diary of a doll

Saturday I ventured out on my own to wander the city aimlessly (If you haven't noticed, I do that a lot). I decided to drive downtown which proved to me more of an inconvenience than anything. I don't drive in the city that often so I know my routes to get to places but being the Olympics, most of my regular routes were blocked off so it ended up taking me forever to get to where I wanted, but luckily enough I found parking quite quickly.

I wanted to go to the LiveCity stage as Wilco was playing and I knew it would be a great show! I had tried getting there early but with the traffic and getting lost etc. I showed up only about an hour before the show was scheduled to start. The line was again blocks long but I actually saw the end this time and decided to wait in it. I was in line for about an hour and estimated that there were probably only about 250 people in front of me when the police came down the line telling everyone that they were now 1500 people over capacity and were not letting anyone else inside. Even if people left, they had officially closed the door for the night. This was a huge disappointment, and I thought for sure that people were going to break into riot (but being the calm-tempered, easy going mostly Canadian crowd, no one over reacted). People were definitely disappointed but pretty much everyone who was denied just went up to the section of the fence you could see through and watched from there.

After about 20mins I got tired of standing in the pooring rain (discretely cuddling up to strangers who had umbrellas), and left. I was not ready to go home just yet but I was still by myself and wasn't sure what options I really had of where to go but thought I would try going to Robson Square. Again, I totally lucked out and got parked easy. I was glad I went to Robson/Granville because there were tons more people and it was not awkward at all to be on my own. I people watched and took my time wandering as I followed the loud cheers of people down to the icerink/stage. It was undercover which was also a huge bonus. There was a band playing and behind them was the icerink and thousands of people watching. As the first band played they had girls trying to get people dancing in front of the stage, person by person they got some and it was funny to watch as they made some men go up who clearly didn't want to be there and didnt know what to do. At one point there was an American who went up and tryed getting the audience to cheer for his American flag to which a guy dressed in a Canadian flag went up and they pretended to fight as the crowed chanted CA-NA-DA! CA-NA-DA!



When I first got there I was at the very back where it wasn't even covered, I could hardly see anything and there were thousands of people in front of me, but one of the best things about being on my own was that I am very sneaky and can squirm my way innocently threw the crowd without anyone being upset. Slowly I made my way all the way to the front of the entire crowd, up at the stage and danced along to the band.

After the first band played, they had a huge fireworks show which was really neat! They had lazers and people ziplining through the air etc. They definitely put a lot of money into this whole extravaganza.




Next playing was Jeremy Fisher, who is a local artist who, athough is quite big now, I only really know because my mom has been following his career from the VERY start, going to see him in tiny coffee shops and churches holding only about 15 people (mostly his family). So I knew I had to stay and watch him for my mother's sake. Again, I snuck up to front stage and was only a couple of feet away from him. He was a fantastic performer and I had a lot of fun at his set! His crowd was actually really big too, and everyone was singing along.



He made a comment that he had to finish by a certain time due to rules etc. and the crowd was not happy. The guy beside me (who must have been the biggest Jeremy Fisher fan ever) was so upset, he yelled at him to please do one more song! Jeremy then jumped off stage and came right over to us and said he would unofficially sing one more. He was not hooked up to speakers or anything, he just stood with his guitar and played DIRECTLY in front of me! It was so cool! I thought that was really great of him to do, people really appreciated it. It was funny because I was probably the closest person to him and everyone around me was screaming the lyrics and I (having never heard the song before) had to just smile and bob back and forth to the melody.



After he finished he chatted to a few of us for a minute, then he hugged that guy and then he hugged me. Again, it was a lot of fun! For a single girl it was a nice way to start off my Valentines, being serenaded by a singer!