"I was lucky it hit me in the dick, bounced and then exploded. I was lucky it didn’t explode on contact.” Says Nugget over the phone today from Vancouver… testicles thankfully still in tact.
      The epic video of a dude wandering through the crowd getting smoked in the nuts with a flash grenade moments before it explodes in his face during the riots in Vancouver “went viral” (as the marketing people say) last week, making the rounds on Facebook and even appeared on the front page of TMZ and was shown on Jimmy Kimmel Live and Jay Leno.



      Turns out the dude in that video is none other than our very own Nugget who can be seen in our Spring 2011 recognize section and whose name you will no doubt remember after our next issue drops.
      “I didn’t get hurt or anything, my ears were just ringing—I couldn’t hear anything for an hour. It scared the fuck out of me.” He says about the whole experience he barely even remembered until the next morning when the video had already reached his friend’s Facebook after a filmer from CBC got the clip on the nightly news.
      “I was like ‘No fucking way, I remember that!’”
      Hell, in the haze of burning cops cars and the chaos, he didn’t even remember it hitting him in the nuts. He thought it maybe hit him in the leg on the stomach. “Watching the video it clearly smoked me in the dick.” Nugget confirms. “I’m sure the cop who shot the grenade is laughing and bragging back at the station.”          
      Wandering the streets after the game, Nugget was trying to make his way through the rioters when he got hit with a flash grenade launched by the cops—a tool used to create a loud bang, a flash and some smoke to try and keep people back.
      “Literally within two seconds it all happened. It hit me, I was on the ground and I ran away. Classic case of the wrong place, at the wrong time.”
      Was it the wrong place at the wrong time? Now Nugget is riding the weird wave of internet stardom. Tracking all the remixes (the two minute dubstep version is one of his current favs) and all the awesome/horrible comments.
      “A lot of people were just laughing or some people are like, ‘He deserved it, fuck the rioters.’, ‘He shouldn’t have been there.’, ‘Hope he never has kids now.’ I’m not embarrassed by it or anything, I watch it on a daily basis. I laugh at it now even more than the first time.”
      To eyre is human, but to watch yourself on YouTube a week later and still find it funny, well that’s just awesome.
      As for any regrets about the situation?
      “I should have had some Converse logos in there.”