The New York Giants have won the Super Bowl. They also beat the now 18-1 New England Patriots. Goliath is down and, as best I can tell, David is too busy drinking flowerpots full of liquor and hugging his bros to even bother with pissing on the corpse.
I passed a firehouse on the way to the train and the guys were all out front smoking cigarettes, itching to race off and deal with the inevitable repercussions of the situation. I lent fire when necessary and they just stood there baiting cancer, ears trained on their radios, badges redirecting light across the glass case housing pictures of men six years gone. We agreed that, sooner or later, someone would start some shit. There were 8.5 million people in this city and at least half as many couches. Couches are flammable, particularly when mixed with inebriation. We all knew how this was supposed to work. I hung around for about twenty minutes and as many cigarettes. Nothing happened, nothing at all. We were all strangely uncomfortable with this. Eventually they said, "Fuck it," loaded up, pulled the truck to the end of the block, kicked on their sirens and started doing laps around the neighborhood. Everyone in eyesight cheered.
Queens was marvelous tonight. There are a dozen or so reacts in my notebook, several of them worth mentioning, all of them testament to what can be accomplished when you approach someone with a notebook and a pen and a smile. I'll address these when I can claim a clean(er) head. For the time being, I’ll leave you with this:
El Rey Del Taco lingers in Astoria on the north side of 30th Ave between 33rd and 34th streets. It’s a box truck, not unlike those you see lurking on the outskirts of literally any college campus. Half a block away, I finished listening to an Audi crammed to clown car levels with not sober people and caught sight of a Randy Moss jersey. Like Chappelle’s white-guy-in-a-horror-movie, I thought, “I’d better investigate.”
Hugo grew up in Los Angeles and moved to New York ten years ago. He’s been following the Patriots for just as long and is therefore beyond the bandwagon label rightly applied to much of that team's fanbase. As I watched him devour in three bites a soft taco the size of my own head, I recognized a man rapt in the kind of pain that can only come from devotion to professional sport. Hugo would have gleefully eviscerated his entire family in exchange for a win and for that I respected him.
What troubled Hugo most, though, was not the loss. It wasn’t the taste of football immortality slipping through his team’s hands or the multi-sport champion status that had managed to elude a city he’d never lived in but had, for some strange reason, adopted. What vexed poor Hugo was the fact that he had to go to work in the morning.
For Hugo, work involves facing innumerable sergeants, officers, and fellow cadets at the New York Police Academy.
Roll Call is at 7:07 AM. Best of luck, Hugo.
