Joshua Sur­tees

The So­cadrome ini­tia­tive en­dorsed by five of the ma­jor Car­ni­val bands end­ed up with mixed re­views on Car­ni­val Tues­day.Harts and Pas­sion did not get to cross the spe­cial­ly built stage at the Jean Pierre Com­plex be­cause of a tim­ing clash with the much big­ger Tribe.

Ar­riv­ing at the end of Fitzblack­man Dri­ve, hav­ing spruced up their cos­tumes and pre­pared to cross the stage, Harts mas­quer­aders told the T&T Guardian they then heard an­nounce­ments from their sec­tion lead­ers telling them to re­turn to the trucks be­cause they were di­vert­ing to have their lunch in Vic­to­ria Square ear­li­er than planned. They then saw Tribe be­gin­ning to en­ter the are­na to cross the stage."Two hours lat­er, af­ter our lunch, Tribe were still cross­ing the stage, so we didn't get to," said a Harts mas play­er.

"But Harts still had an ex­cel­lent day. We knew we were go­ing to the So­cadrome, we just ar­rived at the wrong mo­ment, and the thing about our band­lead­ers is they want to keep us on the move, not stand­ing for two-three hours par­ty­ing on the spot like Tribe do on Car­ni­val Tues­day be­cause of the size of their band."Harts crossed the Sa­van­nah stage ear­ly, as is tra­di­tion­al. The first sec­tion be­gan cross­ing at 7.30 am.

An­oth­er Harts mas­quer­ad­er said, "I think send­ing the bands west and tak­ing it away from down­town was a fail­ure. Harts didn't make it to the So­cadrome and no one seemed too con­cerned and up­set about it."For those mas­quer­aders who did cross the stage the So­cadrome was a more pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ence.

Gabriel­la Bernard, 19, play­ing mas for the first time with Yu­ma, said, "The So­cadrome was great. It was def­i­nite­ly a great sub­sti­tute for cross­ing the (Sa­van­nah) stage and mim­ic­ked every­thing that was em­bod­ied in that ex­pe­ri­ence."Crowds in­side the Jean Pierre Com­plex were small, with just a hand­ful of peo­ple pay­ing $25 for ac­cess to the banks of seats. But the same could be said of the North Stand at the Sa­van­nah.

Act­ing Com­mi­sison­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams said yes­ter­day the ma­jor chal­lenge in the pre­vi­ous years was bands get­ting to the Sa­van­nah stage. He said the So­cadrome "aid­ed in eas­ing the lev­els of traf­fic for it to flow."

Of­fi­cials: It went well

So­cadrome of­fi­cials re­leased a brief press state­ment yes­ter­day which read, "Crowds at the fa­cil­i­ty were small as ex­pect­ed for the pi­lot project," but added that the project "went fair­ly well. Feed­back from our mas­quer­aders so far is large­ly pos­i­tive as it re­moved con­ges­tion and long wait times from their mas ex­pe­ri­ence."

On be­half of Car­ni­val TV, which live-streamed the So­cadrome mas, Camille Par­sons told the T&T Guardian, "On TV it looked ab­solute­ly amaz­ing, with the back­drop of blue sky in­stead of a field. The sun­rise was beau­ti­ful and it would have looked mag­nif­i­cent at night too."

As it was, the com­plex was on­ly li­censed up un­til 4 pm as fears of con­ges­tion along the high­way and Wright­son Road meant an ear­ly fin­ish time had been agreed up­on in ad­vance. Par­sons sug­gest­ed that an ex­tend­ed stint next year would al­low all the big bands to cross the stage.