Boston awoke today to dark threatening skies In fact, since we impulsively grabbed our heavy-knit Andean Not too long ago, the Dowbrigade was so addicted and fanatical So there we were, on Wednesday night, driving directly Despite the madness and exuberance and joy in the hearts We parked the white whale on a quiet residential street In Kenmore Square the scene was a Dantesque mixture of The crowd was definitely getting rowdier, and there was Here and there throughout the mob, brooms and banners By about an hour after the end of the game, the crowd reached \n Smashed football players were cannon balling through the crowd, trying As if to reinforce our decision, the forces of order chose We joined a ragtag band following the bagpiper through We gained our car around 1:45, pleased to see the route Arriving home a little after two, tired, exhilarated, pissed It’s noon now, and still raining. On the television Its all too depressing for words. This is the trial So we feel not only justified but weirdly righteous in There are momentous movements underway, on the surface So enjoy the party while it lasts, boys and girls. For Police block exits to Kenmore Wed. night (Dowbrigade photo) Boston awoke today to dark threatening skies laid thick on a cold, raw mist, a steady drizzle coating the streets with a slick shiny sheen. Despite that fact, up to five … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/kkkops.jpg\")
\n Police block exits to Kenmore Wed. night (Dowbrigade photo)<\/em><\/p>\n
\n laid thick on a cold, raw mist, a steady drizzle coating the streets
\n with a slick shiny sheen.
\n Despite
\n that fact, up to five million long-frustrated Red Sox fans are expected
\n to jam the streets of the city for the triumphant World Series victory
\n parade. Bundled into long johns and rubber-muckers, yellow rain-slickers
\n and ponchos, they have been lining the 3 mile parade route since long
\n before dawn, wanting to share the supercharged emotions that have momentarily
\n sliced through their normal apathy and somnambulistic media overload.
\n The Dowbrigade will not be among them.<\/p>\n
\n sweater-coat and headed out to the vicinity of Fenway Park
\n during the ninth inning
\n of the
\n final
\n game
\n of
\n the world championships, drawn by the vague promise of unbridled exuberance,
\n drunken violence and bared undergraduate breasts, we have have been so
\n burnt out by the double-barreled emotional assault of the World Series
\n and the Presidential Elections that we have not blogged or even followed
\n much of the news for a couple of days.<\/p>\n
\n about blogging EVERY day that we forced Dave Winer<\/a> to exit Interstate
\n 93 on our
\n way back from a long day covering the primary campaign in New Hampshire,
\n just so we could get to a computer and blog before midnight. We succeeded
\n in publishing a note at 11:59:11, and couldn’t understand why Dave thought
\n we were crazy. Now we do; at times a dramatic pause in the old
\n verbiage flow can be healthy for bloggers and readers alike.<\/p>\n
\n into the heart of the madness, Kenmore Square, where thousands of bloody-mined
\n intoxicated youngsters gathered after every important victory to wreak
\n a little havoc, where there was guaranteed to be exhibition of undergraduate
\n idiocy and multiple arrests, where Victoria Snelgrove had been killed
\n by a Police pellet gun a week earlier, where we had warned our students
\n to absolutely stay away from, in the unlikely event of a World Series
\n victory.<\/p>\n
\n of all members of Red Sox Nation that magical night, the Dowbrigade was
\n filled with a gathering sense of dread. Somehow we knew that this epochal
\n win
\n represented
\n a seismic
\n shift in the karmic landscape of our corner of the universe, and such
\n fundamental movements in the lines of power and fate which rule our lives
\n always have counter-balancing repercussions. Something very bad was bound
\n to happen.<\/p>\n
\n behind BU, and about a 15 minute walk from Fenway Park. As we got
\n closer to the center of the action, the crowd got thicker as hundreds
\n of students
\n flooded
\n towards the square and the ballpark, frantically jabbering into their
\n ubiquitous cell phones, sharing their joy, mustering forces, gloating
\n to fans of other teams, or checking in with parents. Although most were
\n going in our direction, some of fainter heart were turning around
\n in the face of dangerous, out-of-control behavior already evident more
\n than 10 blocks from the gathering crowd. We heard dubious and fearful
\n mummers of "It’s getting too crazy" and "This might not be such a good
\n idea" as about a third of the crowd bailed out and looked for calmer
\n havens to hoist their celebrations.<\/p>\n
\n heaven and hell. People were hugging and hi-fiving strangers. The crowd
\n streamed and bumped together, rising in spontaneous chants at random
\n times or when someone did something exceptionally visible or stupid.
