8/7/2009
Flashing back to Friday Night for a minute.
Sometime after 10:00 PM I stopped by the Delta hotel, walked there with a couple people unsure of the way -- I'd been there the night before for cake, so. There was elevator confusion when we got there, it crossed my mind that the Delta folks might not have realized what they were in for when they signed on as WorldCon's party hotel. After two false starts we arrived on the 28th floor. I stopped at the Japanese Party and ate a Montreal-style bagel with cream cheese and half a beer. Dinner. The bagel, as I'd heard, was definitely different from a NY-style bagel. Maybe they aren't boiled? Couldn't quite place the flavor: wood-fired oven? I will try to get some to take home on Sunday morning. Chatted a bit and then moved on to the UK party. Good cheese and crackers, odd cookies. The food hostess recommended the Victorian chutney -- tasted like my mom's homemade chili sauce; ok, but not on ham as they were having here.
Out in the hall rumors started that the hotel was throwing some people out, or closing down parties, or something. They were definitely curtailing elevator service to the 5th and 28th floors, the party floors. I "lifted" down to the lobby, time to wander back to my own neighborhood. As I exited the elevator around 11:45 PM it definitely looked like the Delta management had gotten more than they'd bargained for. A bunch of hotel employees in suits were monitoring elevator access, trying to look authoritative and a little bit tough, but mostly looking awkward and uncomfortable. Later we heard about fire code concerns and a possible few non-Con people crashing the parties; or maybe they just weren't wearing their badges?
I walked out of the Delta and up past my hotel toward the outdoor rock festival behind it, below my hotel room window. A young woman with a security badge stopped me and I listened to several sentences in French before I interjected that I didn't understand her. She switched to accented but quite adequate English. She needed to check my "bag" (my backpack), and she told me "not that", pointing at the diet coke can still in my hand from the Delta. I guess there was no outside food or drink in the festival area. I found myself regretting that she was no longer speaking French to me as I dropped my can in a recycling receptical; these are plentiful in Montreal.
I walked into the music. The first stage was hard punk, a wall of fast guitars, angry drums and shouted lyrics. In French. The crowd was into it; one twenty-something girl with a bare midriff was horizontal above the packed crowd, body surfing 6 feet above the asphalt. Made me nervous. I walked on. The other stage still playing was hosting French reggae with a female singer: light black skin, purple sequins and 10 inch afro. Don't know what she was saying, but it was much more pleasant to my ears -- still edgy but melodic and swayable. I hung with them for a while. By 1:00 AM, back in my room, the street was quiet. (It was Les Franco Folies De Montreal)
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