In all my time, I have never seen anything so wild, so bawdy, so wonderful, so funny, so upbeat - and I am not talking about my wife.
The Wellington Sevens are something indeed to behold.
It's an outrage, really. So, herewith, consider my disapproval briefly and for the record noted.
Now on to the good stuff.
Everyone is in fancy dress. It must take months of planning, for they get together with their friends to coordinate. We saw hordes of bishops and cardinals. We saw the Teletubbies and the Sesame Street characters. There were gangs of Mario Brothers, the Seven or Eight Musketeers, entire teams of Rugby League players shagging kangaroos. It was amazing.
The quality of the costumes, too, was stunning. It was as if Wellington had turned into a Fancy Dress ball. They obviously take it very seriously, as you can see at right, there was a costume triage center at the side of the road. A good deal of thought had gone into the costumes, too. You had the guys who'd built a YouTube frame around themselves titled "Drunk Guys at the Sevens;" you had the Railway crossing gates complete with flashing lights and annoying sounds.
There were cavemen, superheroes, men covered in tampons, and everything in between.
By noon, when Amy and I headed into town, already whole sections had been invaded by revelers. There was a fashion parade outside the Railway Station. People were dancing in the streets and on balconies. One bar we went to sits along a wharf separated from a long walkway by some pretty deep water. Everyone in the bar was watching - and jeering, cheering, cajoling - everyone going by. Everyone going by was jeering right back. It was the zoo all right, just no idea which were the animals and which the visitors.
Mainly the people at the bar wanted the people on the Quay to either strip or jump into the water. It was that kind of day. In an attempt to stay PG-rated, let me just say that there was an astonishing amount of nudity before we left to go to the game - and it was not yet 2 p.m. In the afternoon. We shudder to think what occured late night.
It seemed as if the whole city had gone made. It was OK to dance with strangers. It was OK to stand in the street and throw a Rugby ball around. By the end of the night WestPac Stadium was rocking and rolling and everyone was dancing and singing, the usual Kiwi reserve evaporated into the sky.
Everyone was in such a good mood. The banter was friendly and witty. Most people role-played their character, so there were funny accents galore.
At the stadium I was literally the ONLY person in street clothes. (I thought people were exaggerating when they said I'd stand out if I didn't dress up.) Though at the beginning of the day a karate gang charitably asked if I was supposed to be a war correspondent. I went with that.
I can't say that many people were watching the games early on. Really, WestPac Stadium seemed just to have become the world's largest bar. By the end of the night, that changed - a little.
We decided to leave before things became a little too crazy and the day lost its sheen. Even after we'd left the stadium the streets of Wellington were filled with costumed gangs still enjoying themselves. The Sevens, fun as they are, seem to be largely an irrelevance to the party - unless and until New Zealand make it to the finals. Then, I'm sure, it'll be all serious. But all that stuff happens on the second day.
0 comments:
Post a Comment