No, Not An Auspicious Start

As I write this there are riots in the streets.

The newscasters are calling the scene post-apocalyptic. Police cars smoulder with vandals' flames, and tear gas envelops the entire downtown core. Windows have been smashed. The Queen Elizabeth theatre was showing Wicked and families are trapped in the foyer, afraid to leave the building.

The city is burning.

And all over a lost hockey game?

There are times in my life when I felt left out because I didn't live in Vancouver proper. I grew up on the North Shore, an underpriveleged kid in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood. When I married I migrated to Roastawasp, another city in Greater Vancouver (not its real name, but my grandmother used to get a kick out of calling it Burn-A-Bee, so I may as well honor her memory). It was always a pain, an annoying but necessary pain, to have to transit in from elsewhere, but it seemed inevitable.

But now? Now I'm kinda glad I'm not out in that mess.

Speculation is that it's probably not the hockey game that started it. That it was an excuse for people to riot; that there are anarchists involved and that all the "real" fans went home safely. I don't know, because I'm not well-versed in politics and frankly, I want to stay out of it.

But this is not an auspicious start to my blog.

And yes, I'm aware how self-centred that sounds. But in my defense, I wasn't expecting this turn of events. I am a Canucks fan, married to a Canucks fan. There was quite a bit of tension leading up to the game and I was having a hard time trying to compose my first entry. I have so much I want to say, because I recently came out of an amazing experience with fellow writers, I have lots to share, and as of yesterday I'd decided to switch from Livejournal to Blogspot.

This is not the time.

And so, like many other Canucks fans and Greater Vancouverites, I apologize to the world for this mess. We are not all like that. If you check the Twitterverse, you'll see many more apologies like this.

When I started to compose this post, it was right after the game ended and I thought I had something clever to say about how the game inspired a story idea for me. This? I'm sure something fictional will come of it, but it's sure not what I intended.