First Hamilton Supercrawl

I eagerly anticipated the James St Supercrawl held Friday Oct 9, 2009. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate in the least. It was raining heavily all day. After listening to music for a short time at the Supercrawl and visiting a couple of galleries, I walked home because I was getting cold. I have heard from others that it was a good party. I had obviously left much too early.

For the Supercrawl, James St North was closed to traffic between York/Wilson and Cannon. This moved the centre of gravity of the event a couple blocks south. Usually, most Art Crawl action happens between Cannon and Barton. Moving it southwards made the Sonic Unyon building on Wilson feel more central, which during normal crawls feels like an outlier. Several live music stages had been set up. Covered stages were necessary that night because otherwise musicians and equipment would have become completely drenched. The wet weather discouraged crawling along James St. It appeared that fewer galleries than normal were open. The Loose Canon Gallery, as is usually the case, had some of the most interesting art on display. The you me gallery, which is often our first port of call, was closed.

The Art Crawl is primarily a linear event, much like that portion of Nuit Blanche that runs along Queen St West in Toronto. On the strip lots is going on. Off the strip the neighbourhoods are quiet. In my opinion the Art Crawl should include more of James Street, both North and South. It should stretch all the way between Liuna Station at Murray to St Joseph’s Hospital. It this way it would include most of the urban highlights of downtown Hamilton, including Gore Park. The Art Crawl has a way to go before there are sufficient attractions to encourage people to tramp all this way, but one can dream.

To attract crowds to the Supercrawl (which it sounds like they were successful in doing) live music became the main attraction. Overall, this made it less of an art-focused event. This may have been because of the weather or it may have been by design. Although live music is enjoyable to see anywhere in the city (the Locke St Festival is especially good in this respect) I’m not sure how successfully live music on fixed stages relates to the pedestrian movement inherent to an Art Crawl. With an Art Crawl you want people to promenade and explore art venues; with fixed music stages you want people to stop and listen to music. Therefore, the Supercrawl for me was like a regular Art Crawl, but with less crawling and less art.