Benefits of working downtown

Having lived in a half dozen cities and states over the years, I have to say I really like where I am. I like the town I live in and I like working in downtown Boston. Case in point being yesterday.



I was heading in to work a little late and instead of having a half empty subway car, it was jammed with red - people coming into the city to celebrate the Red Sox's great victory. One person had even created a World Series crown - it was fantastic! There were a lot of kids who should have been in school, but, hey, how often does your town win the World Series - oh right, once every four years - not bad.



But then I was once more ensconced in the walls of work and somewhat forgot about the celebrations. Although, throughout the morning we had been hearing the periodic roars of the fans. The parade route for the celebrations was just two blocks over.



For some reason, the first day in several weeks I hadn't had time to make my lunch. So a collegue and I ran out, both of us tight on time, to grab a sandwich. The streets were abuzz with people in Sox garb. We discovered the roars had nothing to do with the parade but was actually just the language of fans. As various groups roamed the streets, when they passed another group of fans they would cheer at each other. It was quite wonderful. We were all one group - the winning group.



But we didn't have time to wait around for the parade. So got our sandwiches and as we were heading down the street, we see people running ahead of us. There was ticker tape/confetti raining down on us, and the steady roar of fans. We got caught up in the anticipation and ran to see what people were running after. I got goose bumps as we rounded the corner and the block was packed - it was one of the side streets off the main parade route and the parade was in full force. The street was about 50 people or more deep, but with the duck boats, you could see all the players. The cheers as different players rode by from Lowell to Manny to Dicekay. We even got to see Papelbon do his jig while the Dropkick Murphys' played live on one of the flatbed trucks. It was great - such commradery. I've never been part of something like that. It reminded me what the parades for soldiers returning home from WWII must have been like.



And the amazing thing was that the confetti just kept raining down on us, the whole time. We couldn't figure out where it was coming from. It added to the surealness of the whole thing. All in all it was a nice 15 minute diversion to share the moment with the other hundreds of thousands of people. It was wicked cool!