Free 1982 by Jian Ghomeshi

the essential items I figured I needed for my trip to the Police Picnic with Wendy. I decided to bring my brand new Sony Walkman with portable headphones. Walkmans had only just started to become common in the summer of ’82. I was proud I had one, and I’d already made some mix tapes specifically for my Walkman.
    I have jotted down a short list of the items I packed in my Adidas bag that morning:
    Sony Walkman with Police mix tape inside
    portable headphones
    extra mix tapes featuring the Beat and Heaven 17
    jean jacket
    hair gel
    sandwich bag of mixed nuts
    You may be wondering why I didn’t bring any bottles of water along. I would have brought bottles of water if the Police Picnic were being held now. That’s what you bring to outdoor concerts these days. That would seem like a natural inclusion amongst the items in the Adidas bag. But water didn’t come in bottles in the 1980s. It came from taps. And things seemed just fine that way. Paying for a plastic bottle of water would’ve seemed like something a comedian would dream up. So I didn’t have any bottles of water.
    I met Wendy at Finch subway station and we got to the CNE Grandstand downtown at about 3 p.m. The subway ride was about thirty minutes long. Between the Sheppard and Rosedale subway stops I let Wendy listen to my new Walkman and to my mix tape with the Beat. I had purchased general admission tickets on the “floor,” so when Wendy and I arrived at the Grandstand, we headed to the field and pushed our way forward. We reached a point about fifty rows from the stage, and I told Wendy we should push even closer. She said, “Okay!” and smiled. It turned out Wendy was actually very nice. Even though she was cool, she wasn’t very much like Siouxsie from Siouxsie and the Banshees, who had told us to fuck off at her show. I was suddenly feeling a new sense of confidence. There were around forty-five thousand punters attending the Police Picnic in 1982, and most of them were bigger and older than me. But I had Wendy. Who else could claim to be there with the female Bowie? Soon, we were almost twenty rows from the stage.
    The Police Picnic show started with a local New Wave band called the Spoons. They were dressed in white and they played an admirable set, even though they had some sound trouble. Wewere close enough to get a good look at their faces, and I could tell that the guys in the band were all wearing makeup and eyeliner. The Spoons had started as more of a progressive rock band, but they were now fully New Romantic. They looked and sounded like they were from the UK. They were actually from an industrial suburb of Toronto called Burlington. But that didn’t matter. They had gelled hair and cosmetics and angular shirts and drum machines. The Spoons had a single called “Nova Heart.” The video for the song featured a glowing egg. Eggs were still cool at this point. Many years later, I would become friends with a couple of former members of the Spoons. They no longer seem to wear eyeliner.
    There was no alcohol sold at the Grandstand in those days, and quite a few people around us had snuck some in. The floor was getting really crowded, and I was having trouble figuring out where to place my red-and-blue Adidas bag when I wasn’t holding it. I had decided to put it safely on the ground between my feet. Wendy was getting offers from some of the older New Wave guys to our right to share drinks with them. They had stubble and they were smoking, and one of them had a cut-off English Beat T-shirt. I could tell they thought Wendy was pretty. Wendy declined their offers, although she did let one of them light her cigarette. I think she was being considerate of my feelings by passing on the drinking part. I wished I had snuck in some booze so I could offer it to Wendy too. I hadn’t really thought of that. I didn’t have a lot of experience with alcohol, except for the vodka coolers I had drunk a few times at John Ruttle’s house. One night, I had