Rob Williams: Vibes are high in Vancouver. World Cup Fanfest a success.
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How did Vancouver react to the Australia vs Turkey World Cup match night?
So here's some price from the historic wall center. We welcome in the national sports editor of the daily hive and it's offside sports vertical. Once Rob, the hockey guy on Twitter. Now Roberto, the football guy who took in Sunday's big match. First match at BC place of the 2026 FIFA world cup where Australia, Rob's other favorite nation.
White half Australia is dad. Australia.
Beats Turkey in the first upset of the tournament. But for our purposes, Rob, the talking point is, wow, what a night inside and outside of BC Place around the city.
Yeah, I'm Rob, the World Cup vibes guy right now, I think. The vibes are unbelievable right now in the city. I mean... If you guys haven't, I mean, I know your studio is downtown, so you're seeing a lot of it. But, like, Granville Street is spectacular right now. Like, it's pedestrianized. They've got tons of activations. I don't know, little photo op type things. things that are great for tourists and whatnot. Uh, but all the bars have like their patios are onto the street. Um, and I just thought, I thought on set before Saturday's match, I was like, if I know all Australians, like I think I do, I think downtown is going to be pretty cool. Uh, a pretty cool site. Apparently, Destination Vancouver said 10,000 Aussies were at the game.
They took over an entire yellow wall of Aussie fans on the one end of the stadium and kind of sprinkled throughout. Yeah. Yeah, it was unreal. They had the smoke bombs outside of one of the bars on Granville, just singing, chanting. I think I showed up at the perfect time. They just had finished watching one of the matches and then it just started being like an Australia rally. And then you ended up having like locals, like kind of like gathering around, just like looking at this, the site they were seeing just like, and it really just sort of felt like, okay, the World Cup has arrived in our city, right? Like the traveling fan base. And now, I mean, not to be outdone the Turkish fans, I didn't find where their rally was beforehand.
They were apparently were at Jonathan Rogers Park. So, you know, south of downtown. But inside the stadium, I think the Aussies might have outnumbered the Turkish fans, but the Turkish fans were definitely louder. I mean, if Turkey had won, they would have blown the roof off BC Place, which was shut, by the way.
Yes, we know that. How hot was it in the stadium? I mean, it's a nine o'clock kickoff, so the temperature is starting to fall at that point. But how hot was it in the stadium?
I didn't find it too bad. It seemed like there was like, I could feel like little bits of air conditioning kind of pushing and maybe I was in the right spot. Not sure, but yeah, it was okay. It was fine.
The other thing, and I see our mutual friend Karim Sumal has been tweeting about this, and I know there's a pilot project or the talks afoot at City Hall. Man, Granville, just as a pedestrian street going forward, like in terms of legacy of the World Cup, we may have stumbled on something here, Rob, that changes the complexion of downtown if we take the cars away and just make it a pedestrian. Because the other thing is, and look, I know it's the World Cup, and so they did their utmost to clean it up. Granville has never looked better for me. I walked down it last Wednesday. It's been a long time since I've walked down Granville and thought, oh boy, this isn't an eyesore anymore.
It's a place I want to go. They sent out the army of cleaners to... They hired a bunch of people. They gave them new equipment. They rolled around and... Rob, they could just continue to do that. Well, that's it. Like we could just keep the city clean.
But here's the other thing, though. When Granville is a pedestrian promenade, the cops have to patrol it by foot. And that changes who congregates and their activities on Granville.
Yeah, I think, I mean, the key is having the patios right into the street, right?
What made Granville Street feel like a European-style pedestrian party during the World Cup?
And that really just gave a completely different vibe. Like if the Aussies were all inside of a bar and not spilled out into the street, like that's a completely different vibe.
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