Tag: green point

OMD in Cape Town – a great night out

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Did I miss the Zeitgeist on this one? It’s Sunday lunchtime, and the concert was Thursday night.
But I’ve been busy and tired and chilled, so this is late.
I get it.
Sorry, not sorry.

But still a concert and an evening absolutely worth documenting. Starting with a decent free parking spot a whole 100m from the gig: I’m really not sure where else you can do this. And sure, we were there only about an hour after the doors opened, but why not make use of the VIP bar, seated area, sunshine and early entertainment from SA’s own Werner Bekker?

Burger and chips and a visit to the merch store sorted, we grabbed some space on the grass and waited for éVoid, infamous for their 1984 hits Taximan and Shadows. And they played, and the crowd – seemingly exclusively 50 and 60-something year olds from Parow and Edgemead, and encouraged by a Bok Radio DJ – lapped it up. It was such a feelgood moment watching people transported back 40 years, back to whatever club in which they were dancing to that SA New Wave “Ethnotronica”. And they really were back there. Acting like they were teenagers, for as long as their knees would let them.

But wait… there’s more… OMD.
Andy McCluskey not looking any older than 12 years ago. Paul Humphries with only a passing resemblance to Jerry St. Clair from Phoenix Nights. They were just happy to be there, you could feel it from the first moment.

What followed was just under two hours of nostalgia, energy, audience engagement, incredible stage presence and just really good vibes. Starting with some new stuff, as expected, before Messages and Souvenir dragged us back to our youth.

A brave Kraftwerk-esque performance of Veruschka was a particular highlight for me, after which McCluskey thanked the audience for indulging them with “a slow, new one”.

The interplay between the crowd and McCluskey was just perfect: each feeding on the other’s energy and enthusiasm and just pure enjoyment of the moment.

A powerful, loud, brash – but still tight – version of Enola Gay rounded off the set before a stonking encore of Look At You Now, Pandora’s Box and Electricity sent everybody home happy, although I do suspect that everyone involved could happily have gone on for at least another hour.

All in all, just such a great evening. Band and audience both recognising their roles and duties on the night, and then performing them perfectly. One I will remember for a long time.

Videos courtesy of my daughter, who also had a great evening

On the way to footy

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Indeed, and slightly early, due to a drop off along the way, and a weird lack of inbound traffic. So I pulled over here, and took a (phone) photo:

Beautiful.

There can’t be too many football pitches with this just across the road.

Still, there’s something to be said for an Arnold Laver timber yard right next door to the main car park, too.

Seaside Slideshow

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I was going to call this “Gorgeous Green Point”, “Marvelous Mouille Point”, “Thrilling Three Anchor Bay” or “Spectacular Sea Point”.
But that’s just because the boundary lines between those suburbs have always seemed a little vague and disputable to me. As it was, these were taken from the Mouille Point lighthouse (in Green Point) on what was a stunningly beautiful, but dangerously windy Sunday afternoon. I had to hold onto Scoop to stop her being blown into the South Atlantic.
Again.

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More pics here.

The swell wasn’t huge, but the wind was whipping the tops off the waves in the bright sunshine. I haven’t seen wind this strong since the last time the wind was this strong and I can’t remember when that was.

Imaginative

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With the kick off of the 2010 World Cup just 279 days away, the Green Point Stadium in Green Point seems set to be renamed. Originally, the name mooted was the African Renaissance Stadium, but who wants to play football in an ARS?

Thus, the Cape Town City Council have proposed that the new name for the new stadium should be (and I hope you’re sitting down for this):

The Cape Town Stadium

It’s both brilliantly simple and straightforward and really, really unimaginative. However, there is apparently method in their madness:

On Wednesday the mayoral committee approved the naming of the stadium going for public consultation after agreeing that “Cape Town” would offer the most brand value, together with flexibility in selling commercial rights for optimal financial and marketing benefits for the city.
Other stadiums in South Africa have either geographically linked, commercial, cultural or heritage names. It was noted that a cultural, heritage or personality name would restrict the selling of commercial rights.

Either way, this latest photo released from the 2010 Organising Committee on their twitter feed shows just how well work is coming along:

cpt
Amazing.  You just can’t fault a setting like this.

We’re almost through winter and still ahead of schedule for the official completion/handover date in December. I’m hoping that my study will be completed by then as well. Although I doubt that Jacob Zuma will come to the opening of that.

At least, he hasn’t RSVP’d yet.