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Riots of 2011


Drejka

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Attended game 7 with a buddy. Stayed to watch the cup come out. Really, we just stayed to boo Bettman. While we are there his wife is texting him that a mob is burning cars a few streets over.

 

We exit the arena and started walking in the other direction hoping to go have dinner and drown our sorrows somewhere. A real nasty vibe was forming. At first I didn't really grasp what was happening. I was in a fog from the loss. We get to a restaurant and they tell us they're closing early. It was then we kinda figured this is pretty serious. Just then I catch site of some skinny dork who looked like a meth addict yelling "f**k the police" repeatedly and banging on storefront windows. If he wasn't a 120 lbs weakling he probably would have been able to break the glass he was pounding so hard. Heard some more idiots yelling dumb anarchist crap so we figured we'd get out of there.

 

Walking to the parkade to get to my car. We turn a corner and see a line of 12 or so cops banging riot shields coming up the street. So we turn back and duck into a Japanese restaurant but not before we get caught in a cloud of tear gas. That was fun. Was finally able to see what was happening on the TV in the restaurant, not impressed. After about 90 minutes we figured we could head to the parkade and get out of there. It's was still pretty chaotic. Finally managed to get to my car, half expecting the parkade to be on fire or my car smashed to bits. Lucky none of that happened and we got out of there safely.

 

Also I concur with those that said it was going to happen win or lose. You had people coming downtown all afternoon with backpacks full of molotov cocktails. They were intent on causing trouble win or lose.

 

Lastly, one of my favorite images from the riot.

angry_asian.jpg

 

Just look at this sorry excuse of a human. Arms barely thicker than the stick he's carrying. And a belt you know he had to poke 3 or 4 extra holes into.

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53 minutes ago, Where'd Luongo? said:

OMG I LOVE IT, guy should write the entire article on this dude.

 

"At what precise moment did you know things took a turn for the worst?"

Just for the record, I am a girl and yes I will definitely use this absolute  hero in my article.

 

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1 hour ago, Drejka said:

Thank you! That helps a lot...did something similar happen in 1994 or before?

 

1994 was far different.

 

People (up to 150,000) congregated on Robson Street after the loss to New York. Of course, alcohol was involved and some jackasses started climbing light standards and began walking across the transit/bus wires. One such individual fell from the wires and landed on the street below.

 

An ambulance was called and they loaded the person in and attempted to leave, and were prevented from doing so by about 10 morons. They were trashy mulleted weasels who slammed their fists down on the hood of the ambulance, and this drew the police in, rightfully. The officers engaged the skids (most likely from Surrey) who got belligerent and lippy. The cops then, rightfully, beat the ever loving $&!# out of the clowns, which raised the ire of folks milling about, some of who merely saw it as police brutality and not the deserved beating it was.

 

The crowd started yelling at the cops and then they (due to a slight numbers disadvantage) used pepper spray and tear gas to disperse the crowd, which it did. As thousands of people fled down Robson, certain unsavory members of the crowd began smashing every store front and looting. The police, eventually got the remaining crowd down to Burrard and Robson. There were riot squads preparing in the skating rinks in Robson Square. I remember this vividly, as myself and my friends were fleeing the chaos, we thought to take shelter in what we thought would be mostly empty space, and ran into about 50 officers dressed in riot gear. Needless to say, we got the frick out of there and made our way out of the downtown core.

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48 minutes ago, PhillipBlunt said:

1994 was far different.

 

People (up to 150,000) congregated on Robson Street after the loss to New York. Of course, alcohol was involved and some jackasses started climbing light standards and began walking across the transit/bus wires. One such individual fell from the wires and landed on the street below.

 

An ambulance was called and they loaded the person in and attempted to leave, and were prevented from doing so by about 10 morons. They were trashy mulleted weasels who slammed their fists down on the hood of the ambulance, and this drew the police in, rightfully. The officers engaged the skids (most likely from Surrey) who got belligerent and lippy. The cops then, rightfully, beat the ever loving $&!# out of the clowns, which raised the ire of folks milling about, some of who merely saw it as police brutality and not the deserved beating it was.

 

The crowd started yelling at the cops and then they (due to a slight numbers disadvantage) used pepper spray and tear gas to disperse the crowd, which it did. As thousands of people fled down Robson, certain unsavory members of the crowd began smashing every store front and looting. The police, eventually got the remaining crowd down to Burrard and Robson. There were riot squads preparing in the skating rinks in Robson Square. I remember this vividly, as myself and my friends were fleeing the chaos, we thought to take shelter in what we thought would be mostly empty space, and ran into about 50 officers dressed in riot gear. Needless to say, we got the frick out of there and made our way out of the downtown core.

How I wish the bolded statement wasn't true but people from Surrey almost feel this need to live up to the stereotype in moments like this. Plus Surrey was REALLY, REALLY bad back then.

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13 hours ago, Shift-4 said:

94 was more authentic

Yeah, they were.

 

Scary.

I was working a DT club called Luvafair (best place ever btw) and as people came in we were slowly learning of a riot going on 5 mins away. We were like...a Riot ?!?! here in Vancouver?!?!

