New York united behind blue Giants
The Wall Street suits don’t normally like sharing their turf with us common folk — particularly if it’s a movement like Occupy — but when the Vince Lombardi Trophy is being paraded up to City Hall by the New York Giants, they not only make an exception, they contribute to the fanfare.
The part of Broadway which arrows up through the Financial District is known as the Canyon of Heroes, stretching up to Chambers St where the heroes alight for City Hall.
Given the depth of NFL squads, the players, staff and owners all get sectioned off into modestly-sized floats, guaranteeing them modest shards of the limelight as they roll slowly past the ecstatic spectators.
With hundreds of thousands of people crammed into a few blocks of these iconic high rises, it is a little anarchic. But there is too much joy to make it overly malicious. This being New York, a logistics meeting for a possible parade was held secretly on Friday afternoon.
That it gets held in Manhattan at all is a source of contention.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Jets fan, continuously refers to them as the New Jersey Giants, arguing logically that they play there, operate their commercial business there and all the players live nearby, paying taxes to state capital Trenton.
It’s an old wound. After they won the 1987 Super Bowl, then mayor Ed Koch, still peeved that they’d upped sticks to move across the Hudson River 11 years before, famously blasted: “Let them have a parade in Moonachie.”
But that sentiment doesn’t hold much water in the Big Apple now. From the profligate years of the Yankees in the late 1990s through to the last four years in which three parades have been organised, one for the Bronx Bombers and now two for the Giants, the ticker-tape is almost an annual event.
Law offices with window views high above the street host guests in the hundreds, although it’s rare that death-defying men in nice suits hang out on the sills like the good old days.
It’s so organised that one ton of recycled paper shreddings, provided by a materials company in Brooklyn, is dispersed between the various companies.
According to the Daily News, however, the 2008 parade left behind 36 tons of paper.
I took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather to walk through Brooklyn on the way to the parade yesterday morning.
Strolling along Flatbush Avenue, you get an idea of old and new Brooklyn. The predominantly Jewish Williamsburg spills into African-American Bed-Stuy before you become surrounded by the old Navy Yards and industrial warehouses that heaved with activity a half-century ago.
The blue jerseys began to congregate on Brooklyn Bridge, all the foot traffic going in one direction, the car traffic going nowhere at all.
This fragmented city rarely has one thing on its frenzied mind.
Celebrating a major sports title is as unified as it gets.
At the Turkeys Nest Tavern, near where I live in Williamsburg, 36 hours previously, the wild drama of the game brought everyone together.
Whenever the Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul — son of Haitian immigrants — flashed on screen, only then would the little Haitian lady take time to watch the action before going back to scurrying around and making sure everyone had got their fill from the buffet.
The food was free — all we had to do was drink and have a good time.
Italian meatballs and German frankfurters.
And seeing as we were in the shadow of a Russian Orthodox cathedral, there was the Slavic soul food staples pierogi (dumplings) and kielbasa (outrageously large sausages).
When we spilled out onto Bedford Avenue, looking west along North 12th Street, over the East River concealed by more warehouses, there standing in brilliant big blue, the Empire State Building lit up in honour of its Big Blue Football Giants.
We headed east though, further into Williamsburg along Lorimer Street, closer to home for one last drink.
That slice of Brooklyn has a cluster of Puerto Rico. For a half-century, stretching back to the predominantly Jewish area’s industrial peak, Puerto Ricans have been moving here.
Often it’s their baseball heroes who fly their flag. On Sunday night, however, they had Victor Cruz, the young man from New Jersey who scored New York’s first touchdown.
The Puerto Rican parade will be in June.
The countdown to the St Patrick’s Day parade begins now. But yesterday, there was only football.
* john.w.riordan@gmail.com; Twitter: JohnWRiordan
