Always the goddamn rain!

Somehow whenever I get ready for a day like today I know I need to get ready for rain. Today was The Toronto Freedom Festival, or as you more likely know it, The Global Marijuana March. My brother and I left the apartment later than intended, it being nearly 11:30 already and the festival was starting. The transit ride was long, but uneventful. The day at the Festival started rather slowly, a light drizzle of rain falling on people setting up tents. One of the stages was already alive, a Nufunk.ca banner hanging from the stage. A band named Chamelion Project was playing. As the rain fell I wandered the festival grounds with my brother, looking for people we knew. Eventually he found someone, and from them got word of a small stage off to the north playing jungle music. Hoping to find some more of his friends we headed off to the stage. Shortly after we got to the stage he found more of his friends and I headed off in hopes of finding someone I knew.

I wandered back to the first stage, where a dj was filling air between sets. After around twenty minutes of listening to him I made my way to College street to find a coffee shop. Filled back up with caffeine I made my way back to Queens Park. Continuing to wander the grounds I returned to the same old stage. I found a band called God Made Me Funky playing a cover of Jump Around. Shortly after, while patroling around the stage area looking for, well, anyone, I ran back into my brother, and we smoked, again, and no, I'm not telling you how many times, it was a few. While they rolled my brother and his friend discussed their lack of plans for 4:20. As we finished up they excused themselves to go and locate more friends and I made my way off to find a convenience store.

Running into someone I know from the store that I game at we walked and talked as I made my way to the store. Halfway there he needed to turn back and meet someone, so I carried on alone. Making it to the store and buying my paltry Redbull, hardly a meal, I turned around and headed back. Within five minutes of my return the latest band stopped playing and the DJ announced that 4:20 was only twenty minutes off. I took the time to wander the crowd and see as much as I could. It was all fairly uniform, tarps in trees, tents where ever they would fit, and clusters of umbrellas dotting the ground.

I returned to the stage 3 times over the twenty minute wait, when 4:20 finally came the crowd around the stage had reached it's maximum density for the day. A dense labyrinth of people formed, and as the countdown from the stage finished and the pulsing music filled the air, so did a cloud of thick smoke. Moving through the crowd I saw people of every possible description, the traditional hippie, teenagers of every stripe, even an elderly eastern European woman was wandering the maze. After 4:20 I made for a coffee shop. A few minutes after I sat down the rain began coming down in sheets.

When the rain cleared I headed back north, against the crowd. As I got back to the grounds I observed what had become of it. The torrent of rain had turned the lively Festival into an abandoned swamp. Music bleated meekly from tents and tarps, all but the hardiest of vendors had packed up shop. Even the side stage I'd left my brother at originally had completely vanished, the territory an alien landscape compared to a few hours earlier. Giving the whole grounds a patrol I decided I'd spent plenty of time in the mud and made my way south, following the flow I walked towards the transit at College.

-James