World Series Win Culminates with Friday's Parade

Two million people (including me) ditched work or school Friday to celebrate the Phillies’ World Series win with a parade through our city of brotherly love. (This also explains our lack of posts last week.)

This Phillies win did indeed bring out the love in Philadelphia.  I was lucky enough to go to Game 5 (parts 1 and 2) – the winning game of the series. I felt the brotherly (and sisterly) love like never before as I was hugged by strangers in celebration of this HUGE win.  It was the most perceptible outpouring of our city “slogan” I’ve ever felt.

And I felt it again during Friday’s celebratory parade.  I felt it on the jam-packed subway ride and among the sardine-style gridlock crowd on Broad St.  Personal space was out the window, but it was an experience like no other to rejoice in the win with thousands of other fans.

Some call us a ‘success-starved’ city, and it’s a pretty accurate assessment of the last World Series parade Philly experienced in 1980.  There’s no doubt about it – This week was a huge one for us Philadelphians.  Thousands turned out to celebrate Friday.  Like most celebrations, this one included more than its fair share of food & drink consumption, which means a lot of trash.  The confetti and float decoration debris that lined Broad St. and beyond post-parade were par for the course.  But I still cringed seeing cups, beer cans, soda bottles, and food wrappers strewn along the streets.

I was happy to hear that over a dozen Philadelphia businesses, including Comcast, PNC, Peco Energy, and Tastycake, donated hundreds of thousands to help the city pay for parade clean-up (as well as police overtime.)

Unfortunately, a major hurdle for many (in particular those living outside the city)  was actually getting to the parade.  Mayor Nutter and other city officials encourage taking public transportation to the parade. Sound advice, considering there would be no parking anywhere in the vicinity of the parade route. And of course, the train/subway transporting hundreds of people simultaneously is more environmentally friendly than driving.  Septa officials confirmed they transported about 400K passengers Friday for the parade.  However, they were forced to temporarily suspend service into Philadelphia for a few hours Friday. Hopefully, the city can correct this for highly anticipated event-crowds in the future to keep up the enviro-choices for locals.

All in all, it was a memorable day, week, and series!

Congratulations again Phillies, and THANK YOU for renewing Philly’s spirit!

Posted by Beth