Sweeping up the confetti

It's official, it's in the books. 

The Celtics are the NBA Champions and I made the trip down today for the parade. Here are a few notes from the day. 

*The best shirts of the day all involved Jack Nicholson, this was a pleasant surprise. (The top seller from what I could see was the very simple "Jack Sucks" T-shirt.) I got the one with a picture of Jack as the Joker in Batman, that says "Hey Jack, the jokes on you!" There was also an A Few Good Men Themed shirts out there too. 

*During the parade Greg Dickerson was one of the 3 most excited people to be there today behind Paul Pierce and Big Baby Davis. Dickerson was glowing being on a float with Mike Gorman, Tom Heinson and John Havlicek. He was doing the Manny Point, smiling big, to a point that a female that made the trip with me and my buddy Olderman, actually thought that he was flirting with her from the float. Now that is parade dominance. 

*Two greatest moments of the parade that i'm going to stretch to 4 is this. 

Seeing John Havlicek there and being genuinely excited, Paul Pierce with the cigar and the mvp trophy, KG screaming on the back of his float while PJ Brown clutched the trophy to his chest like Paul Bearer used to do with his urn. Perhaps the greatest moment goes to Glen "Big Baby" Davis. He was standing on the end of the Duck Boat and for some reason he wasn't wearing a shirt. This got a huge reaction from the crowd. If anything personified the day this was it. 

*The whole North End was alive, it was unreal, there were executives coming out of their offices for the parade, buying knock off championship T's and just having a good time. It might have helped that many of them were sitting at outdoor seating at a few of the bars just off Causeway Street. It was one of those days. 

*There was something "in the air" today. The smell of cigar smoke was incredible today, at no other celebration would it be like this, with many people obviously thinking about Red Auerbach today, which they rightfully should be. 

(Side note), we felt the need to go to Fanuiel Hall and pay our respects to the Auerbach statue and get a picture with it. I had it taken once there, but someone jumped behind me and ruined the shot, to this day it has bothered me. So we go to the statue and someone had put a 2008 championship shirt on him. It just seemed fitting on this day. 

*Random moment that capped the day off. 

While things were starting to wind down outside of Quincy Market, we say a guy selling knock off stuff get busted. They took his 2 remaining t-shirts and two police men and a suspicious looking tall guy with a NBA back pack put them into a big black trash bag. Well when we were leaving the parking garage, we saw the same guy there selling t-shirts. He asked us if we needed any, we said for free we would. We talked him down to 5 bucks, needless to say we got the deal done. 

Days like this, you have to love Boston. BTW, it didn't rain a drop down there and I was borderline sweating all day. Maybe that had something to do with it, either that or you can believe like I believe and that's that Red wouldn't let it rain on this parade. 

Sterling Pingree