I was with a group of teens 17-20 from high school, and we were challenged by grown ass men drunk out of their minds looking to start fights. It was crazy as a young adult barely legal to drink, it was one of those experiences where your like “damn, this is the real world” (something about a grown adult wanting to smash a bottle over a kids head). There was a certain bliss of ignorance teens from 07-12 grew up with, I’m not sure why that was, but we were very immature and naive more so than the previous and after generations (huge difference between late 80’s kids and early 90’s kids). A lot of kids our age who were at the riots were the absolute worst and yet many were the ultimate victims of the riot.
I’ll never forget this and a huge reason why I’ve matured considerably in my 20’s, but there was a girl, who didn’t look much older than 14-16, lying lifeless on the ground after she had been rumoured to be suckered punch. I’ll never forget people just walking around her, some video taping, some laughing, but no one had helped her. I regret just standing there and not doing anything about it myself. I’m glad my today’s self would never ignore someone lifeless on the ground even if others were doing the same, I always think about that girl. I felt some sort of guilt and I used to check the news for fatalities regarding the riot because I was convinced she had died. Even years later. But no deaths reported, I assumed she was fine. But she was lifeless, face first on the pavement, body mangled, a giant red road rash from where her buttock meets down to the back of her calf muscle.
Interest rates were low, canadian dollar got to par, more jobs than job seekers
yeah, in 2011 the scary people were often grown ass men. Well, in their twenties and thirties, still kids to me.
Helping people is a tricky thing. Not sure how good samaritan laws work (I should) but I thought it was one thing to not help - but if you start to help, and then stop helping, the law treats that as more culpable? Don't know.
Like I said, I bugged out n '11 because the writing was on the wall. In '94, it was almost indescribable, moving up and down robson street between thurlow and stanley park, depending on where the police line was, where the rioters were taking a stand, and where the tear gas was concentrated.
The police were all on Robson. The really scary people were the looters - they steered just clear of the main police line, but were smashing into the high end shops on robson, altho more restaurants and hotels where I was. I have no idea what is was like further east. Alberni was mostly empty, but the people there were really scary, looters mostly going after parked cars. Came across a young couple, the guy had been maced by a security guard of a highrise on Georgia. They were going to walk the causeway and cross Lions Gate to get back to West Van. But he was in really bad shape, so we carried him to a MacDonalds near Robson and Thurlow, I don't think it's there anymore, where they were putting out paper cups of water as a makeshift first aid station. Cleaned out his eyes, got them down to Denman and Georgia (almost got tasered by another high rise security guard) than along pender to granville, got the last skytrain out of there. Drove back up to Kamloops to arrive 6am, called in to work sick and slept that morning. My brother can be seen in the front page photo of the Sun that day. White flying skate jersey. Wild shit.