Red Line, 6pm, yesterday. The Celtics’ celebratory rolling rally had taken place at 11am, but thousands of attendees remained in the city after the parade to bask in the sunshine and the last vestiges of communal basketball triumph.
I pass a cluster of teenagers who idle outside of the Federal Reserve. “Did I tell you that I got jumbo-troned at Game 2?” a guy in a green “Beat LA” shirt brags to a girl in a white “Gino” shirt. She snaps her gum. “Yeah.”
I walk through the Boston Common and head to Charles Street to run an errand. It’s easy to spot the groups of teenagers and families who have made a rare trip to the city from the suburbs, even if they’re not wearing a telltale green Celtics shirt. They look alternately unsure or simply frazzled. “Do you know where the Park Street station?” asked an exasperated mother as her bevy of sugar-jacked charges snapped at her ankles. We were literally outside of the station, in full view of a big sign that said Park Street.
But no one can top the rubes on the Red Line car that I boarded at Charles Street. The doors open and a handful of us shuffle onto the somewhat crowded car. As I step on, an early-20s guy wearing a sweat-soaked Celtics jersey that shows off his hodgepodge of tattoos and flabby white arms yells “Welcome to the Celtics car!” to the great mirth of his friends of similar attire and physique.
As the train moves, the young men resume a conversation about Boston’s sports supremacy. Yes, it’s exactly the sort of smug gloating that the rest of the county imagines Boston doing. Then, one of the young men notices that the subway advertisements for a power sports drink feature action shots of Paul Pierce.
“Hey, look! A free Paul Pierce poster!” The advertisement is hanging directly over the head of a steely thin blond wearing a black suit and thumbing her Blackberry. The dude leans above her head and begins to disengage the advertisement from its frame.
“Hello?” she says with a touch of Valley Girl annoyance, ducking her head.
“Hey, how you doing,” he says as he continues to struggle with the poster. “You look like a Lakers fan, you know that?”
