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Would it be a stretch to say that yesterday was a huge day for the world? I suppose. Maybe. It would be far less of a stretch to say it was a huge day for the Western Hemisphere, solidly half of which speaks Spanish. To the very pointed message of halftime show performer Bad Bunny, another way of saying this would be that it was a huge day for the Americas—or, as he might have put it while
listing South American and North American countries, it was a huge day for America. America is not just the United States.
It was certainly also a huge day for the United States, albeit in different ways for different people—some of them sensible, and some of them idiots. Shifting from the halftime show to the game itself (which was otherwise dreadfully dull, I must say—when Shobhit saw me literally yawning, he suggested we switch to Olympic figure skating, which perked me right back up), it was a huge day—the
hugest day—for the City of Seattle, whose NFL football team was at the Super Bowl
for the fourth time, and whose team
won the Super Bowl for the second time.
Shobhit and I were all about getting outside after the game was over, so we could witness all the impromptu street celebrations. I
posted photos and video clips of our outing after getting back home, and what I wrote there is worth copying and pasting here as well:
Even though I could not possibly care less about football, I love it when events like this happen, the kind that unites an entire city. I even get a little emotional about it, seeing people of all walks of life unite in a common cause—especially when it’s celebratory.
Shobhit and I went outside after the game, just to witness the people taking to the streets tonight, both on Capitol Hill, and we even took Light Rail down to Pioneer Square to see the predictably ample revelry around Lumen Field.
I’ve learned my lesson after stupidly missing out on similar local, impromptu street celebrations twice before (the first election of Barack Obama in 2008, the first Seahawks Super Bowl win in 2014). And I actually love being in a crowd whose excitement is infectious.
I’m not entirely convinced, however, that it was necessary to tear down a street sign and then play limbo underneath it.
I think a lot about the night Barack Obama got elected in 2008, actually. I had gone to bed that night and was super annoyed by what I thought were inexplicable helicopters overhead. I learned later that they were news choppers getting footage of everyone celebrating in the streets. I always wished I had actually gone out there to experience it—which would have been a memory to treasure, especially after two subsequent wins by the worst man alive to be the American president.
So what about the Seahawks win in 2014, then? That year, I attended a Super Bowl party at Shauna's sister's house, which was up in Edmonds. I had planned to take the bus to Shauna's place first and then ride to her sister's with her, but I barely missed my bus and wound up renting a Car2Go car instead (Car2Go is apparently now called Share Now, and is only found in Europe—they pulled out of the U.S. in 2019; I don't believe I had used the service since 2014). Car2Go was a very convenient system in which you could park your car anywhere for other users to pick up later (much like the ubiquitous scooters are used now), and Shauna drove me home that night. I did get
one picture on the freeway of a guy waving a blue #1 balloon out his window right in front of us, and noting how I had never been in such heavy traffic before where everyone seemed to be happy to be in it.
In retrospect, I probably could have had the wherewithal to go check out the revelry that year too—I certainly was aware of it happening—but perhaps thought it unimportant due to, you know, football. I don't care about football! Except I did go to a Super Bowl party that year.
I rarely pay attention to the Super Bowl, and indeed my
Super Bowl collection of albums on Flickr is mostly focused on years with counter-programming (and plenty of years with no album at all; because I wasn't even thinking about it). But, I have paid attention to the Super Bowl all four times the Seahawks went: I watched at home with Shobhit their first time, which they lost, in 2006; I already noted Shauna's sister's Super Bowl party in 2014; in 2015 I went to a Super Bowl party with Gabriel and Kornelija at Gabriel's friend Andy's place in Tacoma (this was the year I
shattered a tooth on a Skittle, having forgotten it was actually an old crown that shattered). 2014 and 2015 were both years Shobhit was in Los Angeles; 2006 and 2026 were both years I watched at home with Shobhit and no one else.
