Happy Belated Cavs Day
I’ve been celebrating all week. Things have slowed down and I can finally wish my two followers happy Cavs Day.
I watched game 7 in San Francisco, surrounded by Warriors fans. Celebrating in front of the runners-up is poor etiquette — something an Ohioan living on the West Coast would never do. So, I booked a flight to Cleveland to enjoy the festivities with my kind.
The plane filled up with merry folks adorned in Cavaliers paraphernalia (a smattering of Tribe and Buckeye hats too). Cheers roared up after the pilot’s intro, “Welcome to United flight number 1950 from San Francisco to Cleveland, Ohio — home of the world champion Cavaliers.” A few beers later we landed at CLE.
Airbnb is great. I booked a luxury apartment from a vacationing international CSU student. Check-in went without a hitch.
Looking for late-night food, I stumbled across a dive bar to feed on pierogies and Dort. Then it was time to rest before the morning hoopla.
Hours before the parade, by 8:00a the streets were packed. I texted some friends. I set up a rendezvous with a couple old housemates from OSU, but there were too many people. I couldn’t make it through the crowd. People started to go beyond the street finding places to get a view of the cavalcade: trees, bus stops, smoke stacks, garages, balconies, traffic posts, portajohns. Two of my uncles called me trying to meet up, but we were divided by the procession.
Tbidbitl. Urban, Thad & Gene. Politicians. Lake Erie Monsters. Machine Gun Kelly. Shirtless JR. Kyrie drinking pink champagne out da bottle. Low key LeBron. Shump tossing beaded necklaces like it’s Mardi Gras. KLove rocking WWE belts and fat cigars. Folks chanting Delly’s name as he corralled phones and returned them with a Delly selfie. Tristan blasting supersoakers. And other surreal parts of the motorcade that blur together.
After catching it on Ontario St, I cut through the Q and across the skyway to Tower City. The line for the RTA was already approx 1 mile. I walked down Euclid toward E 9th to catch the procession a second time. There were plenty of people partying at the bars, but since the parade was still going on I was able to enjoy a cold beer on a patio. After the beer, I made it to E 9th. I could see Kyrie and Tristan who road with their entourages on large trucks, but the players in convertibles were invisible.
Watching the post-parade rally was a cool experience. The politicians were clueless. The front office told some stiff accountantesque jokes. The players emoted love and happiness. LeBron “The King” James showed that he is a more important leader than the suits and the coaching staff. He spoke for a lot more time and was inspirational as “F dash dash dash”*.
*A reference to Jame’s colorful language and separately to A Christmas Story which was filmed in Cleveland.
It seems fake; maybe I’ll wake up and the Cavs are getting ready to play game 4. After the rally, I met a good-natured woman who gave up trying to find her friends. The two of us spent the afternoon drinking, eating, holding hands and dancing. After multiple bars and restaurants she ordered an Uber to meet her friends in Lakewood. We kissed goodbye and went our separate ways.
It rained all day the next day. In the misty aftermath, wet confetti clung to the streets. I got hair of the dog at a greasy spoon. Then a haircut from an old school barber. My sister picked me up at the casino and we drove 20 minutes to our grandparents house to do some mild celebrating. I made it to Columbus to spend time with my brother, mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law and nieces. We partied.
Now it is time to go back to my boring life in San Francisco. Obviously, I’m joking about SF being boring. But, Cleveland did an amazing job packing over a million happy people into the streets.