Conga line at Park Hyatt goes absolutely nowhere (or, come back, celebrities, we miss you already)

“Where are we going?” said the messy conga line on the Park Hyatt rooftop last night. The response? “Where aren’t we going!” Apparently, someone in the financial district got wind that there was a festival happening in Toronto—who knew?—and brought all their broker buddies to the top of the Hyatt to hang with the celebrities. The minute the celebs left, the classiest joint in town reverted to a deteriorating Copacabana of bottom feeders who thought they had dodged security and made it to the VIP. After the jump, our sad, hilarious collisions with two of them.

The company may have been desperate, but the view was lovely. Queen’s Park has never looked so lush. Sipping vermouth (our dirty martini was no Stellar McKellar) and gazing at the city lights, we were accosted several times by old men who were flat-out lying in hopes of scoring a quasi-TIFF tramp. “I filmed a movie with Angelina Jolie right there,” said one man, pointing to the big-box Bloor strip with its H&M and Zara. When we asked him how he was enjoying the festival, he seemed tongue-tied. He avoided the question by asking us to twirl.

Later in the night, we struck up a conversation with a 30-something sharp-shooter. He whispered that he thinks Lindsay Lohan would have sex with him given the opportunity. We weren’t asking about Lindsay, and we weren’t talking about sex, so we assume that somehow—gazing into the dark night, 18 stories up—this guy looked to the skyline and felt her red mane calling to him.

We took a break to go bust a move to “Pump Up the Jam,” but within minutes realized that we were committing the most obnoxious TIFF faux-pas: dancing with vigour.

Oh, celebrities, we miss you already! At 3 a.m., a sad reality kicked in when it dawned on us that, until next year, our brushes with fame will be limited to high-fiving the kids from Degrassi. Sigh.—Jen McNeely