NEMO – The real Blizzard Bash
I think everyone can agree that this past weekend was somewhat surreal and unexpected. I myself had been gearing up for what many people thought was going to be the biggest food industry event in all of Boston’s history, the long anticipated Blizzard Bash. Ironically, a Blizzard there was, but instead of the food and booze celebration that was hoped for, the entire East Coast was hit with one of America’s top 10 most serious blizzards in history, Nemo. (why do they insist of giving such threatening storms such dinky names!?)
Nemo hit on Friday, schools were closed, travel bans imposed, workers urged to stay home and in a truly unprecedented move by Mikko Nissinen, our (Finnish) artistic director, our rehearsal schedule (set t go to 6:30), was reworked to let us go at 1:30.
Storms of this magnitude always follow the same sort of progression. At first everyone is in denial, thinking it will not be that serious. I am always among this group of people (I blame Canada) and think many people can quote me as saying, ‘I will WALK to the Blizzard Bash if I have to!’ The thought that the entire event would be cancelled just never entered my mind. Around 1 o’clock on Friday, an email was sent out to ticket holders saying the event was to be rescheduled to the next day. Unfortunately, this rescheduling became an outright cancellation leaving hoards of out of town bartenders and chefs stranded in a ghost city.
On the flip side, once the general hysteria builds and settles and people have hunkered down in their respective hide outs, a storm of this magnitude can be pretty relaxing, you are practically put into a state of forced hibernation. This sort of occurrence is always wonderful for your perspective as things that may have seemed important all of a sudden become utterly insignificant.
After about three hours of this cozy feeling however, cabin fever slowly starts to creep in as you realize that almost everything is shut down and those places that are not, are impossible to get to because of the state wide ban on travel. (Coppa and West Bridge were open regular hours on Friday evening..warriors!)
On the flip side, when sights such as this car (yes there is a car somewhere in there) meet you when you go out, you know there is little hope for doing anything around the city..and that you might as well embrace it.
I applaud those who got out their skiing gear…it added to the already apocalyptic feel…it is not every day you see your fellow Bostonians x-country skiing around the South End.
My friends and I ventured out to the Commons and the sight was just breathtaking. It was literally a winter wonderland with people out for a romantic stroll, or with their children sledding down little hills.
Apart from the near frostbite I suffered from not being fully prepared, it was really amazing. Being part of something so historic is special, even if it means you have to let go of some of life’s usual conveniences.
All of this said however, we are very lucky to have had it so easy. I never lost power and on this fine Sunday morning, mostly everything was open again. Most importantly, Flour Bakery was operating in the South End:)
As with most of these big storms, give it a couple of days and everything goes back to normal, the MBTA will be up and running, we will go back to work and start looking forward to the rescheduling of big parties and events and things will truly be back to normal when we somehow find part of ourselves wishing for another snow emergency…what we should not forget, is that next time, things might not be so pleasant.