The Slide

After one, two, three, four attempts, I finally got a ticket to ride Carsten Holler's Slide at the Tate Modern. It was totally worth it. Yes, I think it's art. And man!is it ever fun. I got up early Saturday morning and took the tube to Southwark. Got there at about quarter to 10, which is the time the gallery opens, and there were already probably 300 people in front of me. The queues have been like that since the exhibit opened. Amazing.

The notorious queus of London- at the market, the tube, the bus, the bank, the post office- which I think is comparable, if not worse, than what I've experienced in other large cities like Manila, is reshuffled. The purpose of queuing up isn't to get home or to get stamps, though I do think it's fun to ride on the front seat of the top of a double decker, there's a much more fun purpose to the end of this particular queue: a 2, 4 5 or 6 story slide dow a two twisting tonnes of steel and wire. And in the queue, there were lots of people smiling and laughing and giggling at the prospect of riding the slide. You don't see much of that at the local Tesco. While the Tate's popular as it is, anything that motivates people to get up early on a weekend morning and queue up, especially in the early November cold, is noteworthy.

I'm unnerved by a of a lot of things, heights being one of them (which doesnt explain why I love flying) but I didn't realize how steep the drop was until I got to the 5th floor (which is really the 6th). It was pretty quick and orderly. Once on the 5th, with my ticket in hand, I stood for about 10 minutes before the gallery assistant took my ticket and I got into a canvas sack with my feet tucked into a pouch. I opted not to wear the elbow pads. The first 10 feet or so are pretty slow until the first turn that speeds you into a whirl of successive turns. You feel the turns, your body moving against the tube's sides, your body slightly rising, lifting and losing momentary contact with the tube's surface as your speed increases. The exhibit's been up for about a month and I don't doubt that all those bodies and sacks have polished down and smoothed the slide's surface for a faster ride.

One of the things I like best about London, one of the things I most love about a city, is that it is built for walking. A city isn't a city if it can't be explored on foot. Since I got here, I've walked more than I ever have in years. It's been years since I've lived in a large city...

I walk daily from my apartment in Bayswater to the British Library and back. From home, I walk to Oxford Circus, Soho, Barbican, Clerkenwell, Knightsbridge, Bloomsbury. I rarely take the tube or the bus. I've spent more on water than I have on my Oyster card. It's a different way to see the city, walking and on foot. It instills in you a different sense of pace in time with which to approach the day. Sliding now vies for second place, with flying, as my favourite mode of transportation.