It was before everyone had cellphones so we were getting little pieces of crazy word of mouth stories. Next day we all woke up to hear people had been shot by rubber bullets...If I recall, one guy didn't make it.(EDIT: he did make it, after being in a coma for 4 weeks...thanks wiki)

 

A couple months later two detectives showed up at my door saying I had been identified as taking part in the riot. One of my lovely old neighbours had seen me in my Linden sweater and ball cap so she assumed I was one of the many guys she had seen on tv footage. As I mentioned I was working and had ...oh a few hundred people that could vouch for me. The detectives were very nice and we had a laugh about my paranoid neighbour. 

 

The 2011 riots were a bunch of dorks wrecking things while the cops stood back and watched. 

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1 hour ago, PhillipBlunt said:

1994 was far different.

 

People (up to 150,000) congregated on Robson Street after the loss to New York. Of course, alcohol was involved and some jackasses started climbing light standards and began walking across the transit/bus wires. One such individual fell from the wires and landed on the street below.

 

An ambulance was called and they loaded the person in and attempted to leave, and were prevented from doing so by about 10 morons. They were trashy mulleted weasels who slammed their fists down on the hood of the ambulance, and this drew the police in, rightfully. The officers engaged the skids (most likely from Surrey) who got belligerent and lippy. The cops then, rightfully, beat the ever loving $&!# out of the clowns, which raised the ire of folks milling about, some of who merely saw it as police brutality and not the deserved beating it was.

 

The crowd started yelling at the cops and then they (due to a slight numbers disadvantage) used pepper spray and tear gas to disperse the crowd, which it did. As thousands of people fled down Robson, certain unsavory members of the crowd began smashing every store front and looting. The police, eventually got the remaining crowd down to Burrard and Robson. There were riot squads preparing in the skating rinks in Robson Square. I remember this vividly, as myself and my friends were fleeing the chaos, we thought to take shelter in what we thought would be mostly empty space, and ran into about 50 officers dressed in riot gear. Needless to say, we got the frick out of there and made our way out of the downtown core.

wasn't there a stink because the cops never read the Riot act out? 

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8 minutes ago, PhillipBlunt said:

Not sure.

I just had a quick search but cant find it. I'm sure I remember some griping about that. But at the end of the day, if people are smashing things and cops are handing out beats. You don't need read out anything to me, I'd bounce quick. 

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I went downtown to the public screening in 2011 to watch game 2. Even that game the crowd seemed uncontrollable and edgy. I remember they had an area gated off with a seven foot hight fence, and there were police at the entrance crowd controlling limiting the amount of people in the area right in front of the screen. During the second period there were too many people just pushing against the fence that the fence went down and a bunch of people just rushed into the area. The police kind of just threw their hands in the air giving up on the situation, not that I blame them because there were only 3 and hundreds of people rushing in. I remember thinking this will be the last time I go to an outdoor screening of a game.

 

I watched game 7 at my sister's place downtown. One thing that sticks out in my mind is CBC had a VPD representative encouraging people to come to the public area to watch, saying that it will be safe because  they had a large police presense. When the game was over we were all pretty down so we went for a drink on Granville. We are sitting there and the coverage on tv starts showing burning cars on Robson about 4 blocks away. We think we better get out of the area so call for our bill. That's when people from the street start running in to the restaurant, most b-line to the bathroom. One girl runs to out table, puts her hands in our drinking water and starts washing out her eyes. Our eyes start stinging and pretty quick we realize the tear gas is being used right outside of where we are. My wife took the girl who came to our table to the bathroom to help her rinse her eyes, we pay up and start heading to sky train to get home. 

 

On the way to sky train police are yelling at everyone to get out of downtown, but also saying SkyTrain is closed. This was our way out, so we head there anyways for when it hopefully reopens. It was running when we got there (I don't know if it actually shut down or was just a rumour on the street) so we hop on. SkyTrain is full of people bragging about looting, showing off what they stole, taking pictures to remember the night they rioted. It was all pretty disgusting. 

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21 hours ago, PhillipBlunt said:

1994 was far different.

 

People (up to 150,000) congregated on Robson Street after the loss to New York. Of course, alcohol was involved and some jackasses started climbing light standards and began walking across the transit/bus wires. One such individual fell from the wires and landed on the street below.

 

An ambulance was called and they loaded the person in and attempted to leave, and were prevented from doing so by about 10 morons. They were trashy mulleted weasels who slammed their fists down on the hood of the ambulance, and this drew the police in, rightfully. The officers engaged the skids (most likely from Surrey) who got belligerent and lippy. The cops then, rightfully, beat the ever loving $&!# out of the clowns, which raised the ire of folks milling about, some of who merely saw it as police brutality and not the deserved beating it was.

