Unless you arrived very early or were a special guest occupying a bleacher seat, experiencing the Crystal's opening last night was a disappointed. Most attendees watched from a few hundred metres away via a large digital screen facing west down Bloor Street. Crowd control at Bloor and Avenue road was nonexistent. People arriving from that direction slammed into a wall of media trucks, scissor jacks, and tantalizingly inaccessible, half-full bleachers. As more arrived they swelled out onto the busy lanes of Avenue Road.



Still, because most were Torontonians they overcame the awkward conditons with a quiet patience. After all, they've been waiting for this spectacle for five years now.



And a spectacle it was. The Crystal is architecture as media star having long ago eclipsed the need to actually perform the first two legs of its tripartite role of commodity, firmness, and delight.