Finishing Summer on the Fringe

Mother Nature decided to mess with us a little this year, as we had two solid weeks of iffy weather to close out August and start September.  It was rainy and rather cool, so it seemed we were transitioning into jeans and hoodie weather rather quickly.  In fact, I'm pretty sure some trees outside my office are a good two or three weeks ahead of schedule.  I know I took a picture of one tree last year at the end of the first week of October, and it looks pretty similar to that right now.  I'm hoping other trees weren't as fooled, but we definitely have more changing than I like to see this time of year.  I usually comfort myself with the fact that many trees still have leaves even by Halloween, and some hang in there until Thanksgiving at times, but this year I don't think that will be the case.  I enjoy fall, but I definitely don't like what comes after it...or at least, what comes after the glow of Christmas season fades.  I'm also not a big fan of the first three weeks of November, when the weather is much cooler, the fun of Halloween/pumpkin patch season is over, and we have the long drag before Thanksgiving hits and it's "officially" okay to get into Christmas stuff.  At least we'll have a lacrosse tournament (and its associated preparations and long trip) to break things up this year.

Anyway, after all of that cool weather, now we've been in a glorious span of rather warm, mostly rain-free weather for a week, and we still have another week to go.  I'm a little thrown off with my wardrobe, as mentally I was beginning to transition to fall stuff, but now I'm trying to regain my rhythm with skirts and dresses.  Good problem to have, but it's been strange.  The good news, of course, is that we can fit in a few more "summer" weekends before transitioning into fall activities.  I wish I could add weeknight evenings into that equation, but it's dark so early now. :(

This past Friday the weather was gorgeous, and the evening was looking to be equally pleasant.  It was once again Fringe Festival time in Rochester, and I wanted to go.  You may remember my trip there with the kids a couple years ago.  It's pretty low risk to hit up the free show, and this year's looked...different.  I wasn't getting a whole lot of enthusiasm from the rest of my household, but we pushed forward and headed out.  We walked from my old work parking ramp, past my old building (which looks quite different now), and over to Parcel 5, which is a hotly contested plot of land in the middle of downtown.  It once held Midtown Plaza, one of the first indoor urban malls.  I used to be in that mall every day for years, first while working in an office tower that was part of the complex, then when I had to walk through the mall from my parking garage to another office tower connected by a pedestrian bridge.  It had definitely seen better days, but I was quite sad when it was knocked down.  I'm mostly happy with what has happened in the interim, though much of it has taken too long compared to an average big city.  This one plot of land is now slated to get a new performing arts center, but we'll see if it ever makes it through the bureaucracy that drags most things down here.  But for now, it seems to be the "cool" place to gather for outdoor events downtown.

Friday's free show was from Plasticiens Volants, a French troupe, and the show was called "Big Bang".  It was basically an artistic interpretation of the creation of the universe (I guess--maybe it's even more of a metaphor than I think), using giant helium balloons.  They were walked through the crowd of observers by people holding the guide lines, which made for quite a strange dynamic.  Sometimes it felt like seeing the person under the mascot costume, or what it would be like to watch stagehands at work during a play, but being in a position where they can physically bump into you (or get their wire wrapped around you) was even stranger.

The show initially started with a giant white ball at one end of the property, and things were projected onto it...lots of odd or even disturbing images, but some positive parts of the evolution of mankind as well.  It seemed like there might be some sort of live shadow play happening, as well, like these Easter Island heads that moved back and forth over the projected images.

Eventually these oddly shaped balloons started floating out from behind it.  They floated over us, sometimes dipping low enough to touch.  Eventually they moved back to one spot and formed into this odd "celestial body" together.

That's an eyeball up top

They broke apart again and floated more, this time starting to grow new appendages and turn into new forms that looked like sea creatures, vaguely like crabs and snails.

At one point, this strange insect came out to float around.  I think my first thought is that it might be a tardigrade (I had to look on the internet to find that name, but I'm pretty sure that's what I was thinking it was at first sight), or maybe a dust mite, but clearly it's just some sort of prehistoric bug. 

And eventually this guy came out and ate him, along with some other creatures.

While all of this were going on, my kids were not impressed.  Carter was borderline scared, and Jacob asked me--no joke--about 40 times in an hour if we could leave.  My take was, "We've never seen anything like this before, and we'll probably never see it again, so we're just going to appreciate this odd life experience for an hour."  I won't lie, it was weird.  It was rather abstract and very strange, but hey, it's sort of fun to watch giant balloons float around the center of your city.

Eventually some planets came out to float...

And then something else did that made me momentarily question having the kids there...even though plenty of other people did too:

Yep, those are sperm.

The sperm even pulled a "Look Who's Talking" moment and starting bumping up against the yellow sphere in the picture above, as if they were trying to enter.  Apparently one got in, because the yellow ball started doing this...

And eventually it rose all the way up and looked like this underneath.  Perhaps this was some sort of planet.

After that one started floating around, these spiral cones came out, and a bunch of these bubbles were carted through the crowd.  One came literally right in front of us--to the point we had to get the kids out of the way--and immediately it exploded in front of us.  It was loud but probably not as bad as I would have expected, but it was definitely a surprise.  The guy pulling it went right back to sticking another one on, and we figured out that the popping must have been part of the show as the other ones started to do it, too.

There was some sort of odd ending where the eyeball found its match, and by then we were ready to start walking.  I wanted to go to the Spiegelgarden, which is the center of the action for the festival.  I walked there with the kids last time, and I just loved the magical atmosphere.  We wandered that way briefly again.  We saw this giant igloo, which had some sort of light and sound experience inside it.

The rest of the garden was still pretty magical.  I still really want to go to a show in the Spiegeltent...

There was an outdoor movie that you needed headphones to hear and could sit on comfy cushions to watch, and some table games.  We had fun with the row of funny mirrors...

Jacob, me (holding the camera), and Craig holding Carter

Everyone was ready to go, and while I wanted to go look at the Chihuly at the Eastman School of Music across the street, I gave in and we headed for the car.  I snapped a few pictures on the way back, as it's fun to see the city all lit up and lively. 

Across the street from Parcel 5 - far left is Midtown Tower, where I worked for eight months and is finally swanky condos; Xerox has the lights on the top corners; the building with the triangles on top is Legacy Tower (formerly Bausch & Lomb), and the tall orange one is the Metropolitan (formerly Chase Tower), where I worked for more than eight years.  The buildings in the foreground house Windstream and our newspaper.  The one on the left used to be a couple floors taller and was totally redone after the mall was removed).  The newspaper building on the right was a new build. 

This is the new front of the Metropolitan, formerly the side.  Swanky, eh?  There are apartments here now, in addition to a few offices.  It's so odd to realize that my old office doesn't even exist anymore.  It's now across Parcel 5, in the building you see in the third picture in this post.

This is looking back toward Midtown Tower.  This view used to have the pedestrian bridge from the mall in the middle of it.  I love how colorfully lit and vibrant this area looks now, when it used to be a dead zone after 5pm.

Looking up at the old digs...probably somewhere near the lights up there.  This was the side of the building of my second desk position, where I sat when I was let go.

So much has changed since I last went downtown daily--not the least of which was the flashy new (functional!) elevators in the parking ramp!--but it's nice to see and I loved being down there for the evening.  The kids may not have had as much fun, but I will always try to expose them to whatever I can so they can't tell me someday that we never did anything interesting.  At least this way I have the pictures to prove it!