Every year the Portland Winterhawks hockey team holds a New Years Eve game to ring in the new year. Katie and I have gone for the last couple of years. They're fun, the game is usually good and it gets us out of the house without going to a lame party or drinking ourselves stupid.
(Note to all of my friends: I'm sorry. I didn't mean that, your parties aren't lame. Really).
This year's game was against the Seattle Thunderbirds, a bitter rival, and while there was plenty of the violence that you'd expect at a hockey game:
Exhibit A:
There was also plenty of the violence that you didn't.
The refs in the game were (admittedly) not very good, and called penalty after penalty against Portland. I’ll save you all the technical mumbo-jumbo for all you non-hockeyists out there, but needless to say when the sixth penalty was called against Portland (with NONE against Seattle) the crowd was starting to get a bit upset, and when game ending whistle blew fans were so upset that they started pelting Seattle’s goaltender with garbage.
Yeah. Half-drunk sodas, nacho baskets, beer... it was all thrown at the players at the end of the game, and when one of Seattle’s players was invited back out onto the ice for a special award he refused to come out.
Hockey fans are known for being a bit... extreme, but I’ve never known people to be so upset that they pelted players with garbage.
The fans anger even managed to make it onto the Internet with the official Winterhawks blog and The Oregonian commenting on it.
Then there was the MAX ride home, where a group of pissed off drunk 15-year-old girls were in the middle of a screaming match with a group of transvestites on their way downtown. It was pretty ugly, and disgusting, and lasted most of the way through Portland.
I’m not one to shove my opinions down people’s throat, but I think we can all agree that it’s wrong to scream at complete strangers just because you disagree with them. They aren’t hurting you. It doesn’t affect you. Just let them wear their fishnet stockings. Shut up.
Anyway that brought a pretty substantial downer feeling to the evening and much of the MAX ride was taken in silence until we left Portland city limits.
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| Nothing like a little homophobic bigotry to bring down an evening |
We ended up counting down the new year in a parking lot just off the MAX in Beaverton. It was a memorable start to 2011 to say the least.
Here’s hoping that 2011 is a bit less... aggressive, but just as memorable.
---Geoff
