It's hard to know exactly what to say about the awfulness that happened here in Vancouver last night. It's hard because I feel too much to articulate it intelligently: anger, shock, disappointment, disbelief, sadness, embarrassment, and fear at how thin our veneer of community and civilization appears to be.
Playoff hockey stresses me out to no end. I felt physically ill during all of Game 6, and so I made plans with my friends Caitlin, Cathy, Scott and Damon to see Stephen Sondheim's "Company" on the big screen at Tinseltown, at Abbott and Pender, during Game 7. I figured if we won I'd watch the highlights on replay, and if we lost, well - I wouldn't. It was a theatre full of girls n' gays - most of whom I knew - and I was thoroughly enjoying the show until my purse started vibrating from anxious text messages from my mom, who wanted to know where I was, that I was safe, and that I would avoid the areas where riots had already broken out and were being televised.
As we left the theatre, we began to be more and more aware of what had happened. We decided to walk as a convoy to my place, where Cathy would attempt to drive Scott and our friends Kate and Matthew home to the West End and Kits, as buses and taxis had stopped running (we didn't know that the Cambie, Granville and Burrard bridges were also closed at this point). Tinseltown is only two blocks from my house, so the walk was relatively quiet, although we could see cop cars barricading the streets to the west of us. We left poor Damon at the Stadium Skytrain, which I would never have done had I known that three cars were lit on fire within a block of the station. Luckily he made it onto a train and got home safe. Cathy and her group left, hoping to make a big loop around downtown, and Caitlin and I went up on the roof here at Woodwards to watch what was happening.
It was a slightly horrific sight. We watched lines of police in riot gear walk lock-step down streets in order to clear them. We could hear the recorded messages being blared from parked police cars warning people that this was an area of "unlawful assembly" and to leave the area or force would be used. We heard several loud explosions and saw flickers of fire from the Seymour and Pender area, where cars were set alight, and watched plumes of smoke rise from the Bay. Caitlin and I stood mostly in silence with my neighbours, shaking our heads and staring in disbelief at the police helicopters circling the city.
After Caitlin left (Carman, her husband, was somehow able to get down here to pick her up), it took a long time to fall asleep. I stayed up watching the surreal coverage on CBC and CTV, and then lay wide awake staring at the ceiling, listening to the persistent revelers who were still drinking and carousing in Gastown as if nothing had happened. I couldn't get over the unsettling thought that our city would transform into a war zone in the event of a natural disaster like an earthquake - that it would become every man for himself, with no peace or cooperation without heavy legal intervention. This unsettled me more than anything - is this the way Vancouver behaves in an emergency? If so, God help us.
This morning I woke up to a text from my friend Kate (one of my several Kates - I have a harem of them you know). We had plans for the day anyway - to make Mason Raymond a get-well card and compose some songs on my new tenor ukulele, Maklenko (traditional Hawaiian name, butchered by my dad). Instead, Kate was downtown by 8:30, picking up garbage as part of the clean up. I joined her at Pender and Richards by 10, and we walked up to Seymour to survey the damage at the Bay, which was extensive: remnants of burnt cars, windows smashed and boarded up, graffiti on the walls in Sharpie marker.
The graffiti bothered us the most. It all said some variation of "Fuck Boston," and we felt it wrongly associated hockey and Canuck fans with the atrocities of last night. We wanted it gone.
Now, I am my mother's daughter. I know my cleaning products. I was pretty damn sure that a combination of Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and SOS Pads would do the trick. Kate and I stocked up at London Drugs, and then attacked the wall. For the next five hours, we scrubbed, accompanied by a host of strangers: Katelynn, the darling girl who came equipped with her own Magic Eraser on her lunch break; Tim, who brought a broom and rag to reach the higher-up parts; Clay and Adam, two young guys who had been downtown last night and were unable to sleep after what they saw took place; Sheila, Brenda and Susan, who all joined us for various parts of the day and supplied us with SOS Pads, Magic Eraser and rubbing alcohol; Lee, who bought us extra cleaning supplies; Rachel and Danny, who joined us in the later part of the day, and Brian, who quickly commandeered his own pillar next door in order to get more cleaning done.
A number of media outlets came by to
interview us, which was fine, I guess - as long as the story was not about the rioters and was about the community coming together, I was happy.
The Re-Up BBQ came by and gave us delicious pulled pork sandwiches and iced tea for lunch. Several Bay employees came outside with tears in their eyes to thank us for cleaning their store, and gamely refilled our water buckets all afternoon, carting dirty water inside and emerging with fresh water whenever we needed it. Many strangers thanked us as they walked by, or stopped to sign the "Citizens' Wall" in Sharpie marker - the boarded up windows of the Bay had become a place for people to place messages of positivity or dismay at what had occurred. People approached us with donuts, Timbits, bottles of water, and burgers, just regular people who were grateful for what we were doing and wanted to show us their support. There were also annoying "disaster tourists" - people who came by to gawk, take pictures of us, and natter away at us about their "riot stories," before ambling off. These people annoyed me the most - the people that wanted to wallow in the negativity of what had happened, and shake their heads, without actually
doing anything.
After five hours of cleaning, we had made good progress. We had removed all the graffiti from the marble portion of our column, and had gotten almost all of the words "Fuck Boston" off of the white, painted portion of the pillar. My hands were shriveled and red from hours of scrubbing and exposure to chemicals. My shoulder was sore from standing with arms outreached. At this point, there were so many people "helping" that it was almost comical. People would just walk up to various spots on our clean pillar, and without a word start wiping it with a cloth, or a sponge - cleaning what had already been cleaned several times - that I decided it was time to go. I'd done enough. What we were doing was becoming almost symbolic rather than useful. I took some pictures of the Citizens' Wall (which you can see on Flickr
here) and ambled home, weary and still slightly shell-shocked.
I still don't know what to make of what has happened. I cannot take the safe view that this was an "isolated" incident fuelled by a handful of "anarchists." I've seen the photos. I know better. There were hundreds of people, seemingly ordinary people, who in one night destroyed my city's reputation and destroyed our sense of safe community. While I found some relief and comfort in the outpouring of community support today, I think it will take a long time for Vancouver to recover from this. And to all of those people who have remarked on Twitter and Facebook that they are "disgusted and ashamed to be from Vancouver," I'd say, put up or shut up. Put on a pair of gloves, get out there, and start scrubbing. Make an effort to make this a community you want to be a part of, and that you feel proud to belong to, not just today, but every day. Imagine what a fantastic place Vancouver would be if we all put our money where our mouth was and actively participated in building community. Imagine.
