I should clarify in most municipalities here in British Columbia and also in Ontario, that it is not legal to buy liquor and consume it in parks, walking down the street (ie. drinking a can of beer), sitting on a public park bench. North America isn't that much different from Europe in terms of volume of alcohol drinking. (except some European cultures might be worse..ie. Russia, etc. I say worse because of high alcoholism rate in those populations, etc.)

What was happening on the first big night here Vancouver was that too many people were buying from the liquor stores and walking out into the streets and drinking it openly. The people were packing in tightly in thousands downtown and the police were afraid alot of unruly behaviour would lead to rioting. The bars and pubs were not shut down. Police wanted people to safely drink confined in those buildings, not out on the street. The biggest difference for these huge packed night crowds every night downtown was that included alot of families with young children and young teens. This not the norm for major hockey or football games other times, other years, since it is the Olympics. One only saw few teens, etc. at games. I know because I used to see the crowds every week, entering the stadium when I got off the commuter train near home after work.

We live near the stadium where the opening and closing ceremonies were.

A few years ago, Vancouver had a riot after a major annual hockey game downtown. Alot of drunkeness was involved, property damage to stores, among other things. What amazes some North americans, are large violent riots among spectators (among players is another problem --international problem) at some major European soccer games right at the stadium or spilling into the playing field. I'm glad stuff like that doesn't deterioriate to that extent at most major final match sports games here in North America. But no doubt, the police in various European countries have gotten smarter in their crowd control methods.

The transit system was beefed up temporarily, in terms of staffing and alot more trains, buses running more frequently which still meant 20-30 min. waits during the Olympics. What was more unusual, that many of these people were from the suburbs who normally don't come into downtown often using public transit. The authorities are hoping after this Olympic experience, some people will use public transit more often.

I just realized another reason why the public authorities were stressing people use public transit and actually creating roadblocks for some major roads, was to reduce accidents due to drunk driving. Nevertheless there was a drunk driving car accident of youths leaving downtown for suburbs. 2 people killed, 3 injured. There may have been others. There were enough drunk people still as shown by the nature of medical treatments at our downtown hospitals during the Olympics --despite the liquor purchasing ban for 4-5 days during the 2 wks. However one could buy liquor out in the suburbs. But as soon as one brought into downtown, on those nights, the police asked people to drain the liquor in the sewer grates.

What I did not like was that the police did say they were not going to curb the rise of prostitution that happens...at any Olympics.

For our Olympics, there was an "Olympic" court which enabled arrests of people for lower level crimes..theft, etc. Perhaps you might know better on common/criminal law within international context, but given international visitors (who may be here during the Olympics but instead doing other illegal stuff on side because there were many people visiting that were wealthy, on corporate expense accounts), I got this powerful impression that it would complicated and time-consuming to charge and to hear cases for infractions and certain crimes.

I guess I noticed this (not just because of the sex trade problem when there are international mass events for sustained times) ...because the lead lawyer managing the legal team for the Olympics came from a law firm I used to work.

Not surprisingly alot of the stores did not display the Olympic rings and other Olympic official logos during the Olympics because fear of being sued for trademark/copyright infringement or inappropriate display/use of official logos. The Olympic legal team of lawyers have laid some charges against some firms..

So instead, the stores used neutral slogans ie. Go Canada, Go! Or swathed their windows with the Canadian flag or in red. Even to use the Olympic colours made the businesses nervous.

But aside from the sex trade going on (and probably alot drug trading going on. Let's get real... the international drug rings are a huge problem), it was truly remarkable that people put aside temporarily their impatience when things weren't perfect ..during the OLympics.