L: But they just grabbed any kid.
C: Yeah, he was like anyone else there. And all of a sudden these two guys, just looked like a car that just drove down the street, all of a sudden they just, at random, grabbed a kid and just threw him in the back of the car. As soon as that happened the kids went mental. Regular cops showed up, about three cars, six cops. And right away, the bottles and bricks started flying. And on the corner there was that drugstore there, and they broke the window, which is too bad, because that was like a mom and pop store. They had all these bottles of perfume in the display there, and they started throwing all these at these cops who were not in riot gear, just in regular street clothes, cause it was summer. So all of a sudden there was this reek of perfume…
L: I know, the whole area still smelt like it the next day…
C: That store display must’ve been there for like, fifty years. Anyway, all of it just starts raining down, and these guys are like, ‘Oh shit…’ They jump back in their cars and take off…
L: Was there a cheer or something?
C: Well, kind of, but I mean, it was never meant to be like, a standoff, I mean, they’re the ones who fucked up, they’re the ones who’d like, fueled the fire. And I mean, meanwhile, all these riot cops and firemen showed up and just stood there, like… they were doing nothing.
L: Wait, they showed up with these three cop cars?
C: Well, wait a second, let me backpedal, the first guys who showed up were these three cop cars with these six guys, but immediately when they started getting bombarded, these riot cops showed up, but they didn’t do anything, they just sort of blocked off the street, which didn’t end up doing anything, ‘cause you know, they arrested a bunch of kids, and then, a bunch of kids got away from them and holed up in Loonies (the punk bar then). Apparently it was like a barricade inside Loonies, they (the punks) didn’t want anyone going in or out. But the cops still, since there were by then too many people watching, they were like, ‘well, what do we do?’
L: Start breaking heads?
C: And then they let the few fucking idiots who were still there get away, and they’re the ones who broke all the windows down St-Laurent.
L: What I heard later was that forty people got arrested the following week, because they had gotten them on videotape. They just let them do all that stuff, but got them on video, and got them later… I remember a lot of local merchants had complained later, saying “You were all there, how come you let them go down the street and destroy our property.”
C: It was only like a half-dozen kids. Originally it was just twenty or thirty kids who were basically just looking out for their friends. You know, we all just came to see the show, we just wanted our money back, we couldn’t come back in, I mean, obviously not that coherently, but still. They were just standing around being a public nuisance. What, drinking in public, maybe a couple broke beer bottles, but you know, nothing to raise taxes over. But then, the cops, as usual, like with the Stanley Cup riots, they didn’t know how to handle it. They were a little too late.
L: So I heard that at one point then, the riot cops closed off Rachel, but then they basically watched, what, ten punks go down the street…
C: I think it was just half a dozen, who caused the actual damage. Everyone else got bored and went home. I was right in the middle of it, I was standing on that ledge by Dunkin Donuts there, apparently I was on the news, the next day my boss said “I saw you in the middle of that thing,” I was like yeah yeah, well, just getting my money’s worth.
L: So they closed off Rachel, and then videotaped them…

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