By Alex Lloyd Gross
The Philadelphia Eagles defeated the New England Patriots and have won their first Super Bowl. The parade is scheduled for Thursday morning February 8, 2018 to start on Broad Street near Lincoln Financial Field and proceed to the Art Museum. Everyone knows what happened on the football field. The following is what happened at Frankford and Cottman Avenues in Philadelphia and at 5points in Levittown , Bucks County Pa.
Reales Sports Bar is as close to the intersection as you can get. It sits on the 7200 block of Frankford Avenue. As Justin Timberlake was doing his halftime show, city sanitation trucks blocked key intersections. This prevented vehicles from entering the celebration area. It also served as a repository for cans and bottles to be kept away from the area. This would help prevent them from being used as projectiles . The intersection was desolate, as a cold, steady rain fell. Police that were detailed to the area found shelter under the overhangs of businesses.
Inside the bar, anytime the Eagles did anything that was productive, fans would erupt. The Eagles Fight Song and chants of F Tom Brady were chanted all through the night. These fans were pumped. The energy was constant, except for a brief period in the fourth quarter when the Patriots took the lead. Fans were dejected, and screaming at whatever television they were watching. As the officials made calls in favor of the Eagles, especially ruling the game winning touchdown would stand, the crowd could not contain themselves. Outside, with about four minutes into left in the game, the streets were still empty, save for a few fans.
By the time the Eagles stripped Tom Brady of the football, fans inside Reales and inside every other bar and living room in the region fans were jubilant. A victory was almost a sure thing. By the time the clock ran out, there were about 25 fans in the intersection. Within 5 minutes that number would grow to 3000 . From every direction, fans converged on the sports mecca to scream and holler. Some fans ran down the middle of Cottman Avenue. Car horns honked. By 10 minutes after the game 5000 people converged on the area.
More were on their way. It was long overdue. Police reported one arrest there.. Elsewhere in the city, Philadelphia Police reported three arrests total with “more forthcoming”. Reports of violence were sporadic. At least one vehicle was flipped over and Macy’s downtown had some broken windows. Small fires were set.
In Levittown, cops closed off a huge parking lot to all but first responders in the area of 5 points, before the game ended. The area was desolate, as it was in Philly. By 15 minutes after the game ended, the intersection had grown to about 2000 people. It was a bit different atmosphere than in Philadelphia. Folks came, celebrated in the streets and most left on their own. Two hours after the game, police in Middletown and Bristol Twps. cleared the area. There were at least two people arrested at that location.The crowd disbursed rapidly. There was a huge pile of glass and debris that had to be cleaned before the roads could be re opened. As they were washed away, salt trucks came through to prevent them from freezing.
Many of those attending street celebrations will be at the parade on Thursday. SEPTA is the way to get there. It makes perfect sense to hold it away from the Linc. Holding it at the Linc would only upset fans who could not see the celebration. It holds 70,000 but that means out of the estimated 2 million plus expected to attend, only about 100,000 of those people would see anything and that is only if there were two celebrations, to include Citizens Bank Park. This way, it’s just like the Papal visit in 2015, when everyone went to the Ben Franklin Parkway.
While fans across the region were hoping for a win. The Amazing Kreskin predicted it. He wrote his predictions down, put them in a safe at a North Jersey auto dealership and today, February 5, 2018, those results were revealed. Kreskin also wrote down the number 8. That’s how many points the Eagles won by.