Wooooooo hooooooooooooooo! That was awesome! Phillies had it won without even taking their final round at bat! K. and I popped right into shoes and coats and headed out, along with the rest of South Philadelphia, as though compelled by some hypnotic force or genetic instinct, to Broad Street. Thousands of my neighbors paraded south toward Oregon Street, where we collided with the thousands of fans moving north from the Stadiums, so that we formed a massive partying crowd, several city blocks in diameter at about Broad and Shunk. We moved through the crowd and hung out on the island in the middle of the street, cheering on the masses as they made their long, slow march up Broad to City Hall.

It was an incredible sight in both directions. Armies clad in red and white, filling the street, marching in an endless parade, like the fabled Chinese red army they used to warn us about as kids, like there was some gigantic factory building hundreds of them per second. We spent an hour or two out there, letting the waves of people wash over us, screaming along with everyone, high-fiving until our arms were hurting, laughing at shirtless drunks running around in freezing weather, cheering the guy with the giant, red cardboard P and the various other costumed crazies, and joining in with whatever chant any given person in earshot decided to try out.

It was a lot of fun. And it was so great that it was a short game, because it meant that the bulk of the madness had moved on past South Philly by 1:00 am.