As I watched a sea of blue and green flow into the streets near Lumen Field Sunday night after the Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl, I thought back to a similar celebration in 2014 following the team's first Super Bowl win.
I covered that celebration less than a month after I started at The Seattle Times. That year, I watched University of Washington students only slightly younger than me burn couches on Greek Row. This year, a youth carrying a blue Seahawks flag and standing through a sunroof asked me I was his friend's mom.
Ah, the passage of time.
I watched waves and waves of fans, fueled by victory, redemption and midday-turned-celebratory drinking, pour out of restaurants, bars or any spot with a TV, where they had just watched the historic game.
Where were all these fans going, exactly? No one seemed interested in the destination. They just wanted to be together.
Thousands celebrated throughout downtown Seattle. They climbed streetlights on Occidental Avenue, they posted at the Lumen Field sign and lit fireworks at the Pioneer Square pergola. It was mayhem — uniquely Seattle mayhem.
As fans climbed signs and streetlamps, onlookers whooped at inches gained and groaned at inches lost. Given one young man’s form, a fan wondered aloud next to me, maybe he was a rock climber.
A euphony of cheers played through the night, a mix of the ubiquitous call-and-response “Sea” “HAWKS,” various twists on “we won the [insert explicit language] SUPER BOWL” and “[insert far more explicit and not-very-nice explicit language] the Patriots.”
Bad Bunny played from vehicles clown-car-ed with fans hanging out of windows and standing on trunks. On King Street South, more than a dozen people climbed onto a blue truck, then on each other, for a coveted spot. A hot dog vendor set up shop nearby, seemingly unbothered by the fireworks going off feet from where he was spreading cream cheese on a bun.
Traffic was at a standstill and noncelebratory honks proved futile, but anyway, why would you want to be anywhere else?
Fans were eager to be interviewed. I talked to two friends who grew up in Bellevue and returned to the Seattle area after college about their lifelong Seahawks fandom, and merchandise sellers whose supplies, both of the official and not-so-official variety, would surely sell out by the end of the night. I cut one interview short when I realized the man I was speaking to was far more intoxicated than I thought, which was confirmed when he yelled excitedly “she’s a journalist!” and gleefully tried to lift me off the ground. Of all my job’s occupational hazards, this was a first.
The crowds thinned while the raucousness continued into the night, but one thing remained consistent, even during the biggest fan swells: No matter how they celebrated, fans waited for the “walk” sign to cross the street.
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