I had the "pleasure" of being in down town, on that eventful day, that turned out to be a nightmare for the city. It was a beautiful summer day, and the down town core was packed with hundreds of cheering hockey fans. As I walked past Granville and Cordova I heard one drunken man shout "We will riot if they loose, And We will riot harder if they win!" I guess you can say that it was a loose loose situation for the city, and its difficult to argue that "Vancourites" don't have rioting in their blood due to past events such as the guns and roses concert in 2002 and the Stanley cup finals in 1994. As I hurried to get out of the madness, I was asked nearly a 100 times by random pedestrians as to where the nearest sky station was, and I realized, that this wasn't just a Vancouver issue, many of the rioters were suburbanites from Surrey, Burnaby, And Richmond, just looking to blow off some steam,looking for a way to let out all of their aggression of their outer city life, but in the end we all paid the price. I definitely think that some situations call for a riot , in Greece they recently rioted after taxes were being raised massively, amongst other things. In Libya citizens took action after they had enough of a tyrant ruler. The point is, is that these things meant something, they were fighting for a cause. Maybe it was the sense of defeat, the feeling of coming so close, or the hooliganism attached to most major sporting events, but its time Vancouver was given a reality check . As I headed home that day, I got a text from my 14 year old autistic cousin who told me "There's always next year, I am going to stick with my team!" It was a delightful message in an otherwise chaotic day, if only the rest of the public saw it that way.
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