07-17-2007 – The Edmonton Queen

Running in front of the storm, the wind rips down the river valley to whip the deck of the boat. We dodge skittering plastic chairs, weigh down napkins and menus with plates and cellphones. We ought to be taking shelter down on the dining deck with the rest of the lubbers, but something keeps us on station; we paid money for these tickets, and damned if we’re going to waste them huddled inside a floating restaurant. Besides, we can’t just abandon these nachos…

This Father’s Day started out with great promise, breakfasttime showers breaking to summer sunshine. A good day for a family cruise on the Edmonton Queen, riverboat pride of the North Saskatchewan. Down by Rafter’s Landing the heat raised that damp, good valley smell from the soaked greenery as a kid at the ticket trailer – obviously well-drilled in the unforgiving ways of transport – wailed in fear: “Daddy, we’ll miss the boat! Daddy! We’ll miss the BOOOO-OAT!”

Relax, kid; you sound like your mom. Besides, even if you miss this sailing, you’ll have years and years in which to try again. After some early error-comedy and fun-poking, and with the passage of time allowing us to come to terms with her depth-proscribed area of operation, the Queen has become a fixture in mainstream Edmontonian hearts, a slightly silly but beloved extravagance, like the Chateau Lacombe’s revolving restaurant or the Igloo Room at WEM. She’s now featured in too many paintings, murals and tourist brouchures to be allowed to sink or scuttle, literally or metaphorically.

Still, regulations require lifejacket drill. As the girl on the loudspeaker goes over the floatation-device procedure and gives us the rundown of riverboat Dos and Don’ts, she mentions something about the “Stern Bar”. Immediately I’m taken out of the safety moment, visualizing such a place. Concrete bar-top and form-follows-function furnishings, industrial lighting, barmaids in grey librarian tweeds giving you the drinks they decide you need and not taking any shit about it. Some kind of dystopian sci-fi tavern music. I like it; it’d be a refreshing change from the usual vaguely inept chirpiness…

Unfortunately, the only thing stern about the Stern Bar – other than its picturesque location near the churning paddlewheels – is the boat’s security detail, whose main job seems to be patrolling the gunwales like sailors repelling boarders, stopping safety-conscious moms and dads from lifting their precious little ones up past guardrail level for a better look at the river they’re now dangling over. This duty keeps the vigilant marines very busy.

The Stern Bar pours Santa Carolina, a real fightin’ Cabernet. With a pronounced tannic rush taking point and playfully aggressive notes of blackcurrant and chem lab on the nose, this frisky claretoid presents well in its plastic catering goblet. I tip the barmaid two bucks for generosity; she poured until the wine formed a meniscus and I had to stoop-n’-slurp before I could carry it away without danger to my light-colored sport coat.

Back at the family table, the conversation has turned – as I’m sure many an Edmonton Queen conversation has turned – to the subject of river-valley development. Details aside, the consensus seems to be that Louise McKinney park should have been / should be developed with a riverfront commercial strip “like Granville Island.” Parking, strolling and spending, slurping $10 margaritas on a chain-restaurant patio while watching reflected mini-lights twinkle on the dark water… this is the new dream for the valley. Because God forbid we maintain a zone that’s not actively picking your pocket; any space that’s not blaring satellite radio over the white noise of espresso machines is waste land. Besides, as is strenuously mentioned, “you could make nothing but serious money down there!”

The storm’s blowing up harder now as we round the bend before the turnaround point, Capilano Bridge like a mirage in the distance. There are tents in the trees below the topside condoscape; friendly bums(?) wave hello. Now rain’s coming, with wind that pushes my half-filled glasstic toward me as if to say “Drink up! Drink up!” We’re the only ones left on deck in the tempest, save for the security dudes stacking chairs so they don’t waltz away. I imagine it more epic than it is, imagine mythical Voyage of Sinbad monsters in the water, hiding in the aspens… the Sirens of the Storm Sewer Outfall…

“Don’t listen, men! Their song will ensorcel your wits! Stop your ears with wax!”

Except there is no wax at hand; there is only… nacho cheese.

