So, in a turn of events, unfortunate or fortunate depending on my perspective during the hours, I did get a chance for exposure to the ticker tape parade - at least the utter chaos of its setup, the crowd's gathering, and the start-up of the parade. I had to go to my office to pick up a few things, attend an online meeting, answer some emails and high-tail it out of there.
It was fascinating, exhilerating, and irritating as the hours went on. I took some pictures of the progress of my exposure, too, which I will have to post later.
The fascinating part were the crowds of people on the lite rail and the PATH trains heading to the WTC. They were excited and looking forward to the festivities. There lots of kids, lots of handsome men, and not a minority of hot men clad in NY Giants jerseys.
The exhilerating part was walking around our building to find a co-worker a good spot to watch the parade and take pictures himself. And then going out with another to see the increasing mob around my building.
The irritating parts involved leaving my building and getting on a subway, which on a normal day would take about 5 minutes. Today it took me about 30 minutes to find the proper outlet to take me to an inconvenient train uptown for my conference. The crowd along Broadway began yelling and thousands of paper shards were floating and drifting through the air. Some offices or apartments threw out long streams of unrolled toilet paper, which TP'd street lights and undulated on the breeze in the Canyon of Heroes (something I just realized about this particular venue and why it was chosen to honor the team that beat the NE Pats!!). I noticed people were just dumping their bags of shredded documents (Enron documents?) into the street onto the crowds below.
I suddenly remembered the Monet painting of a Paris parade with french flags flying proudly. Not sure if pride welled up inside of me and I doubt very seriously it was patriotism, but it was emotional. Perhaps it was simply the humanity of the celebration (am I analyzing too much? It was a parade...).
The mounted policemen had to quiet their horses when the cheers got ever louder for some reason. I was on Church St (parallel to Broadway) at this point trying to escape the area. I made my way out of the plaza (devoid of non-security personnel) and down to the R train, rather than the E. My first try to get onto the E train failed miserably and I had to turn around and find a different route. Once down the road and walking along very narrow streets, stray strands of paper floated by and I caught one, which is supposed to be good luck if you catch them in the air. The crowd's cheers could be heard equally as loud two blocks away. The canyon aspect of all the streets in the neighborhood lends itself to echoes.
I'm really glad that I was able to get exposed to this kind of parade and that easily enough it took place on the way to and away from the office. A convenient ticker tape parade - for me.
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