Over in the Distillery District, what was meant to be quick peek turned into my stomping ground for the better part of the Nuit Blanche night.

The neighbourhood is a year-round car-free and creative zone, so it was easy to toss away the map and the app, meet up with friends and spend hours going from store to pub to gallery to bakery.

Projects in this area were all independent, like the all night free dance lessons at Dance District Studio (fox trot at 5:15am anyone?), Nicolas Ruel's composite travel photographs printed on stainless steel at the Thompson Landry Gallery, ongoing street performances by five "urban dance groups" for Dances Distilled, and If Walls Could Speak where the Dish Gallery + Studio invited visitors to get creative with tiles of wet clay to fill a wall (at the time of my visit, Nuit Blanche partakers were not demonstrating exceptional talent in tile-decorating).

Overall, I found the event more interesting than the art, with the exception of Rob Gee's interactive PhotoSecret. Gee solicited txt secrets and/or photos from people passing by, projecting a pairing of images and confessions at random on a brick building. Torontonians shared sad, shocking, and sometimes funny secrets like I am scared of sex, I hate your boyfriend because I love you, I am only interested in sports to find a husband, and I go to church high, you never notice.

In all this spontaneous wandering, we also stumbled into a fun fashion event: Art of Fashion. While it was not an official Nuit Blanche project, the party was open to all in a Distillery warehouse space with a live DJ, food, beer, models, stuff for sale, and a competition of designers interpreting a superhero theme.

Photos by E.S.Cheah Photography (2), derrideb, and muffincoffee on Flickr.

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