In the Canyon of Heroes, A Clash of Two Supers

Darned if it didn't all come down to a tie.

Half the people I met yesterday along the parade route (all of them blocking the view) said Super Tuesday's vote was the most important event of the day. The other half, also blocking the view, said no, the Super Bowl/Eli/Strahan/ Tyree/Go Giants/Oh-my-God-it's-the-Vince Lombardi trophy/18–1!/Super Parade was clearly the bigger deal.

"I think that voting is more important because it impacts more people than the parade," Willie, a Brooklyn construction worker, said. "I'm going to vote tomorrow."

"Voting's today."

Oh.

He was far from the only nonvoter present. Some couldn't vote because of a prior felony, some felt they were already doing their bit for democracy. "This is my vote," one said.

"Eli!" others said, when asked whom they wanted to win.

All the same, some parade-goers were definitely focused on the issues. As strips of paper came streaming down from Wall Street offices, a shout could be heard: "Shred those subprime mortgages!"

Toilet paper came streaming down, too — more economic commentary? "Someone just tried to throw a roll into the tuba," an attorney, Gary Ravert, said.

Okay. So it wasn't commentary. It was clowns. Doesn't mean the revelers weren't politically attuned.

"We're excited about the vote," one mother, Mary Beth Fisher, said, speaking for herself and her son, Sebastian. On the war, "He's optimistic that the new administration will help things get better," she said. He's also a Democrat, she said, because he's "pro-education and pro-health care." Sebastian couldn't actually vouch for this, because he's not quite 2. It also turns out he was on his way to preschool, not the parade. But he did seem to have some notion that it was a big football day, as football is the only thing he's allowed to watch. That, and live theater.

Yesterday, he got both.

"DE-fense, DE-fense!" the crowd roared, for no apparent reason.

"Jump! Jump!" it also roared, when it spotted a sign in one high window, "GO PATS."

"Boston sucks!" was another thoughtful cheer.

"New York City needed this," a tailor from the Bronx, Antonio Mulero, said. He'd gotten up early, voted for Hillary and hurried down to the parade, "because I like the people, all the emotion." When the Giants won, "it was just one of the craziest feelings I ever had in my life," a file clerk, Edgar Lopez, said. His office is right above the parade route, but to get that crazy feeling again, he, too, came down to be part of it all.

"My eyes are just wet," an upstate lawyer, Marc Koplik, said when asked why he was wiping his eyes. This was his first ticker-tape parade because, as a younger man, "I would have avoided it. I wouldn't have been interested." Something changed after September 11, 2001, and today nothing could keep him — or his son, who lives in Providence — away. "This is the most uplifting, patriotic, exciting feeling," he said. "Okay. I'm crying."

It's not that tears were in great abundance yesterday, but collective joy blanketed the crowd sure as confetti. And even though it took most of us almost an hour of inching along in a huge, frustrated herd just to get to that Canyon of Heroes, lined six or seven people deep, it was, as they say, worth it.

"I've taken 150 photos," a television advertising salesman said. "I'm going to frame them and put them in a shoe box for the rest of my life."

When will he open it?

"A couple years from now when they're 0–16."

A 9-year-old who couldn't see his beloved Giants jumped up and down in desperation until Mr. Lopez, the file clerk, scooped him up and held him high.

There they were: Eli Manning, Tom Coughlin, and that gleaming trophy.

"Once in a lifetime, baby!" Mr. Lopez told the boy (mine — too heavy for me to lift). "Don't forget this moment."

Who will?

lskenazy@yahoo.com