In case you didn’t notice, San Francisco erupted into a street party last night, Nov. 1, after the Giants won the World Series. Wandering through a sea of orange-and-black that swelled into the streets of the Mission, I got showered with beer and champagne about half a dozen times, and my ears are still ringing from all the hooting and hollering, horn-honking, firecracker bursting and police siren wailing that filled the air.
One of the craziest scenes I witnessed the entire night was when some people set a mattress on fire in the middle of the intersection at 22nd and Mission. As the blaze got brighter and everyone yelled louder and laughed harder, a fire truck started blaring its horn and inching its way through the crowd. But after the burning mattress situation was under control, the firefighters had a new problem — a dance party was unfolding on the roof of the fire engine. The crowd swarmed around it, people climbed on up, and even swung open the doors and got into the fire truck, and suddenly the brightly flashing emergency lights seemed more like a strobe light. When the truck sounded its deafening horn, it almost sounded as if the drivers were participating in the madness.
The celebration went on. There were brass bands, fireworks, spontaneous high-fives and embraces, dancing in the streets, and people hanging out of their cars half-naked waving Giants flags and laughing wildly. That was just one San Francisco neighborhood — it seems that similar out-of-control scenes played out in the Castro, near the Civic Center, and around the ballpark.
The riot cops came eventually, of course, and I’ve put a call out to the SFPD to find out how many total arrests were made by the end of the night. On my way into work this morning, I saw people washing graffiti off of brick walls and windows, and the sidewalks were littered with shards of broken glass and debris. San Francisco awoke today for the first time ever as a World Series city, but with one giant hangover.