That said, 2026 was only the second year the Seahawks
won the Super Bowl, and thus the only time our team won while Shobhit and I were both together and at home. And we were correct when we assumed there would be revelry in the streets both on Capitol Hill (see the video shot above, taken right outside the Wildrose, amusingly Seattle's one lesbian bar) and particularly in Pioneer Square on the streets outside Lumen Field.
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There seemed to be only brief uncertainty, at first, as to whether we would go down to Lumen Field and walk through the street celebrations there. At first we were going to walk the whole way, but in the end neither of us was quite up for that; Shobhit noted it was a good point when I said we could easily take Light Rail down there. So, first we walked over to Pike Street, where there was much more going on than on Pine; we walked down to Broadway, where I was surprised to see little going on—it had been on Broadway, I believe, that people had gathered after Obama was elected in 2008. Shobhit thought there might be people at Cal Anderson Park, and there really wasn't, as we saw when looking up the street as we walked Broadway up to Capitol Hill Station.
We then went down the south entrance to the station, and a southbound train was upon us in just a few short minutes. People were doing the call back and forth even on the platform down there: "Sea!" "Hawks!" This happened pretty much everywhere we went. And you know what, I bet this street revelry happened in neigborhoods all over the city. I could easily see it happening on The Ave in the U District, for example.
Probably no place was as nuts as Pioneer Square, though. We got off the train at Pioneer Square Station, and I think we were
not the only ones with this idea. (Side note on that photo: it was pure luck I got a shot when both southbound and northbound trains were at the stop at the same time. I love that shot.) And this station opens right next to the iconic Smith Tower; we walked a block away and when we looked back we saw what was being light-projected on the west side of the building: one of the football players against the main portion of the building, and then on the thinner tower at the top, the words WE RUN IT NOW, with the Seahawks bird logo right above that. It was very cool, and a sight that alone made it worth the trek down there.
We then walked to Lumen Field, via Occidental Avenue so we could go through Occidental Square, which was also packed. And even though the game was actually played in Santa Clara, California, it was no surprise that the most people were outside Lumen Field, which is where the Seahawks play home games. We walked down Occidental Avenue past the stadium to Royal Brougham Way, and tured right to head toward 1st Ave to make our way back up—though we both really had to pee and went into a bar that was very gracious about letting people come in to use the bathroom.
We took 1st only back up to S Charles St, where we went back over to Occidental to squeeze through the even thicker crowd again; then we made our way back to Pioneer Square Station and took Light Rail back up to Capitol Hill Station. At first I thought I wanted to just walk straight home from there, but when we could still hear cheering over on Pike Street, I agreed we could go back over there to walk back up to our street. I'm so glad we did, because I got a couple great video shots of an even bigger crowd than there had been earlier—so rowdy that, as I already noted, they actually
tore down a street sign and then
played limbo with it.
In fact, between the drone show at Seattle Center two Fridays ago, and all the street revelry from last night, my
Super Bowl 2026 photo album now has 53 shots in it, the most by far of any that has any focus on the actual game and its after-effects. It's bound to get even bigger after the parade happens on Wednesday—something that also happened in 2014, but our office was still in the U District then so I had no easy means of witnessing it in person. But now? The parade is going to pass right in front of the window in our break room!
Alexia just alerted Shobhit and me that she's actually taking time off to be there. Shobhit will be too busy all day—two different meetings during the day before he heads to Olympia for his first rehearsal—but Alexia said she'll head toward my office so I can meet up with her. Fun! Depending on how many photos I take there, I'll either add to the Super Bowl album itself or create a dedicated album just to the parade. Really I could split the one I've already got going in two (one for the drone show and one for the street celebrations), but I'm not sure yet if I want to. It really depends on how Wednesday goes.
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In other news, there were also other days this weekend!
Saturday was a pretty big day on its own; I caught the Sound Transit #594 bus at 9th & Stewart at 2:15, and Tracy picked me up in downtown Tacoma at 3:21, before we then went to the Grand Cinema to see a movie: the animated French film
Arco, which we both very much enjoyed.
