Lobster parade

Since posts remain elusive this week, I dug this half-done guy out of the archive and tried to wrap it up.

Meant to post this last week in November, but then bad things happened.

Remember when I started this blog, more than two years ago? I don't. Reason being one of the "founding principles" was the posting of drunken stories. There was a good run of those -- involving baseball bats, condiments or fake blood. But drinking and memory are not two great tastes that go great together, it seems, and the telling of the belligerence petered out. But hey, its never too late to resurrect a classic. So here's one man's experience from the Phillies Championship Parade two weeks ago to the day. History.

The original plan was to take SEPTA into the city. No car, hey. But the worst public transit system ever had different ideas. Those ideas being to run fewer trains on a day with their highest ridership ever. The local station was packed with people. Some shitfaced patrons were entertaining themselves by setting their empties on the tracks and then throwing rocks at them. Broken bottles are fun to cheer at 10 a.m.
But standing around with 800 drunks and children got old after about 20 minutes and my friend, lets call him Justin, decided to drive into the city. Glorious internal combustion got us there in no time at all. Seems all the dumb saps were waiting for the train, leaving the highways relatively congestion-free.

ed note: Up to this point this was all written back in November, let's see what the old memory can provide without notes. May contain false information.


The closest I could get was at the very start of the parade. Close enough to snap that photo of my hero and yours at least. Close enough to shout "Bulldogs!" and get a wave in response. After seeing them off, Justin and I decided to make our way down to Broad Street to "see" the rest of the parade. And by the rest of the parade I mean Greenman. Not really sure what is going on behind that parking meter.


The parade went by, and the street was opened. We went to McGlinchey's, a bar right in the heart of Philadelphia that maintains what I like to call a "blue-collar asthetic." Meaning dirty as all hell, bathrooms don't work, reeks of cigarette smoke despite a citywide ban, etc. The kind of place where a nearby group of reprobates in stylish caps asks for your empties, to fill with Keystone Light from a backpack. Don't want to raise suspicions.

An indeterminate amount of time passed, several hours at least. Eventually Justin called it day and I walked out to West Philly to meet some relatives who were in town. Not much for the goats there, except for a hipster I saw holding his own dance party on the street. He was certainly more amusing than the homeless man Sinclair and I encountered a month later outside a Hard Rock Cafe. He was letting out blood-curding screams every minute or two. Terrifying.

Indeed. Where was I? There were drinks at some place called the Raven Lounge. And finally met up with some others at Oscar's, a Rittenhouse dive known for its $3 23-ounce domestic drafts. There I chatted up a couple Obama volunteers, and received a sticker. Unfortunately the mood was ruined by some over-educated white girl who insisted on dropping the n-bomb in an attempt to seem with it. Even a McCain-supporting friend of mine was confused by the situation.

I think there may have been more, like the journey home, but that's just about all I care to remember at this point.