Your roving reporter, on the scene :) (literally - my apartment is approx. 3 blocks from the Convention Center).
As I sit here in my apartment, I can hear the occasional police siren, but things have pretty much quietened down now. It's eerie. It's something that you never expect to see happen in your own neighborhood. Let's put it this way - a block away from my apartment, people were being gassed with pepper spray earlier today. I drove down Broadway a couple of hours ago. There's stores boarded up where they've had their windows smashed in. Everywhere closed at 7pm when the curfew hit (and it's not even in the curfew zone). People were up-ending dumpsters in the middle of Broadway; by the time I went past (probably a few hours later), there was a pile of trash in the middle of the road, but other than that, it was clear. Everything was shut down though. It's strange. In a city where being sleepless in Seattle means having things to do if you're an insomniac, it's very odd to see everything... well... empty. It's such a shame to see people acting with such random violence. I mean... why? Is it some kind of herd instinct or what? Aren't we above all this? Maybe I'm too trusting in human nature. Maybe I don't want to believe that people are willing to just go insane and loot and destroy just for the fun of it. Still... the upshot of it all is that I've just discovered the only problem with having a just-on-the-edge-of-down town apartment, is that when there's rioting going on, you get the spill over. Last time I saw anything quite as.. well.. disturbing as this was when I saw the after-effects of the IRA bomb in Manchester. Though of course, that did a lot more than take out a few shop windows. Simon
