Calgary film producer Chris Ball is coming back from America’s presidential election with five staples holding together the gash on top of his head.

Ball spent the evening in a Santa Monica, Calif. bar watching poll results come in. As the election progressed, he said attitudes in the bar became more and more heated – on both sides of the campaign.

“People started launching homophobic slurs at me from afar,” he said. “I mean, I kind of got into it, but I didn’t want to provoke them.”

They were saying things like, ‘We got a new president you f--king faggots.’

When he later left the bar, alone, he was walking through an alley when he was jumped by a group of men – one of which smashed a bottle over his head.

He fell back, his head smashing against the concrete, where he blacked out.

“When I came to, I remember waking up and wiping the blood from my eyes. I called some friends, they picked me up and I went right to the hospital,” he recalled.

He was stitched up at the hospital and said he’s feeling fine.

Santa Monica police were not immediately available for comment to confirm details of Ball’s account.

In retrospect, Ball doesn’t think it was really a political issue – it was a hate issue, fuelled by the charged atmosphere of the election night, with a group of drunk people who used Trump’s rhetoric as an excuse to get in a fight. He feels it could very well have been a Clinton supporter, or just someone else with a homophobic attitude on any other night – it’s an ongoing issue.

He does feel, as Americans are more charged up, incidents like these may come up more in the near future, but he doesn’t feel this event is representative of all Americans, or even all Trump supporters.

“I’m in pretty good spirits. That’s just how I have to handle it. I’m alive and well and still very gay,” he laughed.

polluxlm wrote:

I've said the polls were way off and they were.

Yes, but let's be honest. It's only because you wanted them to be. You took a long shot and you got it right.