The Riot Act

by Tom Namako

By the time this paper comes off the stands, it will be eight days since the Phillies won the World Series, the night where, appropriately, my boss, Doron, and I exchanged text messages about the "riots" on our fair streets.

The next day at work, one of our star interns asked why this kind of stuff happens. Turns out his bike got crushed in the onslaught of the evening. (He parked it on 13th Street. Oops. His name is Andrew Thompson. Check out his amazing pics on The Clog.) My answer was, "If you don't get it, you don't get it." He said, "I don't get it."

Yeah, some truly idiotic things happened during those "riots." Like the four or five guys fighting at Broad and Shunk streets over nothing in particular. The crowd responded by throwing bottles at them.

Or the fella who walked from Broad and McKean down to Oregon Avenue, slamming a metal serving spoon on every two-hour parking sign along the way. He seemed to be having a great drunken time obliterating everyone else's eardrums.

Or the dudes who lit their shirts on fire.

I didn't really mind all this. In fact, it wasn't the all-out bedlam I'd expected.

See, there were also police officers and clear-minded civilians who made sure those fires got stamped out.

And after the guy with the spoon realized that he had grotesquely bent a street sign, he actually turned around and began hammering it back into place.

And, my favorite moment of all: While people threw bottles at the fight, right outside Grasso Funeral Home, a young woman tapped me on the shoulder. She was holding three empty beer bottles. "Do you guys know where the trash receptacle is?" she asked, as people rushed away from the brawl.

What I meant by "if you don't get it, you don't get it" was this: This is how we celebrate. It's messy, it's dangerous and hours later, it's sometimes embarrassing. Things surely would have been a bit more polite if we were celebrating in, oh, Green Bay. Or Tampa Bay, for that matter. But let's all thank God we weren't.