Given that the people who are important to me live in a couple of different countries and not all in my present timezone I had some explaining to do on the incidents of last Weds night. I’ve been enjoying their responses and bald confusion over what took place. Wha? Then again I’ve also especially enjoyed responses when trying to give them a broader picture and described some of the nonsense rhetoric that has crept in here in the last few years, which includes bigging up the brand with daft invocations such as “World-Class City.” and how unfortunately some residents seems to have swallowed it and are currently participating (tho’ p’haps not consciously) in brand repair via compulsive apologizing.
One respondent wondered poignantly what the criteria was for being a World Class City? (Curiously now I type it, it’s awfully redolent of those tacky mugs with World’s Best Mum or World’s Best Dad on them).
Other cities just get up and get on with it in the mornings. We are active in our World-Class getting on with it. Indeed we are perhaps World-Class at getting up in the morning. The culture of pronouncement indicates a void. It also indicates a level of arrogance that refuses to pay attention to the thunderstorm rolling in or look skyward and consider the conditions that are presenting and what might form as a result.
In my mind I keep searching for the scenarios that took place on Weds night in other manifestations of my experience of daily life here. The one that does come back is that image of people standing alone and people not stepping forward to support them. A hesitancy to involve oneself. A kind of quiet reticence rather than cold indifference. And if you do involve yourself either a discomfort at the offer (resulting sometimes in a refusal to accept help) or an overwhelming response of gratitude and surprise at the expection you would.
The place I’ve observed a complete contrast to the above is in the DTES to be honest.
counter measures
What will the counter measures be to the scribblings on the plywood?
Will random pieces of plywood (even not yet purchased variety?) become new sites for written interventions? Is plywood the new monument? Does plywood even need anything written on it to warrant a photo opportunity?
This has potential for appropriation.
Anthropomorphism
Who are the people who have written on the plywood boards apologizing to?
On plywood
Here’s an online link to photos documenting the plywood scribblings (wall seems rather grandiose) I just noticed the following in red which stood out among the repetitive apology and I love my city tones. (how can everyone sound so similar when they love their city??)
HBC WAS THE PRIMARY AGENT OF CAPITALIST EXPANSION AND CONQUER OF INDIGENOUS LANDS.
Another curious thing about the wall is the role of overlap and interruption. In one series of phrases the writer appears to be apologizing to members of the hockey team,(!) or was that a red penned edit? At this point it’s incumbent upon me to point out that the sports franchise reaped the benefit of this entire shenanigans — profit wise — they’re skating on and off with mounds of cash. How much will Mike Gillis et al contribute to the repair to our public space? When collective identity becomes commodified down the lense of a team logo perhaps we need a dustpan and brush at the ready or a cash lined blocker included.
While we’ve been consumed with our own riot situation last week, I’ve been watching this story unroll in China the last few days: with nothing like the media attention.
It should be noted that Xintang is a “centre for garmet factories” and could very well be a place where the hockey shirts are manufactured.
The article mentions the requistion of land, low-level compensation, corruption, and the all round oppression of workers. It also alludes to other recent strikes.
I went to visit some of the hoarding that covered the windows broken during the riot and is covered in apparent messages of support for the city or messages of thanks and outpourings, I found reading some of it as terrifying as the riot. There is also some kind of flag project happening. The ending is firmly being scribed and hoisted on this episode without there being any real interrogation about it. We have had only gasp horror, deflection, and we’re onto the reconciliation stations.
A man passed while I was reading the words (very repetitive) and shouted out The Bay won, The Bay won. It was the most pertinent statement I read. Another collective identity has already been dreamed up by the marketing men before we’ve dealt with the ramifications of the last half hatched one that actually in part gave rise to these riots. This time it’s Van Love and we’re encouraged to hang it in our windows. But heads in the flagged sentiment of it shouldn’t have happened rather than why or what might have contributed to it happening .. onward we traipse.
Down the road the postal workers had an active picket line that was not crowded with people taking pictures of themselves beside scribblings. Given the state of organized labour and the attempts to undermine it, a picture of a picket line might actually prove a more pertinent historical recording.
Vancouver has managed to turn a riot into a tourist attraction within a few days.
Foodie uproar
This is an interesting story about Borough Market. I am nearly sure I used to live right beside this market. It was a very ordinary orange and apples in brown bags type market, so I barely recognize this foodie controversy it morphed into. Mind you it was 19 years ago.
“London’s ‘foodie heaven’ and symbol of culinary revolution has been engulfed by row over commercialism and quality”
Not only are we after the single heros/heroines, after the single match, we have now fixated — globally — on a single image from Weds nights events (which did/do not begin and end on Weds night!) Singularity does not equal any kind of reasoned interrogation. It’s complex! Why are we settling for such clipped, bullet point explanations?! The neat summary. One match, one image.
The commentary around Weds night’s hockey riot is noticeable for how weak it is. Not exactly breaking out the old brain cells nor searching the vast corners of the attic… There was a piece in today’s Globe that was so pointless the writer must have written while his washing was on the spin cycle. He referred, in a throw away half (witted) sentence to the “labour battles of the 1930’s” and attempted to cook up some bonko explanation on Vancouver’s pre-disposition to riot antics while having no insight or discernible knowledge of the city’s history. (quick smash and grab on a wiki link or two). If he intends to reference the 1930’s and he might do well to note that the relief camp system was invented by the Federal Govt!
A friend today described what took place (before and during riot) as a silly performance of identity. I think I’d actually term it more of a misguided clog dance of identity. Listening to the police spokesperson (redolent of the hockey tunnel interviews) drone out cliches the other night, in the car, a friend who was riding with me called from the back that many intelligent people did not experience the play offs as a “great run” and could tell something like this wanton madness was brewing.
The language was a key indicator. Hockey language is incredibly vacuous. A half dozen vacuous men speaking in vacuous language on locker room analysis. To be honest no wonder the language then became peppered with tones that one hears in the average fly -on-the-wall documentary about going to war and how to psych up with your rock eared battalion about the enemy. I was particularly struck noticing people I know to be reasonably intelligent, normally lucid individuals chiming out the kinds of mumbo-jumbo you might record in a screening interview with some-one in an active state of delusion on the PAC ward at Vancouver General Hospital.
Every time I hear this battle cry of World Class City — I wonder why this hasn’t made it into the commentary, why amidst the chronic feeding of mindless boosterism & blithe acceptance of what we’re fed about where we live should anyone be surprised to see the equally mindless participation and blithe feeding frenzy on the violence on Weds. There are bigger questions to be interrogated around participation. What is the unfed urge to participate? What was this dependence on a single outcome, the entitlement to that outcome, the lack of consideration for any other outcome, the demand for it. (and when demand not met in a timely manner, refund?!)
We’re also looking for these single individuals, we want to unite with those who stood up and yelled and waved their arms, urged people to stop. We want to unite with them now, but while they were standing there yelling (solo it seems almost always from the footage) why didn’t the swarms of others join them? Why didn’t three other people join them? And why did those swarms only join when some lug-head then proceeded to push them to the ground, why’d the swarm join in when it came to kicking them in the kidneys and back of the head?
To some degree enforced participation began with the 2010 Olympics. Those who stood aside and questioned and didn’t don the red mittens were eyed suspiciously as kill joys. National Pride took over. A swarm ensued. See how the language comes back to itself. We were desperate, we are desperate and we’ll remain desperate until we actually examine those appetites and how they’re fed. Yet the biggest examination seems to revolve only around “brand repair” and explaining or tagging activities with neat slogans.