May day

From last may 1st... First in the day there was the Euromayday march with some destruction of property (sadly not so well directed, people smashed instrument stores and small cafes in happy chaos with banks & other estabilishment objectives...), and later in the night people started to gather in a building scheduled for demolition.

The place was the old railway magazines (barracks??), anyway these 1900th century warehouses that have been a popular location for gigs, flea markets & all kinds of urban gatherings since the place was cheap, accessible right in the center of Helsinki, next to the parlament actually.
A movement trying to protect the location has been active for some 10 years or so, but finally the people lost, and the place was lost.

So the people knew that the last days of the place were in hand, and AFAIK spontantaneously started to gather there, make a fire, which then got bigger... And bigger.
The police & firemen came, throwing of shit at them ensued, they left, & the people had their last evening in the place. The crowd was mixed... Oldschool squatters, random festive mayday people, passers-by. The temporarily autonomous space had a pull, and people came like moths to the fire.

Eventually they burned down everything that wasn't nailed down, and some things that were, too...

Some weeks later, the whole place burned down, apparently by accident.
Some weeks after that, the only social centre type squat in Helsinki burned down, apparently by accident...

Go figure, that was the summer of fire, 2006 in Helsinki. The hottest summer for 160 years or so, IIRC, too.