aural laurels

Last night Whyte ave was INSANE! Starting at 9pm, just after the Oilers won, total chaos erupted. Actually, it wasn't chaotic, just packed, loud, and belligerent. I opened the front door and was hit by a wall of sound, reverberating cheering and horn-blowing. The streets were packed with slow-moving cars that waved makeshift hockey stick-flagpoles bearing oilers flags. Crazy fans ran into the street, high-fiving drivers and passengers. Everyone was wearing oilers jerseys, some men wore tiny blue speedos, others wore worker oil-rig gear.

Sheri and I went for a stroll, and felt like cultural tourists, quietly and carefully walking arm-in-arm, sometimes reaching up to smack a strangers outstretched hand in a high-five. Crossing the street was risky, it involved negotiating cross-currents of throbbing fans, waving limbs, flags, and effigies of the Detroit and Calgary logos. "Hey! Hey Oilers Girls!" someone yelled from their car. Who us? Swaddled in wool and winter trench-coats? We did see some oiler-girls, shivering and hooting in their clever make-shift tube-tops fashioned from oilers bandanas. There were also plenty of women sporting big oilers jerseys and face-paint.

We settled in at Julios for beer. We opened the door to a rousing conclusion of "Sha-na-na-na Goodbye", not what I expected in a mexican resto. People ran by banging the windows and yelling madly. Everyone had video and digital cameras. A young woman ran by and flashed the restaurant, to raucous applause. As we walked home by the huge crowd assembled at the intersection outside Chapters (pictured above by the Edmonton Journal), I saw another women atop her friend's shoulders, shirt lifted up. Doesn't she see that they will soon come to demand flashing? From her and other women?
It was definitely time to head home.
Winning adrenaline+testosterone+over-running public spaces+constant bodily contact+women flashing flesh = potential nightmare.

Sexual aggression scariness aside, I love it when a community spills into the streets. Just like the blackout when I was in Toronto, the carnivalesque of latenight revelling and celebration is intoxicating in its energy. It's abnormal, it's exciting, and you actually meet, touch, and smile at strangers in the street. I wish we had more to celebrate than a hockey series.