How Philadelphia celebrates the World Series
While sportswriters safe in warm press boxes wrote about joy, and public rela– I mean editorial cartoonists drew happy pictures of dancing fans, and sports columnists weighed in with deep thoughts about what it all means for the city and the region, here's what a World Series victory really means in Philadelphia.
More: See more Philadelphia fans showing their class here and here.
© Peter Rozovsky 2008
More: See more Philadelphia fans showing their class here and here.
© Peter Rozovsky 2008
Labels: miscellaneous, sports
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 1:43 AM
25 Comments:
AWESOME!
RESPECT.
Let's see you do that Pittsburgh.
The overturned car happened right outside the front door of the building where I work, though I did not hear it. I did watch the replay tonight on a tape from the building's security cameras, though. And today, the mayor urged newspapers to remove honor boxes from the streets during Friday's victory parade so fans don't throw them through windows as they had after the game Wednesday.
One of the security guards told me that he went to put out a trash fire fans had set during the celebration, and the fans chanted "Asshole! Asshole!" at him. It's funny to think that when I told people that I had attended the all-Ireland hurling final in Dublin, one or two smirked in the smug assumption that the game and its surroundings must have been one big brawl. But that's Philadelphia for you. Trash a few cars, shatter a few windows, loot a few stores, and that all makes up for 180 years of decline.
Didn't someone (Yogi?) say something like "the streets of Philadelphia are perfectly safe, it's only the people who make them unsafe."
Who would you pick in a beauty contest between Yogi Berra and Shane MacGowan?
who do you think will live longer?
age versus pint glasses of brandy.
Acc to google the quote was Frank Rizzo and not exactly what I thought, but close enough.
Yep, you exploited that pang of guilt I had for making fun of Shane MacGowan. Bloody shame what a talented man like that did to himself.
Frank Rizzo -- great man. (I'm not going to say whether I believe that or not, but Frank Rizzo is not made fun of in my part of town. There's a bloody mural of him not far from here.)
Brings to mind Woodstock '99 -- "three days of music and social unrest."
Loren
If you charge 10 bucks for a bottle of water the people will rise.
As a Pittsburgh native, this just shows why the western part of the state holds its eastern big brother in such high regard. The closest the Pissburgh area comes to such a celebratory conflagration is when West Virginians set fire to the sofas on their porches and yards after a WVU victory. That's right West Virginia. Philadelphia is the West Virginia of Pennsylvania.
I can't believe there's no way to delete a post to make up for such an unfortunate typographical error.
Adrian: Your point is well taken.
Dana: Best. Error. EVAR.
Dana, if you want it deleted and corrected, I shall delete it, and you can correct it.
Wasn't the motto of the original Woodstock "Three days of music, love and inadequate sanitation"?
"If you charge 10 bucks for a bottle of water the people will rise."
I just read up on Woodstock '99. I'd forgotten about it, apparently in my nostalgia for Woodstock '94.
It appears members of Rage Against the Machine and the Red Hot Chili Peppers in particular disgraced themselves with remarks after the event. Why does anyone take rock stars' thoughts seriously?
Dana, as destructive as the yahoos of Philadelphia can be, and as complicit as local media outlets, including my newspaper, are in hushing up the violence and engaging in civic boosterism, I'm not sure Philadelphia's hooligans and slobs are any worse than anyone else's.
As a native Canadian and Montrealer, I used to look comfortably down my nose at the behavior of American sports fans after championships. Then Montreal fans behaved just as badly after the Canadiens won a Stanley Cup one year.
Still, I like "Philadelphia is the West Virginia of Pennsylvania," and I shall print it out, blow it up, and post it in my "news"room this evening
I owe an apology to my own paper, at least to its online version, as much as it galls me to say so. That was the source of the two link that I have just added to this post.
Sadly Peter, in Montreal they now riot after first round series...
Peter, at least Montreal never had that trouble with the Expos.
Anyone who was alive the last time the Cubs won a World Series has forgotten what happened. I expect they overturned the horse drawn buggies.
I hope the big game on November 4th does not produce similar scenes.
Damn me, John, that's right. I was in Montreal when the fans went berserk after that first-found victory over the Bruins. One imagines some old-timer ambling around Beaver Lake complaining to his friend that in the days of old, fans wouldn't riot until after the Canadiens had won the Stanley Cup.
The Richard riot of 1955 is a special case, of course.
Uriah, 1908 holds some fascination for you, doesn't it? Perhaps a horse, scared as it might be of a mob driven by id and alcohol, might intimidate especially violent revelers.
I will be shocked if the Nov. 4 contest produces similar violence. Here in America, we know what's worth getting excited about.
On the other hand …
Ah, hell, leave it up. We had fun with it, and Loren's comment becomes meaningless without it. It's enough to know a Pittsburgher got a dig in.
Peter wrote:
I will be shocked if the Nov. 4 contest produces similar violence.
To show where my priorities are, I immediately wondered who the Flyers were playing that night.
"Ah, hell, leave it up. We had fun with it, and Loren's comment becomes meaningless without it."
I had trouble believing it was really a typo.
"Peter wrote:
I will be shocked if the Nov. 4 contest produces similar violence.
To show where my priorities are, I immediately wondered who the Flyers were playing that night."
It is to laugh that the Flyers keep signing guys like Riley Cote and Jesse Boulerice year after year, then righteously denying that they are trying to live up to the bully image.
Actually, now that Bobby Clarke is gone, the Flyers have no more jerks in the organization and, as long as you don't listen to their godawful radio announcers, are a team worth rooting for. So are all the major Philly teams, as a matter of fact, now that the Eagles' ownership has been convinced that barring fans from bringing sandwiches to games was a stupid move. Even the Phillies are likeable bunch, unlike their thuggish, drug-addled, anti-social 1993 predecessors.
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