Did we really move that far?

This is our first December in our new place. It is 4 city blocks over and 5 city blocks down closer to the water than our old place. It doesn't seem that far, but yesterday - a day after the parade - we realized we missed the Santa Clause Parade noise completely for the first time in a decade! We only realized this when we saw a balloon caught in a tree outside our windows and remembered it was that time of year again.

As I mentioned in at least one previous blog entry we used to be awakened on the morning of the parade by 6 or 7 marching bands at a time warming up outside our building. Then when the parade started we heard many bands walking the parade route a couple of blocks from our home. This year we heard nothing. We saw no traffic jams, no crowds of people. We didn't even notice there was a parade.

Of course, in August we had a great view of the Pride Parade from our balcony in our new home, and that was noisy too, as I wrote in another blog entry, but it was so colourful and fun and warm, it wasn't nearly as annoying. (That may have something to do with the complete lack of tired old Christmas songs being played to death... could someone write something new, anything new, for Christmas?)

So have we really moved that far away? It seems like such a short distance, but it is like a completely different city just a few blocks away! What a difference a few city blocks makes!

Could we have just one loud music player?

The Vancouver Pride Parade just finished a couple of hours ago, and it was great. It was extremely colourful, and well attended, and very long - more than 3 hours of floats and crowds going through Vancouver's West End. We have a great view of the parade from our balcony, and even had an MC with a microphone just in front of our place so we had all the commentary for each float! What a great place to live!

And in the next couple of days I will have lots of photos posted on Flickr of the colourful excitement.

But now there are people partying outside at the hotel across the road from us, and some more over to the left, also partying outside but at a different party. The problem is, they are each playing extremely loud music, but not the same music.

One could say there is a battle of music going on outside our home right now. This is not nearly as much fun as the parade was. We have all the windows closed now because we couldn't stand it anymore, but we can still hear the cacophony.

We're not against loud music, it's a festival atmosphere and quite fun, we just want it to be from one place, not two. Is that too much to ask? Do they have to make us sound like grumpy old people because we want just one source of loud music? That's somehow not fair.

Is that the definition of cacophony?

Oh dear, the world is defining things again.

We had the Santa Clause Parade on Sunday in downtown Vancouver. The parade starts about a block away from our apartment, so we typically hear some warming up of bands before the parade starts. This photo was taken outside our bedroom window at about 11:30am. This year the noise was far greater than normal, making me wonder if this is the very definition of cacophony.

A brief rundown of the noises (note, most noises overlapped each other - thus the cacophony defining):

11 am

• Santa Clause is Coming To Town - live band playing
• Oh come let us adore him - live singers
• Ratta tat tat - live drummers
• On the dance floor oooh ooooh - recording
• You better not cry - recording
• Something that sounds like a Beach Boy's song - live singers
• Oh come let us adore him - live singers
• Wooo hooo - live young girls
• Da da da de daaa da da - live horns
• Smoke alarm going off in someone's kitchen

11:30 am - I gave up on sleeping in and went to have a shower

12:30 pm

• Rock'in Christmas - recording repeated at least twice in succession
• A welcome garbage truck in the alley making it's usual banging noises while emptying dumpsters - a semblance of normality
• Ratta tat tat - live drummers
• Oh come let us adore him - live singers
• Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy - live horns
• Christmas Day in the Morning - live horns
• Bagpipes! Maybe we're getting close to the end?
• Clean and crisp and even - live horns & drums
• I blessed the rains down in Africa - live band - very odd
• Various other recorded songs

1:30 pm Drummers jamming - live band

1:40 pm Go Tell It on the Mountain - live band

1:45 pm Joy to the World - live singing and Santa Clause is Coming to Town - live band (at the same time)

2 pm - Didn't the parade start at 1pm? Shouldn't everyone be gone by now? Ohhhhh, the float for Santa is still in the street below our window... slow parade! Santa Clause is still Coming to Town.

I've recorded the cacophony so I can remember it once we've moved away from here. Typically we have the marching bands practicing in the street and the alley on the other side of our building when the parade comes to town. This is the first year we've had the floats and multiple bands and cheerleaders (they had pink pom-poms - that means cheerleaders, right?) crowding into the street below us. It's much noisier than having just the marching bands. They don't take turns, it's more like they try to out-noise each other. Cacophony. Yep, that's the definition.

Is running with a musical instrument safe?

"Don't run with scissors!" Was definitely something you learned as a young child. (I hope, for your sake.)

But how about running with other objects... like tubas, flutes or drums? Those could be dangerous as well - even though it's far more entertaining for onlookers, so there's got to be an embarrassment factor in there too!

The Vancouver Santa Clause Parade went off on Sunday in sunny skies and all! We live next to the start of the parade route. No, we didn't go out to see it, but we lived it for a few hours. Starting at about noon, we were woken up (hey, it's Sunday, we sleep in) by a set of drummers - about 10 of them - warming up in our back alley. They found an acoustically great place to make lots of noise in the loading bay / garbage area of the restaurant building next to us. So we were drummed out of bed.

And then the other bands in the parade started warming up - apparently we are living in the band practice area. In the alley, on the streets, everywhere you can stuff a marching band to warm up, there were marching bands. Do you know how many marching bands are in your average parade? LOTS.

The funny part was when one of the bands was a bit late getting into line to join the parade! Runners holding - and trying not to hit themselves with - wind instruments, followed by these poor guys carrying the tubas and drums. It was like a wrestling match! I bet on the instruments! Too bad it wasn't the bagpipers, now those instruments would have an unfair advantage!