 

The crowd started yelling at the cops and then they (due to a slight numbers disadvantage) used pepper spray and tear gas to disperse the crowd, which it did. As thousands of people fled down Robson, certain unsavory members of the crowd began smashing every store front and looting. The police, eventually got the remaining crowd down to Burrard and Robson. There were riot squads preparing in the skating rinks in Robson Square. I remember this vividly, as myself and my friends were fleeing the chaos, we thought to take shelter in what we thought would be mostly empty space, and ran into about 50 officers dressed in riot gear. Needless to say, we got the frick out of there and made our way out of the downtown core.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a resurgence of Surrey bangers to be honest.

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6 hours ago, Jimmy McGill said:

Just make up whatever you want. There's so much BS around this incident no one will notice. 

I do not want to do it intentionally. If a BS slips in it unnoticed, there is nothing I can do about it though ... people in these situations tend to make stories up, but sometimes it is pretty easy to distinguish it from a true event... (and sometimes it´s not).

 

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On 2018-10-29 at 11:48 PM, Dungass said:

Sounds like Jim Chu's version of events.  Molotov cocktails, baklavas? Pictures or proof for any of this?  

 

The Anarchists and Black Bloc planned this riot, was a lame excuse that Chu and the VPD used to cover their asses for the fact they weren't prepared to handle a large crowd of drunken, angry, young men.  And considering almost the exact same scenario had played out 17 years earlier, that was inexcusable.

I though the cops werent ready because city hall wouldnt authorize the OT and extra man power.

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1 hour ago, Violator said:

I though the cops werent ready because city hall wouldnt authorize the OT and extra man power.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/police-city-were-unprepared-for-vancouver-riots-396-page-report-reveals

 

Quote

Police and municipal officials were quick to decry the riots as the work of violent anarchists and malcontents, although video footage showed that many of the rioters were disappointed Canuck fans who were caught up in the moment and impetuously joined in the mayhem.

 

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My nephew phoned me...he was stuck in Vancouver when the riots broke out.  He was a teenager and was scared...was trying to call his Dad, but couldn't reach him.  As I was talking to him and guiding him on what to do, he said people were grabbing broken shards of glass and throwing them like Frisbees.  I told him to get away from the area, NOW.  He said the skytrain wasn't running at that point.  I said to just get away from all the people...go in the other direction of where the chaos was.  He did and managed to get to safety and home.  But it was extremely scary ... one minute you're downtown having fun and the next minute it's a very dangerous situation.

I was watching it play out on TV and it was very surreal..was hard to imagine that this was our city on the news for all the wrong reasons.

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Took my 2 teen daughters to MIlestones on Robson for dinner.  Could watch the game at the same time on the TV screen.

I wanted to walk around the city with my 2 girls after we won the cup... soak it all in.

 

After the game went badly.....  we left the restaurant and headed towards granville  to get back to our car..

 

We started passing people bleeding with head wounds......  then we started seeing crack/meth head types light garbage cans on fire.... or tipping them over....

Saw helicopters over our heads.... and black smoke billowing upwards...

 

Got to my car and headed home...

 

On highway 1 coming into the city....  we saw a whole group of police cars heading into the city.... maybe 20 police cars... and ambulances sirens on... racing into the city...

 

Pretty f....ed up night for us.

 

I PVR'ed the game so i could rewatch it 100 times.......  I never had the courage /strength to ever watch the game off my PVR.......  I recently deleted it.

Just too painful.....

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2 hours ago, kingofsurrey said:

Took my 2 teen daughters to MIlestones on Robson for dinner.  Could watch the game at the same time on the TV screen.

I wanted to walk around the city with my 2 girls after we won the cup... soak it all in.

 

After the game went badly.....  we left the restaurant and headed towards granville  to get back to our car..

 

We started passing people bleeding with head wounds......  then we started seeing crack/meth head types light garbage cans on fire.... or tipping them over....

Saw helicopters over our heads.... and black smoke billowing upwards...

 

Got to my car and headed home...

 

On highway 1 coming into the city....  we saw a whole group of police cars heading into the city.... maybe 20 police cars... and ambulances sirens on... racing into the city...

 

Pretty f....ed up night for us.

 

I PVR'ed the game so i could rewatch it 100 times.......  I never had the courage /strength to ever watch the game off my PVR.......  I recently deleted it.

Just too painful.....

That game is so far out of my mind its unbelievable cant remember anything that happened fell asleep at 930.woke up the next morning and came on CDC Saw a thread about the riots and felt disgusted.

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On 10/29/2018 at 10:22 PM, HerrDrFunk said:

Also, people say it wasn't real fans out there rioting and that's bull$&!#. Of course real fans were rioting. They were disappointed, angry (and drunk in a lot of cases) over losing such a lopsided final game and took it out on their own city. 

People have stated that they heard people on the skytrain, etc. "planning" this on their way to Vancouver, before the puck had dropped.  

 

This wasn't people "losing it"....sure, some may have joined in but most I know who were down there for the game were horrified.  Don't lump "fans" into this...people disguised as fans.  People who care about their team generally also tend to love their city.

 

Idiots will idiot and this was just a platform for them, that's all.  Likely alcohol fueled, some may have participated who were there for the game but aren't they the same clowns who fight in the stands and get tossed?  I think they're more fans of getting wasted and causing trouble than anything.

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