DaveC
Blue Crack Addict
this likely tips the scales a bit for kawhi staying in toronto.
Seems like LA has got to add shooting now, and a lot of it. .
But with the current exchange rate its the equivalent of 2869 US people.pretty sure this is the biggest championship parade in north american history.
i guarantee that this wouldn't have happened if the team didn't arrive 3+ hours late after a million people had been baking in the sun getting irritated at being told over and over how the team was coming out "in just a moment".
fuck. this was supposed to be such a fun day.
not from what i can tell, but nothing would surprise me at this point. it could have been anything from a targeted attack on one person and some bystanders got caught in the crossfire, to someone simply getting pissed that they were being pushed around in the crowds. they caught the shooter a block away from there just a couple minutes later (there were hundreds of cops around) and also arrested some other people who are connected to the incident.
the vibe in the crowd started to get pretty ugly around 3 pm as people were getting out of work early and cramming more and more people into the square and surrounding streets, and i had a suspicion that something might happen, but i figured it would just be a fight or something. everybody was getting dehydrated (the one and only water tent being in the dead middle of the crowd where nobody could get through to it) having been standing in the square for hours with very little shade and hungry (having been promised the raptors would be in the square from 12:30-1:30 pretty much everyone planned to go for lunch afterward). not to mention there were two porta-potties for that entire giant crowd, plus a small one-person public washroom in the snacks building.
they started off showing a live feed from the start of the parade but as soon as it became obvious that they were going to be late they shut off the feeds and replaced it with an NBA champs logo and didn't give the crowd any updates. the only way we had any idea of where the parade was, was by looking up and seeing where in general the tv helicopters were hovering.
after about 2 pm they started in with stuff like the raptors dance crew getting on stage and dancing to a song, then the MC would come out and say something like "raptors fans ARE YOU READY?!?" which of course hyped up the crowd, only to be followed with "the raptors will be here in just a moment" when the people on stage knew damn well that the parade was still well over 90 minutes away. at about 2:30 they sang the national anthem and had a military jet formation fly over the square so it was obvious that something was about to happen, and then literally nothing did. not even as much as a "the raptors will be here soon", just all this stuff happened and the crowd got super hyped up again only to get disappointed yet again and given absolutely no information. after this kind of shit happened like 3 more times the crowd around me was getting really irritated. it seemed like once the players actually arrived that the vibe was less angry but still very tense. the executives and players were introduced then during the first speech from the team owner about 5 minutes later is when the shots went off and all hell broke loose.
if this ever happens again then they should run the route backwards and start from city hall then head to the exhibition grounds - the staging area where they departed from is a gigantic parking lot on the ex grounds, right next to the toronto FC stadium, where they hold the indycar race and have RV shows and huge events that are highly attended and require a ton of space like that all the time (https://i.imgur.com/k1GOX2Z.png). if they had held the rally in that lot and used the stadium & the amphitheatre and parking lots across the street as overflow to show the rally on the screens there, that area could easily have held way more people than city hall, but without the crushing penning-in effect of being right downtown in the middle of the financial district, and it would have made a world of difference.
that whole parade was a shit show and the way it was mismanaged is fucking disgraceful. it felt very much like they hadn't put a second of thought into planning the parade before friday. considering how "plan the parade" has been a running joke in this city every september/october for decades it's ironic how poorly planned it actually was.
That’s always the recommendation. When Green Bay won their Super Bowls in 96 and 10, the always ended at the stadium and sold tickets dirt cheap to have the speeches and fireworks. In 96, Holmgren forgot his jacket so a cop gave him one, which was hilarious.