I simply cannot stop freaking out about this.

Barrie, ON is about an hour north of Toronto. We were walking around before our show there last night and came upon a skate park. All the skaters were taking turns doing tricks on the ramp/handrail thing (proving my knowledge of skateboarding), and they were basically all showing off for each other. Perfect time to not feel creepy watching kids skate in a public park. These were the epitome of skater kids. They told us they didn't like "new music" and only listened to "skater music", and somebody claims to have spotted a Lagwagon tattoo on somebody.

Here's the weird part. One of the twenty five or so skaters said "oh shit, look over there!" There were five "emo kids" walking on the sidewalk just past the park, and all of the skaters started yelling at them, calling them fags and such. The emo kids, naturally, just walked by all sad looking. It's one thing to make fun of the emo kids, but they were yelling at them like they were a rival gang. It was brutal. I really think these kids get beat up in Barrie for being emo.

This scares the living shit out of me, especially after the "emo riots" in Mexico recently. There have always been genre-related scene drama, and I've heard stories from years before I started going to shows about the skinheads and the straight edge kids fighting and things like that. I would have NEVER in a million years thought that there would be a conflict between dudes who skateboard and dudes that wear guyliner. And in Canada?!?!?! You'd think the free health care and basically legalized marijuana would chill these guys out enough to let the kid with the My Chemical Romance hoodie and girlfriend that is too hot for him walk by unscathed.

We crossed the border this morning at about 4:30 AM and re-entered the United States of America. Time to find a Bank of America and turn our loonies and toonies into foldin' money.