I started this Brisbane Festival at Riverfire. I did it the classic city dwellers way, just walking up Brunswick street to the Story Bridge. This is the ultimate end of Riverfire, which goes along the river between there and the point. So you only see a bit of it, like just the bridge and some of the tallest fireworks. But it’s also the closest you can get to Riverfire because the top of the cliffs there above Felons is right next to the Story Bridge, like if the road was open (they close it for the fireworks of course) it’s where you’d walk across it. And it’s a very local scene, certainly people in from all over Brisbane, but a very valley denizen feel. The last year I went over there, you could feel the sparks from the fireworks on your skin and some guy started a low key bar fight, so a bit wild and wonderful.
This time my favourite fireworks I called in my mind a raspberry pie. I’m naming this after the Ilia Malinin figure skating jump I got into on TikTok, where he bends 90 degrees and does this leap kind of a flip but all horizontal. Anyway these fireworks were one of those two toned kind, I’d seen them in previous years but the first ones to come out were white outer ring with a purple inside, these were the same but the inside was pink. Raspberry pie get it? I was living in the city last Riverfire, and from there I always went the Kurilpa way, walking across the pedestrian bridge and then just up the river til I hit a likely looking spot but before the gated full scale area of South Bank. So the absolute other end, and a more quiet country kind of way, you are much more aware of the river, and the people are pretty sparse. In the Valley there are revellers all around, and they break up into the various bars and clubs on the way back.
I didn’t do much theatre wise this Brisbane Festival, other stuff booked etc, so I didn’t partake so much until last night, which was the other end of the festival. Marie had invited me out to this free one hour Bollywood dance thing on South Bank. I was a bit of a homebody this week, but I couldn’t bear to not be the kind of person who would say yes to that invite, so I went along. Someone at my work has won a community hero’s award, so was depicted on a poster in the walk of heroes on South Bank which was fun to happen by.
And it was a bit of a revelation, I mean in the way of those things. You know it was super awkward, and you had to look like an idiot and let that wash over you, and it being the modern era like half the people there are there to film it, so you have to put up with being in the background of six social media posts, which I do not want and does not make you feel like you look like less of an idiot. But the other hand as well, like my office worker back popped like 9 times in response to this getting out of the chair as a wild idea. And I lived the music, and even though I did it badly it felt so nice, like most exercise it’s hard to overcome the knowledge that you could just not do this, but dancing feels exerting but also like a pleasure, the way singing feels where your body just wants to do this.
And then right after that there was a laser light show with pop music on the river, which I think is the festival of lights thing for this Riverfire, I went with my mom to the light up globe thing. We saw princesses in festival light up gowns on stilts on the way out, and I left Marie on a quest for water and got home in time for dinner and kickoff on the NRL semifinals, with augmenting phone calls with Kelvin and chats with the NRL SuperCoach discord.
So that’s my life as a true Brisbanite here in paradise, I love being a city dweller in this way, you know the way that large scale events like sporting seasons and festivals and fireworks and public classes and large scale people like the club kids of the Valley and award winning orgs and community theatre productions all intersect with your friends and your actual lives as much as you leave your house or want them to.
