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Originally published: February 7, 2012 6:16 PM
Updated: February 7, 2012 8:01 PM
Photo credit: Alejandra Villa | Thousands of fans line the streets in lower Manhattan during today’s New York Giants Super Bowl parade in New York. (Feb. 7, 2012)
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Cheers and confetti filled the air of downtown Manhattan as the Super Bowl champion New York Giants were celebrated with a ticker-tape parade along the Canyon of Heroes.
Pablo Ortiz, 20, a bank teller from Mastic Beach, was naked from the waist up as he cheered the passing parade near Zuccotti Park.
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“This is great. Everything is great . . . ” he said. “My knees are shaking. It’s so cool to have all these people out here.”
Ortiz said he had painted his chest Giants blue, even though it seemed to have a green tinge.
“I want to support my team. Big Giants fan. So I thought: What better way?” he said, pointing to his chest. “I thought there would be more people doing this.”
— Igor Kossov
Rich Reynolds, 42, and his son Ryan, of Northport, were getting fired up for the Giants ticker-tape parade while riding into Manhattan on the 8:48 a.m. double-decker Long Island Rail Road train out of Mineola.
Ryan, who had just celebrated his 10th birthday, wore the No. 10 jersey of his favorite player, Eli Manning. The father said he’d gone to see the Giants win the Super Bowl in the 1980s when he was a teenager and he wanted his son to experience the celebration as he had. “I’m coming full circle,” Reynolds said.
Nearby, Greg Couture, 34, of Mineola, was on his way to work.
He said he has been a lifelong Giants fan and had been to all the previous Giants victory parades, but had to miss this one.
“I have an 11 a.m. meeting,” he said.
When it was suggested that no one else might attend the meeting, he said, “It’s a call with people in L.A. They don’t care.”
Couture said he’s been a Big Blue fan since he was a toddler.
“My dad says he saw me when I was 3 watching TV and the Giants were on. He couldn’t figure out how I turned the TV on, or how I’d found the Giants. But I did and I’ve never stopped rooting.”
Couture looked at the younger Reynolds and said, “It’s special when you’re his age.”
He said he and his friends skipped school when he was 10 and went to Manhattan by themselves from Port Washington for a Giants victory parade.
He looked at Ryan and said, “Don’t do that.”
— Kery Murakami
Husband and wife Ray and Carol Hughes of Oakdale were waiting for their beloved Giants along the parade route.
Ray, 51, a Giants fan since he was 4, and his father had season tickets for more than 40 years. Carol, 46, was a Jets fan, but her husband said he has converted her.
The moment of her conversion was the 2008 Super Bowl, when the Giants stunned the New England Patriots 17-14, and ruined their quest for a perfect season.
“It feels great to be here,” said Ray Hughes, attired in a Giants jacket. “This was on my bucket list.”
— Igor Kossov
Fans who scored a rare ticket to the post-parade Big Apple toast to Big Blue at City Hall Plaza got winter treats on the way to their seats: an oat bran cranberry muffin and piping hot chocolate.
Waiters wielding trays of the goodies spun through the crowd offering the snacks.
How’d they pick what to serve?
Well, said Robert Cano, of the caterer RCano Events of Long Island City, they take into account the season, city guidelines on nutrition, and need for the broadest appeal of culinary tastes that makes allowances for food allergies.
“And you can’t have nuts,” he said.
— Matthew Chayes
Dan Coners, of Wantagh, was with a group of 20-somethings from Long Island near Battery Park, where the parade got under way. Coners, 24, said he loved the sight of the Lombardi Trophy.
“What more can you ask for?” he said. “In the shadows of the Freedom Tower . . . now you’ve got the trophy, coming down, glistening in the sun. That’s what we needed. The city still has what it takes. We still got it, no matter what happens.”
— Maria Alvarez
Dawn Churns, 44, and son Kevin, 12, of Rocky Point, were outfitted in blue with red and white Giants jackets.
“We were raised on the Giants,” Churns said.
Her son attested to that: He remembers watching the Giants since he was 3.
Churns and another friend said they “left our husbands at home.”
Why?
“They’re Jets fans.”
— Igor Kossov
A white bus carrying city sanitation workers stopped briefly on its way down Broadway before the start of the parade. It was immediately heckled by the throngs.
One daring worker put his head out the bus window, waved an index finger scoldingly and mouthed a smiling order: “No littering.”
The command was met with a streaming roll of toilet paper dead center on the bus roof.
— Mark Harrington
One budding quarterback in a No. 91 Tuck jersey tossed a roll of Charmin toward the street just as a bike messenger passed by. Perfect pass, but there was a penalty marker on the field.
Police plucked the toilet paper flinger from the crowd and walked him away, to raucous crowd chants of, “Let him stay! Let him stay!”
But he was gone.
— Mark Harrington
Crews were out before dawn hurrying to put the finishing touches on the plaza in front of City Hall where Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city officials were to give Giants coaches and players keys to the city.
Hundreds of police officers, parks department workers and mayor’s office staffers busied themselves on the plaza. Parade personnel scurried by, clutching large “GIANTS” placards, and blue drapes hung between City Hall’s columns.
“Giants” cheers echoed along Broadway hours before the parade was set to begin.
As the morning wore on and more and more downtown-bound subway trains released their passengers in lower Manhattan, blue jerseys began to outnumber business suits.
— Matthew Chayes
Ari Horwitz, 8, a third grader waiting at City Hall with his mother, who lives in DUMBO, Brooklyn, wore a long T-shirt, No. 80. Why Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz?
“Because he fast, he’s short, he’s skinny, so he’s basically me. My favorite Giant and I love him. He’s awesome.”
— Matthew Chayes
It wasn’t just New Yorkers along the parade route. Milton Haring made the journey all the way from Bethlehem — Pennsylvania, that is. No Steelers or Eagles for Haring. “My grandfather was true blue,” he said.
— Mark Harrington
