities with her own brand of stardom: eliciting drunken, lascivious howls from the masses around her as she stipteased them, before finally taking it all off to the whooping delight of all (males) around.

One of the entry points to the concert site, replete with turnstyles and minimum wage help checking every napsack coming in, resulting in thousands of would be spectators/participants standing in full sun for hours to get in, even though the show had long since started. Newsflash for organizers: it’s an all-day event during summertime in Toronto–ie, the fans would of course come with a day’s supplies in napsacks on what would predictably be very, very hot. Needless to say, the thousands of people standing for a few hours in the full July sun waiting “in line” (it was chaos) to get in were kept waiting as every bag was checked for…what? After way too long, some sensible supervisor made his/her way over to this portion of the festival site and, performing good damage control, made the right call to stop with the baggage checks and just let people through. In very short order, all made it into the show, albeit having missed a few acts while getting sunburnt and, presumably for some, peeing in their pants while waiting in the midst of hordes standing cheek by jowl in a field.

Lining up for water bottles (did I mention it was hot that day?) - Long line ups of people with empty bottles lining up for great lengths to get a chance at refilling their bottles with water out of a spigot of sorts protruding out of a huge water tanker/truck thingy. S & I innocently strolling by as a woman reached out for our bottles, offering to fill them for us. We quickly assessed the situation, passed over our bottles, and she, in some form of solidarity with us as fellow members of the sea of people, kindly filled them up and we were on our way with full replenishment of water. As we kept walking, we saw that we had just unwittingly jumped the queue, which kept getting longer the farther we walked. The line went on and on, unlucky, trusting folks just waiting for their fair turn to come, not moving, unaware that all sorts of people were jumping the line in the free-for-all that was taking place up at the hose/spout at the front of the line.

The food “section”–it was a runway lined with vendors–dominated by stalls selling all manner of beef products, the Albertan government jumping on the woe-is-me bandwagon (the whole SARStock spectacle was conceived by some self-serving Toronto-area politicians as a promotional, “support Toronto” event intending to diminish concern/fear from would-be tourists to the area about the recent spate of SARS deaths in the city, and drumming up a few feel-good votes in the process). The Canadian cattle industry, primarily located in Alberta, was being hit hard by cattle embargoes over Mad-Cow concerns in their main market, the US. So Alberta Premier Ralphy-babes Kline saw an opportunity to tag along with his own sorry story of wretchedness, and came flogging pulled-beef lunches to the masses, showing it was safe both to eat Alberta beef, and to do it in Toronto. A mile of beef food product stalls. Not a hot dog in sight (pork).

The music was mostly routine for us, as the real show that day was sharing life with 500,000 people. Except for the last two acts, AC/DC and the Stones. It was AC/DC’s day hands-down, in terms of a battle-of-the-bands point of view. They had the immense benefit of coming on just as the sun was setting, thus a) performing as the day was starting to cool, removing the oppression the sun had been contributing to the scene all day, and b) being able to be seen on the many huge screens which in daylight were impossible to view, so were just in the way. The lead singer Brian Johnson grinning ear to ear, his eyes bulging out of his head, having an absolute blast being there, performing in front of so many people, his utter delight and enthusiasm infectious for all to feel. And the heartbeat of the band, Angus Young, one of the most dominant stage presences in rock, doing his own striptease thing, finally removing his pants to show half a million gleeful Canadians his underwear sporting the Canadian flag.

And then it was the Stones. They were fine, which translates to being really good because, after all, it’s the Stones, man! They were clearly enjoying themselves too, though trying really hard not to show it, as is their style. At one point, Justin Timberlake (who earlier in the day during his own set had been roundly booed) came on to do a bit of a duet with Mick, highlighting the decades-long gap in performing experience between the two. Keef clearly out of it, at one point taking an opportunity to mumble unintelligibly except to remind us of “why we’re here: for those that took the hit.” Thanks, Keith. Classic. Ronnie had some fun too, which is always nice. Charlie grimaced. All in all, watching the Stones play a set is a nice way to end a day-long sunburn fest sharing a space with a half million people.

On our way out of the fields and runways at the end of the night, our feet crunching down on a carpet of empty plastic water bottles. A crunch with literally every step, the ground riddled with them so that you couldn’t avoid stepping on one, going on for about a mile. No point waiting to get on the subway, would be waiting for hours, so S & I walked the few miles, along with thousands of other people, merriment the whole way, walking off those multiple pulled-beef sandwiches, a day well spent, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Thank god for self-agrandising politicians.