WEST 4TH AVENUE – JULY 13, 2013
Vancouver’s annual Khatsahlano festival is an 80,000-person gong show. This mile-long street party along West 4th Avenue frees the spirit of anyone game enough to go and BeatRoute went on an urban safari to catch the sights,
The day follows a tight schedule, which everyone knowingly or unknowingly follows. The morning is a mix of keeners, young children and zombified hungover brunch-seekers. Upon entering Sophie’s Cosmic Café from a quiet, car-free West 4th Avenue (except for the skeletal frames of tents and stages being erected) at 11 a.m., they are shocked to exit 1.5 hours later to a sea of spectators. Within an hour, the street fills and the walking pace slows to a crawl.
The noon hour is when the excitement is highest, ambitions are fired up for the day and sunburns and dehydration have not yet sunk in. This is where the watching gets exciting and the “seen only at Khatsahlano” sightings begin. The roots of the hippie movement on West 4th revive for this day, with at least eight different hand-made blanket stalls reeking of hookah, dozens of people on the defence of their vulnerable wet henna tattoos and the token man with a parrot on his shoulder. By 2 p.m. there had been several bare-bottomed baby dance-offs, at least one straw hat being carried through the crowd by the wind like a tumbleweed and the red Solo cup count was in the hundreds. Between the 12 stages and 35 food carts, the overwhelming content of the festival drives many to the beach four blocks away. Practically the entire crowd takes turns having a 20-minute tan and nap on the beach to recharge for the headliners. With a stage on every block between Burrard and MacDonald, it’s not difficult to alternatively wander into one of the many beer gardens, grab a pick-me-up and enjoy the hot local acts. One quick tour of the stages could instantly turn any passer-by into a Vancouver indie band buff, since nearly every act in the city can be found somewhere on the massive bill.
Geographical history nerds must have been delighted to stumble upon the This Happened Here installation, which featured 10 cargo boxes with various art and film from Vancouver’s past lives: from decades of punk documented by Bev Davies to animation mashups by Marv Newland. What Happened Last Summer also screened in one of the boxes, a film chronicling the acid-dropping, feather-wearing times of Kitsilano in the 1960s.
For a piece of tangible history, the curious history buffs could wander onto the Transit Museum’s 1958 Vancouver public transit bus, with sticky vinyl seats an full-colour advertisements still in tact. By this late afternoon hour, anyone who has been navigating the festival has a complete knowledge of the city’s urban history, modern arts and music culture scenes, and a heavy shopping bag full of beaded garments and soy wax candles.
As the evening breeze cools off the sweaty crowd, the headliners step up on either ends of the festival: the Burrard and the MacDonald stages. Depending on whether one would rather be jarred awake by the Pack a.d. or lulled into the mellow haze of the festival by Brasstronaut. As the families started to head home for bed time, the crowd thinned and dispersed to various after parties and local bars, whose wait time for a table climbed to one to two hours. The day left an atmosphere of satisfaction and communal appreciation for the ’60s.
By Jessica Brodeur
