Carmella and I watched the game at a Point Grey pub with her friend Tanis. Point Grey is a neighbourhood near UBC and near Carmella's work. It's on a hill, and you can see downtown in the distance.
As we were walking home, we saw a column of black smoke rising from the downtown area. We thought it was either fireworks or riots.
When we got home, we turned on the live news feeds and found out that it was in fact another round of hockey-related riots. In 1994, there were riots when the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup to New York in 7 games.
It's 11:15pm right now, and we've been watching since the game ended at 8pm.
We've seen footage of at least five or six cars on fire (two police cars, a BMW, a Hummer, and one or two others we couldn't identify), stores being looted (Coach, London Drugs, Bank of Montreal, The Bay, Sears, and Chapters), and lots of fights. The police have riot gear, dogs, and horses.
A major theme that has come out of the coverage is the stupidity of all the people that are standing around, taking pictures, filming, cheering, talking on phones and waving at news cameras.
There were reportedly 100 000 people downtown watching the hockey game on closed streets, watching huge screens set up in designated fan zones. When the game wound down, people threw bottles at the screens, got into fights, and tipped over port-a-potties, and threw rocks, bricks, and bottles.
Words like Chaos, Stupidity, Shock, and Embarrassment have been used. The newscasters have had trouble keeping their emotions out of it, being so disappointed and surprised with the events, especially after a successful Olympics and playoff run up until today.
There have been stabbings, fights, fires, vandalism, and looting.
Right now there are a lot fewer people downtown by the looks of the live shots and reports. It was a problem getting everyone out of downtown because transit was slowed and stopped, and also because people were enjoying being in on the action and being entertained by the mobs.
The major call right now is to get people out of downtown and to go home. Everyone has seemed excited to take pictures for their Twitter feeds and Facebook statuses, egging on the violence and vandalism.
Any police force I've seen on has been entirely necessary and justified. The bulk of the damage has been done by a group of people wearing black with balaclavas, possibly tied to the group in similar attire that tried to stir up dissent during the olympics.
We have the worst hockey fans in the league. It's disappointing that things went this way. The reporters talked about this being a blight on Vancouver's image, and I think they're right.
We'll see what happens when the sun rises on this city tomorrow. The streets will be messy, there will be lots of repairs needed to shops and businesses, and we'll hear about injuries sustained.
Carmella is seeing an event being organized called Post-Riot Clean Up: Let's Help Vancouver. That's something positive coming from all of this.
I think we've seen the end of Fan Zones, Fireworks Nights, and any sort of public celebrations downtown.
It will be interesting to see and read the analysis of the unrest as it comes out. Was it a bad idea to try and rekindle the Olympic spirit by inviting thousands of people downtown? Were the police prepared enough? How much damage was done? How severe were the injuries?
I'm off to bed now. The Canucks lost, but life carries on. These riots put perspective on everything, in a way. It really is just a game, and not worth fighting about. Life goes on . Our wedding is happening in just over three weeks, the longest day of the year is still ahead of us, and it's not raining every day anymore!
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