The Pimp ’n’ Ho has officially been relegated to the dustbin of history. Extremely Canadian’s Annual Season Kick-Off party has cast aside the overt sex ’n’ drugs theme, and reinvented itself. The debauchery, however, will no doubt continue. In its redubbed version, the shindig is summoning up a Whistler classic from the dead: The Freakers Ball.
It started with a 1972 Dr. Hook album, Freakin’ at the Freakers Ball. Most of the songs on the LP were penned by a songwriter called Shel Silverstein. The album was distributed to radio stations in late 1972 with a letter from CBS warning it contained "objectionable material". Diligent DJs who screened the album before putting it on the air, as recommended by CBS, would have been grooving along to the title track: "Come on babies grease your lips/ Grab your hats and swing your hips/ Don’t forget to bring your whips/ We’re going to the freakers ball."
It’s little wonder that Whistler’s ’70s ski bums took it as their theme song, naming their inaugural black tie bash after the song’s anything-goes, counter-culture Freakers Ball. Originally organized to coincide with the full-moon closest to the spring solstice, the first Whistler Freakers Ball was held at the Mount Whistler Lodge in the mid-’70s.
One local remembers Whistler in the ’70s as "a rough and tumble place. There was no opportunity to put on any nice clothes. Ever. Everyone lived in jeans and plaid shirts. There were three places to go – the Boot, the Christiania (an on-again-off-again restaurant/bar) and the après ski place at Creekside, L’Après. Then there was Rudi’s Steakhouse, a fine dining place that was in a converted house where Nesters now is. That was the choice of places."
Out of this social vacuum sprang the Freakers Ball.
"It was really a bunch of Whistler freaks getting together to have a ball."
Some of those freaks are now upstanding citizens, parents, community leaders. A bunch of girls did the catering, spreading a buffet out on a long table in front of the bar. One local girl, who grew up to be a Whistler VIP and mother, emerged from a giant cake clothed solely in body paint. Another group of revellers decked themselves out a la Louis XIV.
"Everyone came dressed up in nice clothes, except for one guy, who came in a gorilla suit," goes the story. "At the end of the evening, the gorilla jumped up on the long table and boogie-woogied down, having stripped off all of his costume except for the gorilla-head. He danced down until he stopped at the centre of the table, where two ladies were sitting chatting. Suddenly one yelled out, ‘Oh my god! I recognize that thing!’ And that was what it was like then. The community was small enough that features could be recognized."
Jim Kennedy, who was involved in organizing a few of the Freakers Balls, remembers it going for seven or eight years. Over time, it evolved. The quality of the food improved.
"Eventually we had the Chef’s Best, with a bunch of local chefs coming to cook up things. Each year it became a bit more formal. It was formally insane and insanely formal. Really, it gave the girls a chance to get dressed up, do their hair, not be stomping around in boots.
"As the valley grew," Kennedy recalls, "it became harder to find a location to house it."
The initial Mount Whistler Lodge ball could only cater to a small number of people. The ball moved to the Christiania for a couple of years, then had its swansong years with a couple of hundred freakers at the Keg at Adventures West.
All that remains of the Keg at Adventures West is a concrete slab located next to employee housing at Barnfield.
Another local remembers her one and only Freakers Ball circa 1977. "People did dress up. The one I remember best was a guy who went as a flasher. He wore a trenchcoat and hat, and underneath the trench-coat had a camera flash fixed up so it was covering his private parts. So when he’d open the coat, he would truly flash."
The flasher’s form was echoed by Guitar Doug at last year’s Pimp ’n’ Ho, but the indubitable Guitar Doug didn’t bother with the flash, and ditched the coat pretty early in the evening.
"Pass that roach please and pour the wine/ I’ll kiss yours if you kiss mine./ I’m gonna boogie til I go blind./ We’re freakin’ at the Freakers Ball."
Sounds like a great way to kick winter into gear. As long as you don’t mind the prospect of encountering some "objectionable material."
The Freakers Ball, as Extremely Canadian’s event has become, takes place Dec. 6, at Merlin’s, voted by Ski Canada last year as one of the best ski bars in Canada. (Along with the Boot, R.I.P.) If you haven’t got your tickets by now, better start working on your chances for 2005. Just like the antecedent Freakers Ball, the tickets are the hottest trick in town.
This piece is part of an ongoing series prepared in conjunction with the Whistler Museum and Archives, celebrating Whistler’s Vanishing Places. The Museum is committed to preserving and documenting Whistler’s heritage. To raise money for this work, the Museum is hosting the Good Times Café, selling coffee and a smorgasboard of baked goods, at Saturday’s Bizarre Bazaar. Located in the foyer of the Telus Conference Centre, the Café will be serving treats, baked and donated by Whistler’s favourite businesses and culinary legends, throughout the day. Take a break from your Christmas shopping and enjoy some freaking good coffee with the Whistler Museum and Archives’ crew.
