Downtown Vancouver last night!

I had no idea that deciding to go downtown Vancouver last night would result in it ending in a riot!! I will never forget last night and what happened as long as I live. It will be a night that everyone will be talking about for years to come. Just like in 1994. People still talk about the riots that year and everything that happened. I have very vivid memories of what I was doing during that whole thing back then. I had no idea that years later I'd be at the beginning of a riot in downtown Vancouver for game 7 of the stanley cup finals in 2011. Anakin really wanted to go downtown to see one of the Canucks games. We heard about the big screen and all the celebrations. We debated for most of the morning about whether or not to go downtown. It was game 7 and the big one. We really thought they would be winning the cup and the whole city would be celebrating. We didn't want to miss the opportunity to experience it. Our kids really wanted to come with us and we also debated about bringing them with us. I'm really glad now that they weren't there to witness the violence that happened. It was a really scary situation to be in. I wanted to blog about my experience last night. I've had a lot of people asking us about what happened and are wondering about what our experience was with going downtown. I am sharing a few pictures that Anakin took last night. I also shared some on twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/padmeamidala) and facebook. I think Anakin took some really amazing pictures that show some of what was happening at the time. We decided to take the skytrain downtown. We knew it would be crowded and also expected it to be a circus. Canucks fever was everywhere. Flags on all the cars and canucks stuff all over the city. People were already honking. We got to Surrey Central and parked. We were lucky to get free parking! It was crazy already. Tons of fans all over the place. We ate dinner before we left on the skytrain. It was packed!!!! We got on at Surrey Central station and it was already completely packed. We made it on but had to stand the whole way there. We saw one guy openly drinking liquor even though it's not legal. It was pretty clear that many people were intoxicated and we weren't even half way to downtown yet. It was a very rowdy crowd heading into Vancouver. A few people were trying to start some problems on the skytrain. Booze and young punk guys with testosterone are a bad combination. Always ends up with problems. We have been to the fireworks and seen things get out of control. Usually due to booze and drugs and young punks looking to start problems. We got off at Granville Street skytrain station and walked upwards towards the huge crowd of people. I've never seen so many Canucks jerseys and stuff everywhere! Flags all over the place and signs. One guy was holding up a sign that said "F**k Boston* and we later saw him on the news during the riots! We also saw someone that we think we know in the crowd during the riots. We were shocked at how many people stuck around downtown when things started to get really ugly. We got out of there as soon as we knew things were going downhill. I have to admit that I was a bit surprised to not get my purse checked and not see many police officers when we got into the middle of the big crowd. Anakin and I were pretty surprised by what was happening around us. One guy behind us smoked the biggest joint I've ever seen out in the middle of the crowd. No one did anything about it. It was clear there was many people on drugs too. We also saw lots and lots of open liquor all over the place. Vancouver had closed the liquor stores by 4 pm but it was clear that people had brought in alcohol from all over. We watched the end of the first period on the big screen. There was helicopters all above us and so much tension and excitement in the air. Don Cherry came on and there was lots of comments about him from the crowd. lol. I have to admit that I don't like Don Cherry. I sat down on the curb to rest for a while and avoid having to watch Don Cherry anymore and the Coach's corner. I noticed a CBC reporter close by and they had the camera on us at one point. We later saw the same reporter covering the news of the riots downtown later that night. The second period started and things started going downhill for both the Canucks and the crowd. Boston scored the 2nd goal and people were starting to get angry. There was booing from the crowd and some fighting starting to happen in the crowd. Anakin wanted to go but I convinced him to stay longer. I was really afraid they would score a goal and I wanted to celebrate it with the city. So we stayed and hoped for a goal but it never came. I could tell that Anakin was starting to get nervous though, especially by the third goal. People were starting to climb onto vehicles and things were getting out of control. People had climbed the poles and it started getting very intense and rowdy. People were chanting and getting really angry about the game. We looked around for the cops but didn't see any. We decided to leave shortly after that point. It was clear that the crowd was starting to get mean and nasty and we worried about a loss and what might happened. Anakin remarked that it looked like a riot might start. I could see a lot of worry on his face. We saw one woman with a broken nose. A bruins fan who had gotten hit in the face. She was laying on the side of the street with blood coming out of her nose. Anakin went to take a picture and I witnessed another act of violence. A woman was getting assaulted for having a yellow purse!! Imagine that!! A bunch of young punks thought she was a Bruins fan just for having a yellow colored purse. She looked scared and started running and one guy chased her. We started to see some other fights and problems too. It seemed like some of the punks were on the hunt for Bruins fans. I wouldn't have been wanting to wear a Bruins jersey downtown last night. I noticed some people taking theirs off when the problems were starting to happen. Then there was a burning of the teddy bear "Bruins bear" that got us heading quickly towards Granville Skytrain station. We were starting to worry about fires. We found out later that that same skytrain station was tear gased shortly after we left. Police cars were set on fire and there was tons of smoke coming out of downtown. We had just missed it all. It turns out that things went quickly downhill shortly after we left. Fires turned into riots. Violence in the streets of Vancouver. I've gone downtown and seen the best of times (Olympics last year) and now the worst of times with the riot. It was a very frightening experience to see a riot starting to happen before your eyes. We were lucky to get out of downtown when we did. Thank you Anakin for getting us out safely and right away! I had no idea what kind of danger we were in at the time. We went home and turned on the news and watched the Riots unfolding right before our eyes. We were both completely in shock. It is one thing to turn on the news and see violence which happens in other places. But it shocked us so much to know that we were just down there. To see what has happened to our beautiful city. It's shocking! I barely slept last night. I kept replaying some of the things that I witnessed. They are cleaning up our city today. It's going to take a while to get over this. Thank you to everyone who sent us messages of support. We had a lot of family and friends worried about us last night when they heard we were downtown. We got home safe and am glad we left downtown when we did. I'm still proud of the Canucks for making it all the way to the end. I will always believe in my boys and hope that one year we'll see them get the cup. I do hope that Vancouver will handle things differently though for any playoff games in the future. I'm not sure it was a good idea to bring that many people into the city like that. I think this probably would have happened though whether they won or lost. Some punks were going to try to destroy our city and take advantage of the situation with all the looting and such. I hope that they are all caught and thrown out of our city and in jail! Shame on them all! **I hope that people reading this post realize that Vancouver is a beautiful city and that a bunch of punks did this. True canucks fans would not do this! I have been born and raised here and this city is amazing to live in. There have been really great times that I've spent downtown like the Olympics and Expo 86. There are people downtown today helping with the cleanup and getting involved in repairing all the damage down. Please don't judge our city based on what happened last night. I've read some really nasty tweets today about the city and they were upsetting to me. Vancouver will get over this in time (they did in 1994) but people won't forget what has happened.** May the force be with you all!! ~padme amidala