The picture I tweeted moments after the game ended.

“You were there?” Yes, right next to the first car on fire.

And then, wandering the downtown core, calling into the station as another car got swarmed, the police moved in, hundreds streamed down an alley, looking for what might happen next.

I’ve been thinking a lot the Stanley Cup Riot this week, not just because the playoffs started again, prompting more discussions on policing and crowd control.

Last night was the RTDNA Awards, where our CBC team was honoured with several regional awards for our coverage. So were other outlets in the city, so the acceptance speeches were filled with memories of what we all saw and felt that night.

I was excited for the playoffs last year. But 10 months post-riot? Not one bit.

My city transformed, for better then worse

Not green men, but green kids at what started as family-friendly playoff parties.

I was a fan of what was happening on the streets, much more than the ice. It rekindled a bit of that spirit from the Olympics, the year before.

Granville Street after the 2010 Olympics gold medal game, Feb. 28 2010.

During the Olympics, that was all capped off with the impromptu street party after the men’s gold medal hockey win.

That whet my appetite, and I’m sure many others, for another crazy but good-natured civic celebration.

As CBC’s Stephen Quinn recalled on the radio this week about the outdoor playoff parties: “It was fun, until it wasn’t.”

Smoke rising, bottles flying

And that turning point came around 8:02 p.m., June 15, 2011.

I was already outside the CBC with a television camera and other reporters, gathering comments from disappointed fans. Then, over the sea of people on Georgia Street, bottles started flying, aimed at the massive public viewing screen.

We saw smoke across the street, but didn’t see where it was coming from. We linked arms and pushed through the crowd, getting sworn at for our CBC logos. As we reached the other side, we saw that first overturned car, just smouldering.

I felt a wall of heat as it burst into flames.

That’s when I tweeted the picture at the top of this post. I didn’t know how to describe it. Do I name this, a #riot? Maybe, but this is just one car. Are these #Canucks fans? That debate continues today.

So I just wrote: “Georgia street right now.” It lacked keywords or hashtags, but it was true. And shared widely, with many adding comments: “sad” “OH MY GOD” “holy crap” “insane” “disappointing.”

It was a little of all of those things, especially disappointing. But also surreal.

Witnessing downtown that night, it felt like either that memory of happy Olympic crowds was make-believe, or this was. But they were both real, and now we have to live with it.

Help available here! (Photo by cogdogblog on flickr)

Well, mostly just improved.

I had been getting pretty frustrated with some pieces of this site that weren’t working. There had never been an RSS feed, the comment form was broken, and so on.

So, I hit up the very friendly people at the WordPress help desk at Northern Voice this weekend. Not only was the help free, but it was nice. No judging when I introduced the problem to each subsequent person as:

Sorry, I built the site myself, so it’s probably not done right, and I probably can’t tell you how I did it….

Miss604 gave the first crack at it, with some tips on plugins that might work better for me. Then Digital Entomologist Lloyd Budd took it on for hours, looking for where I hid a wee bit of code that he figured was messing things up. He eventually did, with a little help from Scott Leslie, and now the feed works.

Thanks all! I also learned a lesson: plopping code somewhere to make the site look prettier just might be breaking it.