Andrew Underwood

Whyte Ave Hockey Hooligans

I live in the center of the Whyte Ave party zone and when the Oilers took the western conference champions title on Saturday, 30000 people descended upon the area. Looking out my window you could see lots of people climbing all over the building accross the alley from me and a couple of people atop the Southpark car dealership sign, about 30m tall, waving Oilers flags around. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep for a while from all the noise so I went out with my camera and took lots and lots of pics and vids. I put the best ones up in my Gallery here. I think most of the troublemakers were just out for the destruction and aren’t really hockey fans. It seems almost the whole city is sickened by what happened here Sat night. Windows were broken, 2 phone booths were knocked down, and almost every street sign was torn up. People kept making bonfires in the street, then the firefighters would put them out from rooftops, then a couple of mins later anotherone would spring up 10 m west of the last one. That happened nine times.

I don’t know what’s going to happen the next time they play. I would suggest not having the games on the weekend. This isn’t going to end well either way, I’m forcasting more property damage, and/or police induced injuries.

Here is a movie of a phone booth coming down: