Fireworks
August 11, 2002
Today I witnessed my worst pet peeve: big crowds. We had planned to watch the big fireworks finale all week and originally, I thought I would just take Eri to Jericho or maybe Kits to see it. Granted the view isn’t spectacular from these two locations, but the traffic is a lot less heavy. However, Benny invited us to go with him to English Bay today and seeing how I’m always busy when he asks to go out, I promised I would go. So we did.
I parked in the parkade under Eatons (actually, it’s Sears now) and we walked all the way down Robson to get to the beach. Everything up to this point was relatively fine. There were many people walking on the sidewalks but none were too unruly. The problems started when we actually got to English Bay. For some stupid reason, they put up fences around the sand. Why would you want to fence in 100,000 people? They made a few entrances onto the beach, each about 6 feet in width. Imagine thousands of people going into entrances 6 feet in width and you’ll begin to get the idea. Ideally, and theoretically, if everyone walked and NO ONE budged, pushed, shoved, or prodded, people would get onto the beach very efficiently and no one would be mad but throw in what I call the BIG FUCKING ASSHOLE factor and you get one big mess. People kept pushing and pushing. One european lady behind me was holding out her elbow as if it were a lance and kept spearing me with it. I got pissed off because she did this for 6 meters (which took about 5 minutes to travel) so I stood my ground, bent my knees and just made sure she could not move. Then she just shoved her stumpy body to whoever was beside me. If she had only lowered her stupid elbow, I wouldn’t have been pissed. I understand the mentality that people want a good seat and therefore are pushing to get by but please, no pointy objects. I really wanted to just elbow her back in her nose.
Canada won by the way. The fireworks were nice. They were as nice as fireworks can be… you know, flashy explosions containing millions of dollars worth of chemicals.
Leaving the beach was exactly the same as entering. More shoving, more morons, more elbow spears, and a bitch who pushed Eri this time. That got me pissed but it was some short asian girl with a stupid “it’s not my fault” attitude. Fuck you bitch. We walked through an alley running parallel to Robson and that saved us a lot of time. By the time I got back to the car, I was a fireworks display with a short fuse or a loose trigger. We drove out and of course, at one green light (Robson and Howe maybe…), NO cars went through because more morons crossed when they shouldn’t have. At Nelson and Seymour, some kids made some stupid scary faces and stupid noises and us. I would have honestly killed them if there were no consequences. I would have really murdered them cold blooded. One more episode. As I was crossing a green, two really stupid white guys dashed across the street in front of my car. Again, I would have loved to run them over if I didn’t have to go to jail or pay money or whatever. I would gladly rid the world of people who can’t wait fucking 2 minutes for the light to change. Don’t bother to point out the irony of me not waiting 2 seconds for them to cross because I did wait when my light was red.
So we got home relatively fast because we parked so far away. I hate fireworks now. I hate big crowds. I’m really pissed and stressed. I hate big crowds.
God I have a bad temper. It’s just people… calm down dude. Ah fuck off. Here’s a new webcam to show you exactly how I feel.
