It was a BIG day in the Windy City yesterday, by all accounts. Here's a piece part of one of 'em (you should read the whole thing, it's fun!) ...
At the corner of Washington and Canal is where I set up camp, in the thick of screaming Blackhawks fans.Yeah... and what a party! Dee-troit does it up in similar fashion when The Cup comes home. Chicago is a much bigger city than Detroit, so I'll give 'em their two million parade attendance over our 1.4 million. But that's a lot of fans for a supposedly "minor" sport, innit? I'm thinkin' it would have been GREAT good fun to be bar hoppin' in Chicago last night.
Of course, delirious fans and sunny-day partiers and bicycle messengers and foreign tourists and office workers and suburban kids blowing off caddying jobs lined the parade route like ants on a watermelon spill.
Thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands. A million.
Two million, some reports say.
[...]
And at last appeared the cherries on top, perhaps the two most charismatic yet dissimilar child-star hockey players in any recent Cup winners -- 22-year-old "Captain Serious" Jonathan Toews and 21-year old ice-magician/party monster Patrick Kane.
Toews stood on the left of the bus top, smiling and waving. Kane stood on the right, screaming like a lunatic, doing repeated military presses with the 35-pound Stanley Cup.
The NHL will entrust this treasured trophy to this guy?
To his Buffalo pals? To whatever bimbos might fall in and barely resurface?
Oh, what a lovely thing the sport of hockey is! What a culture. What a hoot.
As far as trusting Kane with The Cup goes... Hell, the NHL entrusted Darren McCarty with the chalice back in his party-hearty days. I'm sure Kane can't do worse. Or better, as the case might be. (Insert big-ass grin here)
Thee's nuthin like a good celebration!
ReplyDeleteOutside of the motor sports, hockey and skiing are the last of the "bandit" sports/life-styles around..
ReplyDelete(well, have to toss in Rugby and Australian Rules football)
BTW, I left a note downthred re: your "ZUKI" "Road-Warrior" pic.. :)
How in the hell do you manage to blog so much content? You and Morgan definitely have at least that much in common.
ReplyDeleteI'm confused. Are you home already or still blogging from the backfield?
Thee's nuthin like a good celebration!
ReplyDeleteAs you well know, Moogie!
Outside of the motor sports...
Well, that and the fact that hockey has its "code," wherein you see damned few serious asshats within the player ranks. The same is not so much true for management, unfortunately.
Daph: The content bits are because I have no life, which I didn't address in our off-line.