Light Up Night 2002
At the moment, I'm (more or less) stranded at work downtown as the streets around me are closed for "Light Up Night 2002".
For those who aren't familiar with Pittsburgh, we have several nights during the year when we celebrate conspicuous consumption by encouraging everyone downtown to leave their office lights on when they go home, so downtown looks all brightly-lit and pretty. The cornerstone example of this is "Light Up Night", the kickoff for the winter holiday shopping season (which Pittsburgh and its Chamber of Commerce renamed "Sparkle Season" for several years in order to try and avoid the whole religious sensibilities thing.) They close a bunch of the downtown streets, have small concerts and parades, and the grand firestorming of a Christmas tree by Santa. No kidding, the past few years Santa's really entered throwing high-speed fireballs into some sort of display. And tonight's the night.
So, I'm up on the 12th floor of Fifth Avenue Place overlooking all of this. At this altitude, the bass from the music is combining with the general street noise in bouncing back and forth off lower buildings to create this deep, low frequency drone. Plus, it's raining (or snowing, or something in between) so there's a windtunnelish effect as well. The resulting effect is this really intense, slightly threatening sort of low-pitched rolling ambient whoosh, with occasionally recognizable scraps of Christmas carols, twisted and reverbed by the echo off buildings, occasionally swirling through as counterpoint like the broken flotsom of a wrecked ship occasionally breaking through a dark and stormy sea.
It's really got that sort of unsettling "Christmas of the Unhappy Clowns" sort of feel.
I'm sure it's a lot different for the crowds standing out in the rain at ground level. (Well, crowd, specifically, at the main stage on the grassy triangle between Fifth Avenue Place, the Hilton, and the State Office Building - the rest of the closed-off area downtown is pretty well deserted due to the less-than-festive weather.)
For those who aren't familiar with Pittsburgh, we have several nights during the year when we celebrate conspicuous consumption by encouraging everyone downtown to leave their office lights on when they go home, so downtown looks all brightly-lit and pretty. The cornerstone example of this is "Light Up Night", the kickoff for the winter holiday shopping season (which Pittsburgh and its Chamber of Commerce renamed "Sparkle Season" for several years in order to try and avoid the whole religious sensibilities thing.) They close a bunch of the downtown streets, have small concerts and parades, and the grand firestorming of a Christmas tree by Santa. No kidding, the past few years Santa's really entered throwing high-speed fireballs into some sort of display. And tonight's the night.
So, I'm up on the 12th floor of Fifth Avenue Place overlooking all of this. At this altitude, the bass from the music is combining with the general street noise in bouncing back and forth off lower buildings to create this deep, low frequency drone. Plus, it's raining (or snowing, or something in between) so there's a windtunnelish effect as well. The resulting effect is this really intense, slightly threatening sort of low-pitched rolling ambient whoosh, with occasionally recognizable scraps of Christmas carols, twisted and reverbed by the echo off buildings, occasionally swirling through as counterpoint like the broken flotsom of a wrecked ship occasionally breaking through a dark and stormy sea.
It's really got that sort of unsettling "Christmas of the Unhappy Clowns" sort of feel.
I'm sure it's a lot different for the crowds standing out in the rain at ground level. (Well, crowd, specifically, at the main stage on the grassy triangle between Fifth Avenue Place, the Hilton, and the State Office Building - the rest of the closed-off area downtown is pretty well deserted due to the less-than-festive weather.)