7-24-2007 – Latitude 53

Even after all the wonderful gifts he’s given me, even after Manimal, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive Glen A. Larson for ruining whole genres and numerous subgenres of music for me with his Knight Rider theme. Ever since that hypnotic staccato riff was sampled, remixed and bhangrafied in the late ‘90s, I haven’t been able to hear Indian music – or any of its Romani descendents that came paintwagonning over the Carpathians – without seeing a vision of David Hasselhoff, head to neck in black leather, neck to crown in glossy black permcurls, leaning against his robotic Trans-Am.

So there he is in my mind’s eye as Tza and Zza Gabor, the Slavic Sibs, spin their ass-moving gypsy beats for the arterati filling the room for Latitude 53’s “Love Bytes” fundraiser. Art and Hasselhoff… the combination wanders my thoughts back to my longest period of sustained work in a single style, in elementary school, painstakingly drafting elaborate KITT-inspired control panels, sometimes five sheets of paper taped, stapled – or “tapled”, for extra security – into wraparound panoramas of buttons, dials, joysticks, switches and screens. I remember making one that had three ejection buttons, one for each passenger seat – as the imagined driver, I knew I would gladly perish in whatever southern Californian pyrotechnic cliff-plunge claimed my beloved futuristic ride…

“Have you tried the mini-cupcakes?!”

I have indeed tried the mini-cupcakes... and the cream-cheese rollups, and the spring rolls, and the bruschetta, and the rosemary/black-pepper spread that’s basically herbed butter; a beautiful spread illuminated by “LOVE” spelled out in fairy lites, perfect for sopping up all this generously-poured wine. I hadn’t planned on “doing the alcohol thing” tonight, but… but it’s for a cause! It’s for Art! This place supports emergents and wayfinders, and if Latitude is to survive and thrive, it is every art-lover’s duty to make the scene and get as buzzed as possible without lurching into the walls and pulling down the pictures. Note, also, that beyond a certain point of unreliable glass-handling it’s considered polite to switch from pigmented reds to non-staining whites.

The silent-auction pickings are, you know, kind of just there. A few interesting pieces sharing wallspace with some terrifically dire material, same as it ever was in this unpredictable Freeport of a gallery. Not that a night like tonight is about the pictures, really; it’s about the laser-intersection of people and scenes, the meeting and chatting with the people you last met and chatted with at some similar event a season ago. All around me sparks of conversation, ideas, plans, “email me!”… and the place a showroom of beautiful people, every type and style of fox, like the Shopkeeper of the World has lined up all his samples for our perusal. It’s the kind of scene where you have to consciously control the creepy threesome-troll impulse:

“Um… my wife and I think you’re very beautif-- UWAAEEEAAAKKKK!”

Jesus! What’s that noise? I thought this was a “silent” auction? No such luck. Our glamorous emcee, “charmingly neurotic culture snob” T.L. Cowan, has taken the stage and begun the hour-long process of shrilling out the results of the chance-auction draw. All our hopes and dreams for donated art and miscellaneous middle swag are nestled in those draw-baggies, our numbers destined to come up – how could they not? We put ten dollars of tickets in there, and we know how odds work. Slowly, the lot-drawing process screeches its ear-splitting way around the room…

Does everybody love a winner? Not so in this case, friends; in a random-draw situation, one person getting multiply lucky draws whispers and suspicions. When it’s just wine and t-shirts and gift certificates, OK, whatever… but there’s a darling blue handbag up there, the object of many a young lady’s covetous ticket-stuffing… and when one of the Lucky Buddies is announced as its proud new owner, and she has to carry it hung on her arm because her hands are full of all the other junk she’s carting away, the rhubarb boils with more conspiracy theory than a JFK convention:

Overheard by the canapés: “It’s gotta be a fix.”

Whispered by the wine bar: “They had a system! I totally saw them signalling!”

Out with the cigarette smokers: “Did you notice how she didn’t actually announce a number?”

Such excitement! To be fair, it really was an adorable little clutch… I’d be sour-graping it, too, if I’d been denied some congruently desirable treasure – a new-in-box Dreamcast, maybe, or a case of Yellow Label. But, really, in the end, everybody wins: it’s drama like this that makes the art world go ‘round, right? Drama… plus the cash money we’ve all, win or lose, freely showered upon our beloved 53, long may she live.