OK, time for me to chime in.
Like everyone else on here, I was extremely angry and sad to see the rioting in Vancouver. And as many here know I support far stiffer penalties than we have right now for such crimes, our culture lacks discipline and responsibility. that being said, I would not punish via jail time, but by putting these idiots to work for a month to 3 months doing social services. Cleaning up garbage, cleaning up graffiti, tending and cleaning our parks, helping in soup kitchens, etc... and of course if they failed to show up to such work, then monetary fines and / or jail time.
That being said, I am now equally frustrated with the knee-jerk reaction on this forum via public events in Vancouver. Was this event poorly planned? Possibly. Is there much we can earn form it in regards to better management, absolutely.
Is the solution for Vancouver to close its doors for such large events? Absolutely not, for then you have essentially allowed the thugs to win.
Do you guys really think Vancouver is the first city in the world to have such a riot over such a ridiculous reason? Noooooooooooo.
I am in Europe right now and this story barely made the news here. I find it so funny that people on this forum are associating "being a world class city" as one that never has riots. Hate to brake it to everyone here, but every world class city here in Europe has had many, many riots for idiotic reasons that make ours the other day look like nothing. Where do you think the famous soccer riots came from??? Not to mention both Montreal and Toronto, Canada;s other potentially "world class cities" have had more than their fare share of ridiculous riots, especially Montreal.
Again, does this justify our riot? No, and I do hope it doesn happen again.
But then that brings me back to the point of everyone on here wanting to shut off Vancouver.
That is one of the key problems in the first place!!! Metro Vancouver is so uptight and stringent on its entertainment, liquor and zoning laws, that when a big event is hosted, there is a lot of bottled up bullshit that can potentially, and this time did, spill over.
Everyone on here is complaining about Granville street and how dumb it is to concentrate all the bars there, well maybe if the other areas of Vancouver did not NIMBY out every potential club, bar, dance hall, etc... we would not have this problem!
In fact, this is the funny part, I was just in Stockholm, Zurich and now am in Amsterdam, and when downtown in these cities every fucking street is a Granville Street downtown! All the streets and alleys are lined with bars, dance clubs, cafes, brothels, restaurants, theatres, etc... and yes these are also the same streets full of residents living above! And these cities do go 24/7. Not to mention they also support lots of good neon signs, electronic billboards, etc... you know, city life!
And thats the thing, life here is a constant stanley cup celebration, so people are far more even tempered and less volatile with their partying and enjoyment, because it is released all the time everywhere downtown. Not just a few select moments every year in a couple crammed corridors.
oh, and for the record, Stockholm, Zurich and Amsterdam are all about the same size of Vancouver, all are between 2 and 3 million in their Metro Areas.
So it is not just the punk idiots to blame, but also Vancouver's, and indeed all of Metro Vancouver's iron fist rapped around entertainment zoning, and yes, the NIMBy problem that squeezes all of downtowns entertainment into a couple confined spaces, instead of embracing that you live downtown, so therefore having a bar / club at or near the base of your residents should not come as a surprise.
And just for fun, here are some pics I just snapped of downtown Stockholm. As you will see this is true mix use where people live above never ending entertainment and commercial streets, all with or greater than the density of Granville and Robson. So again, these are normal streets in the downtown area.
Thats all for now, again, there are countless numbers of these streets and alleys downtown, really amazing. And yes, those are "downtown condos" that people live in above these streets.
All pics my own:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/3063463...n/photostream/
Cheers
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