BathHouse Confidential

Friday, 08. 6. 2010  –  The Good Life

Jesse Donaldson

In what must certainly be an all-time low-point for the current state of the press, The Dependent was recently granted media passes to the final performance of Vancouver’s Celebration of Light in English Bay. With all the other members of the writing staff busy with other engagements, and having a lady-friend to arouse with the unspeakably attractive nature of VIP access, I humbly accepted the opportunity to go behind-the-scenes at one of the city’s largest summertime events. Camera in hand, and with the lady-friend carefully disguised as a writer (thanks entirely to the notebook and pen I’d brilliantly supplied), we approached the front gates, signed in, recieved our media tags, and then spent the next five minutes feeling as though we’d just gotten away with something monumentally criminal.

As it turns out, we needn’t have worried.

In the entire press gallery, there was, at most, three people with anything that even vaguely resembled a camera. In fact, it appeared to be populated almost exclusively by the Production Team’s sons and daughters, all of whom looked bored and listless, as though saying:

“Aw, geez! Fireworks again? My folks are sooooo embarrassing.”

We, on the other hand, were delighted with the sudden behind-the-scenes access. The lady-friend took copious amounts of fake-notes as we strode the top of the bathhouse, and I did my best to whisper a variety of professional and businesslike comments in her ear such as: “Ooooooh”, and “Well isn’t that neat?” as we rubbed elbows with something that vaguely resembled Local Celebrity.

There was judge and local news anchor Jil Krop, whose flawless ability to read from a teleprompter no doubt made her the perfect candidate to rule on the merits of pyrotechnic excellence.

There was Executive Producer Maude Furtado, perhaps the most attractive person I’ve ever met with a French accent.

There was Tribute-To-China designer Benoit Berthelet, leaning over the balcony, anxiously puffing on a cigarette as he gazed with apprehension at the evening sky.

There was HeyOcean! lead singer Ashleigh Ball, who the lady-friend knows, and with whom we had a brief conversation before her concerned wrangler rescued her from our nefarious clutches.

“It’s almost time for her to sing,” he said, gruffly, and then spent the next ten minutes chatting amiably with her while nothing actually happened.

MC Kevin Hayes welcomed the crowd to English Bay, prepared them for the show, and, in a truly Pavlovian fashion, thanked them at least seventeen times for their cleanliness, and their dedication to taking their garbage home with them. He read out the winner of the competition (Spain), introduced Ashleigh (fifteen minutes after she was spirited away) to sing the national anthem, and thanked the crowd again for their cleanliness (which, at this point, made about as much sense as thanking them for their sobriety, but no matter).

As we took our seats, everybody seemed to be casting suspicious glances at one another. It was as though they were on the hunt for outsiders, their every look asking: “Who are you and who do you know?”

When a family accidentally happened upon the press gallery seats, instead of the regular VIP access they were scheduled for, they were immediately and forcefully ejected amidst a flurry of scorn and derision. There was no need for formal security; the mob sensed outsiders, and had no qualms about turning on them.

Luckily, before they managed to draw blood, the show began.

Not being an afficionado of pyrotechnics in general, I lack the language or necessary critical expertise to make an informed judgement, but one thing I can say, with complete certainty, is that shit sure did blow up real good.

Yes, an eminently enjoyable time, with one exception: the portly older woman who, two minutes in, stood directly in front of my camera lens, (and, as fate would have it, in so doing, actually tried to steal my seat while I was still in view of it) and who, when I politely asked if she could move, chose to take this as a personal insult rather than the perfectly reasonable request it was.

“No, I will not!” she shouted, and suddenly became vicious and combative until her husband sheepishly led her away.

She then spent the remainder of the performance with her hands gripping the back of my seat, passive-aggressively shaking it until I “accidentally” sat back on her bony, stupid knuckles.

JESSE: 1

BOURGEOUSIE: 0

We remained at something of an impasse after this, with her trying to get my attention (attempting, it seemed, to get within close enough earshot to say something insulting), but finally resorting to the ever-classy elbow to the back of the head while “pretending” to cross her arms.

But, in the end, it’s encounters such as this that speak to the inherent silliness of social stratification: despite aesthetics, and finances, and family circumstances, when one really gets down to it, both the phenomenally rich and the desperately poor are equally capable of being thoroughly rotten.

Restricted Access has this tendency to make said access seem instantly more desirable, as if the people inside the fence are having proportionately more fun than those who are outside. But, truthfully, it’s more of a chance for the rich, important, and entitled to, at least in their minds, separate themselves from the riff-raff, and borrow a little credibility from those like Maude, Benoit, and others, who actually poured months and months into preparing the event in the first place.

As long as society exists, there will, of course, be hierarchy. But, after having been on both sides of the fence, even at something as specific as Vancouver’s Celebration of Light, it becomes obvious in a heartbeat that, if you haven’t been inside, you’re really not missing much.

The view isn’t even that much better.

I mean, they’re fireworks, for Christ’s sake.

Everybody has a good seat.

Tags: Ashleigh Ball, Celebration of Light, Jil Krop, Maude Furtado