Riot

My reading habits have slowed to an embarrassing halt this year.  I think it's because I've been craving something that'll tickle my funny bone, and neither of my bedside books fit the bill. For the last few months, I've been casually flipping back and forth between two books. One is "The Law of Dreams", an award-winning book about a young man's journey from Ireland to Canada during the potato famine. While historically fascinating, it's kinda dark -- plague, poverty and death aren't exactly elements of a rollicking good time. The other book is "The Power of Now", which probably needs no introduction because I think everyone n' their dog has heard of it -- and if you haven't, you should check it out (even though I personally still have a few chapters to go...) It's very inspiring. But sometimes, you just gotta be in the mood to be enlightened, and lately, I only want to laugh.

So, last Wednesday afternoon, Jim n' I headed downtown so I could finally take advantage of the Chapter's gift certificate I got at Christmastime and buy myself something funny. I decided to pick up a copy of Tina Fey's autobiography, "Bossypants", and my nose has been buried in it ever since! She's an absolute riot (of another kind) and my newfound idol. I don't know if I've ever had a female hero before besides Julia Butterfly - the brave activist who spent two years living in a California Red Wood, that she referred to as Luna (also the name of our cat, only by coincidence.) But as an aspiring flatfooted writer, I double-heart Tina Fey. I'm even thinking of writing her a fan letter. Seriously. I think she's that awesome.

Even the back cover cracks me up:

Anyway, as I was saying, I spent some time reading in Chapters until we decided that we should probably head'er home before downtown got too crazy with the whole hockey thing going on. At only 1:00 in the afternoon, there were already line-ups down the street outside of every pub. The sidewalks were almost a body-to-body sea of white, blue and green, while horns, hoots and hollers filled the air. There was also a pretty big police presence on every corner and checking random bags outside the sky train. If this was early afternoon, I couldn't imagine how crazy the city would be come 5:00 once the game had started! (Never mind how insane things got after the Canuck's lost!)

I guess hell must've froze over, because we actually put the game on, but kept the TV on mute. I'd occasionally look up from my book to see the score and report it to Jim who was strumming his guitar and playing online checkers. (Honest to gawd, he's totally addicted.)  When my sister called, I left the room to chat with her and start a late supper. The next time I returned to the TV, there was breaking news about a car that had just been overturned. We turned up the volume and watched with disgust for much longer than we should've, as downtown Vancouver was transformed into the most fucking despicable sight I have ever seen.

I knew without a doubt that there'd be a riot - win or lose. I've heard about what happened in '94, and I expected that there'd be a new generation of assholes out there hoping for their chance to indulge in some historical rebellion as well. (Fortunately, we now live in the internet age and so some of those stupid bastards are getting their due!) For Pete's sakes, some people even came prepared with t-shirts that read, "I'm only here for the riot". Don't tell me they got those printed up between the second and third period.

I know people are dissin' the police, but I will give 'em credit that the '94 riot had only 1/3 of the crowd and took twice as long to control. While some things probably could've been done better, it also could've been MUCH worse!

But instead of venting about all those shitheads, I would rather write about how incredibly proud I am of all those brave souls who risked their own safety as they tried to stop or help others. Like the photo I saw of one woman who could've been anyone's mom, confronting a group of would-be looters. Or the group of young men who prevented a bunch of rioters from setting Chapters on fire - the same Chapters we had just been to that afternoon. Then there are all the awesome folks who volunteered their time and energy to clean up the mess, some as early as 5 a.m. the next morning.

I wanted to avoid going downtown for a while because I felt gross about the whole thing. However, we had a special celebration dinner with our producers at Gotham Steakhouse on Thursday night that couldn't exactly be postponed just because I felt 'icky'. Gotham is beside the Bay, right at the epicenter of the riot. I'm actually surprised their windows weren't smashed like others in the neighbourhood. I wonder how they managed that?

We parked our car in the parkade across the street from the restaurant, which was a grim sight to behold. One wall of the parkade was torched black, with burned asphalt the length of five cars that had been taped off. Nearby, a man washed a few rental cars that had been damaged by smoke, some of them with smashed windshields. We got out of the car and breathed in the stale campfire air. The lobby windows were all smashed by the parking machine, which amazingly, still worked just fine as it charged us the pricy $9.00 fee for two hours, (even though we unintentionally stayed for three.)

As we walked down towards the restaurant, the energy on the street was calm and friendly, not shell-shocked as one might expect. We saw people gathering with officers and clean-up crews, having their photos taken. Love notes to Vancouver had been scrawled all over the boarded up windows. Even though I didn't want to go downtown, I was glad I did. It was a comforting sign that the city is already beginning to heal.

(BTW, our celebration dinner was very nice. They had one veggie option (which wasn't on their menu - but is offered when asked) so I didn't have to eat steak or starve. And our producers graciously covered the bill, which was almost 85 times more expensive than what we paid for parking, so I guess I shouldn't complain...)