The pub to the left of us (the Ship & Anchor, one of my favorites) is overflowing with people. It's a sea of red and looks like they've crammed everyone they could onto the patios, like squishing double the amount of people onto the set of bleachers. And it's so loud. Everyone is yelling nonesence and cheersing or high-fiving each other. And this continues for hours. We started our drinking a bit late, probably a half hour before sitting in set location, and we cannot be as rowdy as the general public, most of whom have been going hard since 1pm - after all, it is a Sunday. And with a straight line of thought, we can't justify waiting in line to get onto a patio, and waiting 2 hours for a beverage, when we could drink for free right next to it.
After a couple minutes, a line up of police officers line the streets, all taking their job somewhat too seriously, not letting people run into traffic to high 5 eachother. Such party poopers, it's not like the traffic was moving anywhere. We're amused by the drunkards that think they could walk by the officers and cheers them, or encourage them to high-five; and then there's those crowds of friends who just jump onto the street and get someone else to snap a picture. But the cops are not amused, standing there stone faced, not answering any questions, as if they're guarding the royal palace.
And when the bagpipe guy full out dressed in a kilt and started playing music, not only did a few "jigs" break out with everyone thinking they knew how to dance, but we got a very well-sung drunken rendition of "Oh Canada" on top of it. The party continued everytime new people walked by and heard the music. At one point in time, I thought the marching band of Calgary was heading out way, but it was just some guys with one of them old drums, dancing down the streets.
And in Canadian-Sunday-night tradition, our riots were always tame. We saw one guy that looked like he got arrested, but having made friends with him a few minutes later, found out that the cops must've been bored when they ran after him after he jumped OUT OF the Ship&Anchor patio after trying to sneak in. They gave him some bullshit ticket for disturbance or something, but he was happy with that, having had weed on him and being let off on that charge. The deal was that he go home instead of continuing to party on the streets, but everyone knows that was not going to happen.
That was the closest we saw to a fight. Everything was pretty friendly. Everyone was high-fiving everyone. When someone bumped into me, the words exchanged were "Sorry, I didn't mean to do that", "No, it was my fault, I wasn't watching where I was going" then some more high-fives and a continued walk down the street.
It took almost an hour to walk from one side of 17th to the other, pubs full of people and cops lining the streets. It's like the color red threw up in all of Calgary, but the roomies and I, having been rebels, weren't participating (so LAME, we should've thought ahead). Among other sights, Army guy saw a female officer, holding a beer in her hand, yelling for some chick to flash the crowd, Canadian KISS made an appearance, and my kindred spirit saw how many times he could walk by the police with a bottle of Jack in a white bag, eventually failing.
But my favorite memory of the night was when a crackhead walked up to the guy standing beside us, and asked if she could bum a smoke. The guy smiled looking at her, saying "no, but you could have this beer" taking it out of his pocket and giving it to the woman. That caused laughter for a good few minutes from us.
Canada won gold. And though I had no-voice, having been sick. And didn't get overly intoxicated, having had to work earlier that day, it was definately a sight to see, and I will remeniss of our Sunday-17th-hangouts for a while.
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