And after that, at Tracy's suggestion, we went to a place in Tacoma called
Dusty's Hideaway for dinner. When we got out of the theater, the sun had gone down, and the rain was pouring so heavily that there was practically a river cascading down the street, which was at an incline. I was so glad I had brought my umbrella with me, even if it was just for the half-block walk over to Tracy's parked car. I needed it again for the half-block from where she parked next to Dusty's Hideaway.
This place seemed to be in a
converted old house. You walk in a front door and you really need to be mindful to close the door behind you—something not all the other customers did. I got up at least once to close it because it was letting in too much cold air. I had a "Vegan Burger" (Impossible patty, not my favorite, but whatever) with real, Pepper Jack cheese; I had budgeted for only a meal but could not resist when I saw the cocktail on the menu that was hot chocolate with peanut butter whiskey in it. And $12 was a relatively reasonable price for it. It was delicious.
Tracy and I had a good time hanging out and catching up; she had a hysterectomy something like three weeks ago, and this was the first time she hung out with a friend after the surgery. Apparently the first week of her recovery was very painful. She also had a cyst removed, and she had a photo of it to show me—hers was of it still inside, not post-operation, so I actually found it less disgusting than the photos I took of my cyst after removal, even though mine was much smaller. (Plus, mine was just under the skin of my back, and hers was inside her uterus.)
After dinner she drove me to Tacoma Dome Station, where the northbound 594 bus was coming in just a few minutes. That bus left there at 7:30 and was at 9th & Howell around 8:20. I walked part of the way home and then caught a bus for maybe the second half of the way back up the hill.
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Shobhit and I also went out on Friday evening—in a sense. We decided to check out the "Central District Art Walk," knowing it would involve a lot of walking and Shobhit would get a lot of steps in.
We knew that by definition this would be a lot different from the Pioneer Square Art Walks we've been to, which has far more venues, all of them much more concentrated close together. Which is to say, easy to walk between them. In the Central District, we looked up the addresses of ostensibly 10 participating venues, and a majority of them weren't even open. The first one with any realy business going on was Metier Brewing Company, where our Merchandising Holiday Party was held in December—we did go in, and there were a few art pieces on the wall, but the place was hopping just as a bar, rather than as an art gallery. We walked to more places down that direction before heading back, and predictably, there was just a couple of places around 23rd and Union with art on display. At "Africatown Plaza," we did see some cool art, pretty much all of it from Black artists, and even bought a pint of delicious banana pudding from one woman.
The whole thing was far different from the Pioneer Square Art Walk experience, which typically has multiple galleries offering free snacks and sometimes even wine. There was none of this at the Central District Art Walk, which I suppose is not such a surprise as there is not nearly as much wealth in that neighborhood, plus it's far bigger geographically. It meant walking far greater distances to a much smaller number of places. It would have been nice of more of the places listed as participants were actually open, though.
We did finally find a house with a real gallery in it, on our way back north after having walked as far south as Jackson St. There was another couple, a straight couple, right ahead of us, apparently also trying to participate in the Art Walk, and also discovering a real gallery here for the first time. We later saw them in the same other couple of venues on Union off 23rd.
We did some light shopping at the CD PCC store before walking the rest of the way home. I
mapped a very loose approximation of our walking route on Friday, and we walked at minumum 4.6 miles. I bet at the very least we walked four and three quarter miles that night. I can tell you my own Health app says I walked a total of 7.9 miles that entire day, which would include things like walking to work and back earlier in the day. My total steps that day were 19,115, and it's been ages since I did that many. It did make me think, though, that perhaps I should get some more practice of that kind of walking in over the next few months, to prepare for the shit ton of walking we are sure to wind up doing in The Netherlands and Belgium.
Speaking of which, we spoke for the second time to a couple of guys selling these waffle treats at Cal Anderson Park yesterday, when we walked to the Farmers Market late in the morning, and they are actually from Belgium. We got a couple of good recommendations from them for when we are in Brussels in August, particularly chocolate places.
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[posted 12:31pm]
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.
