On our very frigid Christmas Eve, I would like to test drive this chaotic icebreaker ❄️🫡 What’s the closest thing to a riot that you’ve been a part of?
USNA 2011, the night Osama bin Laden was killed. Place was nuts, first time I’ve ever experienced the collective emotion of a crowd.
COPA America finals in 2016 in a bar in Queens. Almost everyone there was Chilean or Argentinian. The game went to penalty kicks and as soon as Chile won a riot broke out. Beer bottles were being thrown and splitting open heads, tear gas was let out, it spilled into the streets & I got the f out of there.
College football - beat the rival, stormed the field, goal posts came down (this is ~17 years ago). There’s something strange about bringing a structure that large down, unplanned.
I was counter protesting at an alt-right protest at my university. The alt-right protest gained so much support that non students were also QAnoning on campus. We (the rainbow center) had to write down our lawyers’ # in pen on our arms, and we had a panic button in case they stormed our space, which they did.
part of a crowd of ~2000 people trying to push past military blockage to get into Lima airport when Peru closed all land, sea and air borders at start of pandemic
I was in a massive Disney merchandise story last night in Orlando. That was pretty bad. Otherwise, mostly quiet public experiences.
Never close to one. Excited crowds freak me out. Maybe our high school punk band concert.
Battle of Seattle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Seattle_(disambiguation) was a good one. First time I was tear gassed. Police totally lost control of the city center. Hint I wasn’t wearing a turtle suit but a real suit.
EDC 2010, the last year it was hosted in the LA Coliseum. I knew it was bad when they brought Lil Jon up on stage to quell the crowd.
well, got tear-gassed during a pride when I was trying to extract my sister from the scene, and was about to get stampeded in a back alley. It hits different when usually a very large street is filled like a can of sardines, and you are a shark being stampeded by sardines.
the canadian security intelligence service has a file on me and once physically interviewed me based on calling stephen harper a fascist around 2012
not really a riot but my friend and i were walking down a packed collins ave in south beach and there was a shooting at the TGI fridays, thousands of people running at full speed away (including us bc we would have been trampled to death) happened the same night the NHL season got canceled in 2020
2014 berkeley protests over Garner and Brown killings - police tear gassed near the student dorms
Heavy Heavy Low Low show that led to a noise ordinance 🤘
the protests in NYC during summer 2020 after George Floyd’s murder were pretty intense with the NYPD barricading themselves in and helicopters with spotlights flying over everything
Boston, 2002, Patriots first Super Bowl victory. People were flipping cars, lighting them on fire 🔥
Mad Cool Festival 2018 in Spain. The network was down and lines were incredibly long to get in because they were manually checking tickets. People started breaking down surrounding fences to get in.
Two incidents. One was police tear-gassing crowd in Notting Hill Carnival many years back. Tension between radio 1 music stand and police trying to contain things. Very badly handled and extremely fraught. Second was a protest in Nigeria where military waded in. Heavy handed as is always the case with the military.
Riot in a French overseas department that I was grocery shopping in 25ish years ago. Some Baghdad and Kabul incidents with just a soft car and 2-5 dudes. Anti war protests in SF in 2003. Ricky Renuncia here.
Never been in a riot but I was at a shooting at a restaurant in Mexico when I was in highschool. He was just shooting at the sealing. Fortunately no one got hit by ricochets.
Creating an event that encouraged student’s from a nearby university to bleat like sheep in a field as a joke to demonstrate that the students were mostly sheeple Wake 👏 up 👏 sheeple 👏
Crowd at G&R concert turned into rioters when show got cancelled at the very last minute
Women rights strike in Poland in November 2020
The night before Notre Dame/Michigan football game in Ann Arbor - massive crazy chaotic street brawl - crowd dispersed with tear gas. & looting/riot in Baghdad, April 2003