By Husain Sumra
During the festivities of the San Francisco Giants World Series victory parade, closer Brian Wilson said he felt like he was having a mini heart attack.
Why? He said it was either because of the electricity from the crowd or that the city “smelled like Prop. 19.”
That’s only part of the experience, because the parade was more like the smell of Prop. 19 mixed with alcohol and sweat, sprinkled with pure joy and ecstacy, shaken up and splashed on your face.
I’ve never seen that many people in the same place at the same time, and I’ve been to the FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
My journey started at 8 a.m., when I woke up, which may have been too late.
All the Caltrains were delayed, but there was one every 15 minutes or so. As soon as anyone got near a machine to buy a ticket, passengers dressed in Giants garb would quickly run over and yell, “stop! It’s free today!”
The trains were packed with Giants fans crammed together and chanting. Many had copies of the San Francisco Chronicle, which had the headline “Believe It!” on the front.
Beer was another popular option on the train as many people had cans of Budweiser in brown paper bags.
Because of this, drunks were a fairly frequent sight, hobbling and bumbling all over the place, particularly when we arrived in San Francisco at around 10:30 a.m.
Getting around the city wasn’t hard, as hundreds of fans were walking to the same place, Market Street, to get into good position to see the World Champions.
Wait, let me rephrase that: Navigating around the city wasn’t hard, but moving around was.
Walking around was like being a grain of sand squeezing through the bottleneck of an hourglass.
Once we got to our location, just off of Market Street, we were stuck behind about 75 people. Upon seeing the amount of people I began to wish that I had woken up much, much earlier.
I’ve never been close to that many people in my life before. There was someone less than a centimeter to the front, left, right and back of me. I could barely lift my camera above my head to get a picture.
I didn’t even know what I was taking pictures of. I just clicked and hoped I got something worthwhile.
The motorized cable cars, bands and everything else came slowly.
In between cars there would be throngs of women claiming they were pregnant to get to the front of the line, and plenty of verbal fights between people who brushed past each other.
The hot, unforgiving San Francisco sun bore down on us and cooked everyone like a well-done steak, but it was worth it.
The feeling of seeing the Giants celebrate the victory was powerful.
Knowing that thousands upon thousands of people had gathered because of the love for their team was powerful.
Often, people are separated by class, race, religion and even age.
Yesterday people from all areas of the Bay Area united in San Francisco to celebrate the San Francisco Giants first World Series in only their second victory parade in the City by the Bay.
