I almost never do this anymore, because most of the time I don't have time for it—but, today. I have actually captioned all 60 of the photos and clips I took today for the Seahawks Victory Parade. Shobhit had his first rehearsal for The Foreigner in Olympia tonight, leaving the evening all to myself, which made this much easier. And I have to admit: even as someone who is definitively not a football fan, who doesn't even know the rules or how the game is played, the day was pretty special. It doesn't really make a difference what the reason for it is, anything that brings potentially one million people together in the city makes for a special day.

This would be why I did not post the usual Daily Lunch Update (DLU) this afternoon: most of the people working in-office were gathered in our break room, the one spot where there is a window to the outside, between 11 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. to watch the Seahawks Victory Parade. I took photos out that window once an hour for four hours starting as soon as I got to work, to track the gradual thickening of the crowd: I took one at 7:30 a.m., at 8:30 a.m., at 9:31 a.m., and at 10:30 a.m..

To be perfectly honest, it never got quite as nuts as I kind of expected. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was still a huge crowd, and likely a record size gathering of people in the history of Seattle. But, I really have my doubts as to whether the crowd really got even close to the predicted "up to one million" that all the media outlets kept repeating. Consider this HistoryLink.org article about the Seahawks Victory Parade that occurred in 2014, when everyone was saying the crowd was 700,000, more than the population of Seattle proper at the time—it reads, in part:

The immense crowd was reported during the parade by multiple media sources as about 700,000 -- a number greater than the city's population, and nearly one-fifth the combined population of King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Kitsap counties. But experts who studied aerial photos later expressed doubt about that figure. They said outdoor crowd-size estimates are notoriously inaccurate, and tend to be inflated by civic pride. A more realistic number, in their view, was closer to 450,000. That still would make it the biggest gathering in the city's history, easily eclipsing the Sonics victory parade in 1979.

If we assume 1 million as the widely repeated estimate for 2026, an equivalent correction would have this year's crowd at something closer to 650,000. I suspect even that would be an inflated number. This Seattle Times article offers a fascinating breakdown of what the original sources were for the "1 million" estimate and what the actual crowd number is likely to be—something closer to 408,000. This was based on some very rough math, and it notes that the Downtown Seattle Association will do a count based on cellphone movement data, but that won't be available for three days. Whatever the case, it's probably pretty safe to say today was the largest single gathering in Seattle history, which I think is pretty damn cool.

Anyway, all this is to say, there was always plenty of space to walk on the sidewalk between the crowds and our building—and because of this "1 million" number, I kind of thought there would be so many people it would be difficult to walk past anyone out there. Alexia had planned to walk from her friend's house on Queen Anne to my office so I could meet up with them, then they pivoted and decided to stick with watching the parade near the end of its route at 4th and Cedar in Belltown. From just a walking perspective, that still made sense, but there was no reason to be that intimidated by the crowds.

Granted, this still varied depending on the block. Westlake Center and Westlake Park, at 4th and Pine, is a very popular gathering space—there were definitely more people down there, and would have been more for them to navigate through or around. Either way they probably still made the better choice.

In the meantime, chips with salsa and guacamole, and sparkling water, was provided in the kitchen (also the break room) at work for the watching of the parade. Cat, the Receptionist, even decorated the space with balloons and streamers, complete with a string of footballs across the front of the front desk. At peak attendance in the kitchen / break room, there were about 25 of us in there—maybe a fifth or sixth of total office staff, and perhaps three quarters of the number who actually came to work in-office today. Except this also included at least five or six people who were actually Corner Market store staff who came into the office to watch once the parade was actually underway and that meant no one was actually shopping in the store. It's worth noting that given the size of the break room, even 25 people was pretty crowded.

I got a somewhat surprising DM on Instagram from Karen G, who worked at PCC ages ago—she left before we even moved to the Elliott Avenue location in 2016—to ask if we were having a "watch party," and whether it would be at all possible to come join us with her two sons who really wanted to see the parade but are autistic and may be overstimulated by the crowds. I told her we weren't, which I feel kind of bad about now because we absolutely did, but I technically wasn't lying—at the time I had no idea that anything resembling a "party" would actually happen, and I didn't even know how many people would be coming into the office. A whole bunch of people who usually work Wednesdays actively avoided coming downtown today; this is usually the busiest office day of the week and it was actually relatively quiet, except for the two hours of the parade itself.

Besides, Dave, the VP of Merchandising, had already mentioned in the Merchandising Meeting that he had friends ask if our office might be accessible to them, and he said no. He never said this explicitly, but it was pretty easy to take that as a cue not to invite guests for viewing. As for Karen, I have always been very fond of her, but that would have been a family of 4, which would have increased an already-crowded 25 by about a sixth.

Shobhit also asked about this while he was on his way back from his Weight Watchers meeting in Northgate, and I very much hesitated there as well. After the exchange with Karen, I didn't think it would be fair to invite Shobhit in. But, as he sporadically sent me photos of huge crowds at Light Rail stations, he eventually wound up outside right outside our window, and waved at us. Now I felt weird not inviting him inside. I turned to the person next to me and said, "Would it be tacky if I invited him in?" She said no, and that was enough for me. He came inside, Marie said hi to him, and so did Michelle who commented on how fun it was to meet him after seeing him so often in my social media posts. I never actually introduced her to him because I was completely blanking on her name and I was too embarrassed to say so. (I was only able to jog my memory on her name just now by scrolling through my "following" list on Instagram.)

Shobhit had some of the chips, which I told him to help himself to. But when the parade approached, he decided to go back outside and be more directly a part of the excitement. He texted me later that the view was much better inside. Of course it was—our window is raised about 10 feet above the sidewalk. This served as a very useful test run for the possibility of watching the Pride Parade from the office. Although, if nothing else, we can just watch outside the office and have the otherwise empty bathrooms accessible right there.

Anyway, it was a fun and special day. I'm sure there's more I could say but I can't think of any more right now. There's not a lot of detail in all my photo captions, but the photos themselves paint a pretty broad picture of the event.

As for last night, there was something quite unusual about that as well: after two postponements, Seattle Utilities finally went ahead with their planned power outage for electrical maintenance on our block. At first it was scheduled for 7am to 7pm, which would have been way more convenient, and then it was pushed to the next 12 hours. Shortly after 7:00, I lit a bunch of candles, which then burned for a solid two hours, during most of which time Shobhit and I watched Olympic figure skating. I finally blew out all the candles because the power was still on and it seemed like a massive waste. And then? Not five minutes later the power went out.

Our phones still worked, and I could use my phone as a wifi hotspot for my laptop. But, with no TV to watch, Shobhit ran out of things to do and came to bed much earlier than usual, probably around 10:00. I had to take my contacts out by candlelight. Then I went to bed too. The power came back on at 3:30 this morning—my lamp was still on so it suddenly turned on. I still need to reset the alarm clock (I don't use it for its alarm anymore, I use the one on my phone). I was glad that, like the last time they had to do this, the power came on a few hours earlier than the planned end time. 7:00 a.m. would have been a real pain in the ass, as that's usually the time I leave for work, and getting ready by candlelight would not have been fun.

[posted 9:15pm]