\n The favorite sport seemed to be to climb light poles and shimmy out over
\n the street towards the hanging stop lights, whip out a photo phone,
\n snap a
\n shot of the ecstatic
\n crowd below to prove they’d been there, and shimmied down before the
\n police could work through the massed bodies to arrest them.<\/p>\n
\n a lot of physical contact. At one point somebody bumped against our backside
\n and uttered a sloppy "sorry". Instinctually, we brushed
\n our right hand against our rear pocket, to feel for our wallet, and it
\n wasn’t there. Veteran of hundreds of attempted pocket-picks on foreign
\n shores, we struggled to remember the details of the contact. Had we even
\n remembered our wallet when we rushed out of the house at the start of
\n the ninth? For about five minutes we ran through the mental checklist
\n of what had to be done after a walletectomy, canceling cards, etc, before
\n deciding it was a problem we could do nothing about until the following
\n day, and that we needed to have out wits about us an our mind on the
\n here and now as the crowd got more and more dangerously excited.<\/p>\n
\n were waving like captured emblems of enemy legions. Girls got up on their
\n boyfriend’s shoulders, and a few flashed the crowd to sustained cheers.
\n At the outlets to the Square a massive police presence lurked, lined
\n up in riot gear, on horses, backed by floodlights and mobile command
\n centers and armed with gas grenades, shotguns, white batons and some
\n kind of fancy plastic lariats.<\/p>\n
\n its peak. Music was provided by isolated individuals, one with
\n a tom-tom, another with a saxophone, a third waving a set of bagpipes. People
\n were literally dancing in the streets, although considering most of them
\n were severely intoxicated, rhymthically-challenged white people their
\n movements more closely resembled St. Vitas than any Arthur Murray
\n steps.<\/p>\n
\n to high-five people hard enough to knock them over.
\nWe bundled deeper into our protective sweater and concentrated on keeping our
\n feet. A crewcut celebrant with obliterated eyes wrapped us in a bear
\n hug, lifted us from the ground, and screamed, "Way to Go, Sweater-Dude,
\n we’re Number One!" We knew it was time to leave.<\/p>\n
\n that moment to decide to clear the crowd, moving in tight, coordinated
\n lines through the square and forcing the human mass down Commonwealth
\n Ave and away from the ballpark. We went with the flow, as this was the
\n direction
\n of our car.<\/p>\n
\n the BU campus, erupting into applause every time he finished a tune and
\n encouraging him to keep on, keep on. Behind us, it was obvious that some
\n of the celebrants weren’t ready to go home and were confronting the police
\n Siriens wailed as ambulances and paddy wagons roared off down the blockaded
\n street. Our thoughts returned to our missing wallet and we noted our
\n vague sense of impending doom
\n was unabated.<\/p>\n
\n out of the area and towards home was clear of traffic or crowds. We
\n had to give a midterm exam at nine, and several sections of the test
\n were still unfinished. As we drove down Memorial Drive, along the
\n river and past Harvard Square, we glanced for the first time at our rear
\n view mirror. It wasn’t
\n there. All that was left was a jagged white plastic stump. It
\n had been smashed and ripped from the body of the car. We pulled
\n off to the side of the road and inspected the car for body damage. None. It
\n was as though the mirror had been shattered by a sledgehammer, or a crowbar,
\n or a BASEBALL BAT, while we were at the celebration.<\/p>\n
\n off, our emotions still roiled by triumph and rage, we found our wallet
\n atop the
\n dresser. Menos mal. But we still can’t shake this feeling of gathering
\n doom. The Red Sox are champions of the world, and something is very wrong
\n in the cosmic balance.<\/p>\n
\n scores of delirious fans are mobbing the parade route, following the
\n amphibious and meteorologically aptly named duck boats down off of Storrow
\n Drive and into the Charles River. The people crowd close for a glimse
\n of their heroes, the only heroes they are allowed to have. Whatever
\n else can be said about Bush and Kerry, they are not looking terribly
\n heroic to the teeming masses looking for a lifeline of authentic hope
\n or pride or vision to cling to.<\/p>\n
\n by fire of the TRUE Red Sox fan. The essential core nature of the
\n Red Sox fan, what makes us different, and grander, than all other sports
\n fan is the eternal striving after an unattainable goal. The TRUE Red
\n Sox fan is paranoid, sun-shy, fatalistic, cynical and morose. Those pathetic
\n good-time Charlies lining the streets of Boston in the rain are the deluded
\n fools, dancing around their own downfall.<\/p>\n
\n dwelling on the darker side of the changes sliding swift and silent beneath
\n the surface of this insane euphoria. We are getting very close to bumping
\n up against something large and vicious in the dark of our national bedroom,
\n and we obviously aren’t ready for it. The next few days promise to deliver
\n us once more into uncharted territory where all our map’s and notes and
\n accumulated
\npolitical wisdom and experience
\n are
\n useless.
\n It could get very ugly.<\/p>\n
\n and deep beneath. Yassir Arafat exits stage left. Osama Bin Laden
\n reappears in a lonely spotlight. Massed and poised power shuffles impatiently
\n in
\n the wings. The game is afoot, and it doesn’t bode well for the casual
\n sports fan.<\/p>\n
\n us, we will not be attending any large public gatherings for a while. We
\n will be here, in our living room, on the computer, TV tuned to a news
\n channel in the background, nervous as a rabbit and ready to bolt at the
\n first
\n sign
\n of
\n the shit hitting
\n the fan. And by the way, the fan they had in mind when writing that aphorism
\n was definitely a Red Sox fan.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"