Plan A: Please Do Not Enter The Chicken

Every November in Sydney, the sand and cliffs between Bondi Beach and Tamarama Beach are littered with dozens of new-fangled pieces of modern art. This is called “Sculpture by the Sea”. Now, I’m not a huge art person, especially modern art, but after seeing the Biennale a few months ago, I thought this would be great as well. And it was, but it almost didn’t happen.

First try:

Todd, my top hetero activity buddy (that sounds dirty, doesn’t it?), and I planned on heading out early to see the sculptures. The weather for the day was questionable, but the forecast said the weather might be ok in the morning and then shitty in the afternoon. So, we awoke at the butt crack of dawn and met for breakfast around the corner at the cute baristas’ place and then planned on taking the bus down to the beach from there.

Well, that plan didn’t work out so well. The weather in the morning was… terrifying. I don’t think I’ve seen rain that hard in Sydney before. So we had our brekkie and then parted ways back to our respective houses for additional sleep. Later on that afternoon, when the weather was supposed to be worse, the sun started to peek its head out. I had already made other plans. Bastard.

Second try:

So, the next day – Sunday – we tried again. I had brunch plans already but we met in the early afternoon and bussed down to the beach. My friend Karen joined us this time. We arrived and the weather was delightful. Unfortunately, everyone else thought the weather was delightful too. The narrow trail through all the art was littered with more people than you can imagine. You could barely move and I kept getting pushed and brushed up against inappropriately. It was sort of like a gay club in that everyone who you didn’t want touching you was touching you and all the hotties were off somewhere else, but different in that it was outdoors and the people were a different breed of gross (but overall, the whole experience was completely and absolutely and utterly miserable… just like the gay clubs usually are). Fuck this.

We left half way through. Not worth it.

Third try:

The following weekend, on the second to last day of the exhibition, Todd and I met once again at an ungodly hour of the morning: 8am. That’s pretty ungodly for a Saturday. We bussed to the beach and… we beat the crowds! Hooray! We walked around for an hour and a half or so and we didn’t have to shove our way through to see everything, and we didn’t have all the children running around, and we didn’t have the old people with delusions of actually being able to climb the stairs at a reasonable pace, and we didn’t get bumped and shoved and inadvertently manhandled by people who have no place manhandling anyone, and we didn’t have the Asian tourists out there in full force with their cameras posing in front of each and every sculpture to take sixteen group photos. Not to stereotype or anything, but seriously people.

And at the end, the masses of pesky tourists and onlookers and other undesirables had begun to arrive. But we were done by that time, so we didn’t care. I guess the third time really was the charm. So now, without further ado, I present to you: Sculpture by the Sea, in pictures:

The yellow light means: “Proceed with caution, there’s some strange shit on exhibit here today.”