White Night

So tonight was Melbourne's first White Night. It's an overnight festival that runs from 7pm - 7am, this year was Melbourne's first time trying it.

Quote from their website:

"Come and experience the best Melbourne has to offer as the city is transformed into an all-night wonderland for everyone to explore. From dusk til dawn discover over 80 free events celebrating music, food, film, art and light. This truly will be a night like no other."

I didn't really know what to expect.

Um, it was crowded as HECK. When I exited Flinders Station I literally just stood still with my mouth open in the same spot for ages, not wanting to move into the crowd.

I got off from Flinders around 8, where there was a band performing. No idea who they were, but they definitely weren't Cat Empire.

That's what it looked like down Swanston St. It was insanely crowded. I avoided that whole mess and went the other way, up to Fed Square. Thought there might be something interesting up there, like free food or something.

No free food I guess. They were doing some kind of square dancing gig, which did not appeal to me at all so I escaped from that too and went down to the river.

Thank gawd it was less crowded. I was pretty much ready to go home already and it'd been like, 20 minutes. It's not like I hate people or crowds, it's just that trying to constantly push through a massive sea of people for 20 minutes is exhausting.

Even though the description for the night said there were tons of events, I kinda wandered around a lot looking for something interesting but didn't really find anything. Maybe I was just in the wrong part of the city?

Took a detour into Hamer Hall/Theatre Building thingy, hoping to maybe catch a free show. Turned out the shows there weren't free after all.

Jazz band performing along St Kilda Rd.

These floating platforms were being set up when I walked past, I think they were being prepared for musicians to perform on later in the night.

I got bored and decided to go down to the Yarra and sit on top of this railing while I waited for Selina to come. It was nice and peaceful on top of that railing, and these kids behind me kept climbing it haha.

Eventually got called down by safety workers, boo.

Walked down to see the water light show. There were party buses on the Yarra too, dunno if that's a regular occurrence though.

The light show was ok.
My phone was being a total shit and had no reception, so the conversation between me and Selina was just terrible. No kidding, took me around 5 minutes to send a text that said "..."
In the end I just gave up on my phone and hiked my ass to Crown.

Chevrolet Impala outside Crown. While I was taking this photo, some friggin' white schoolgirl behind me said in the most whiny voice "Um, excuse me, can you like, move?"
I was so tempted to bluntly just turn around and say "NO" to her face but I decided to be polite and simply walk away.
Sigh.
I was hungry anyway.

So by the time I reached Selina in the food court, I was pretty pissed, starving, and exhausted from pushing my way through crowds of people for hours. I may have been really snappy LOL, I'm sorry. I was fine after eating, food cures everything. Even expensive food court food.

Decided to venture out a bit more, since we were already in the city. Also I wanted to show Selina how insanely crowded it was. Those buildings were lit up.

Walked down Swanston, there was this guy twirling around draped in what appeared to be toilet paper. And also waving batons of toilet paper. Props to that dude.

What is this thing??

We got tired of the crowds and just sat and ate ice cream. Looking at the events, the only interesting thing seemed to be Melbourne Museum, which was open all night. Unfortunately it was on the other side of the city and I couldn't be bothered.

Went home early I guess. The ratio of actual stuff to see compared to the amount of people was not balanced at all. It took me and Selina roughly an hour to walk a few blocks down Swanston, LOL.
I slept well that night.