I'm sure you've seen most of the photos of Eagles fans celebrating in the streets after the team's Super Bowl win over the New England Patriots last Sunday. My mother called me from Utah to ask if I was "okay, covering the riots." And looking at the national media coverage of our city, you would not be wrong to assume the city was burning down, no downtown businesses were spared the looting, and every driver foolish to have parked anywhere near Broad Street found their car only overturned - if they were lucky - or a burned out metal shell if they were not.
I am not surprised by the exaggerations. It is nothing new. I find it in almost every story out-of-towners do in my city. And especially with sports, the stereotypes and cliches abound. One of the best putdowns of same was the Eagles own Twitter reply this past fall to Colin Cowherd on Fox Sports Radio:
What IS new, in recent years is what in the early days of smart phones most mainstream media were calling "citizen journalism." There are so many phones out there now you can't even get a strong enough cell connection to send a text of make a phone call (let along send a photo!!). But besides the lack of broadband connectivity, almost anywhere that anything happens in front of anybody you can count on there being video shot by somebody.
I won't share all the links, as I said, you probably saw them in all your Twitter, Instagram or Facebook feeds. Many "news" reports had the crowd spilling out during halftime to begin the destruction. The photo above was made on Broad Street near City Hall during the third quarter of the game. I had shot a few groups of fans - mostly smokers I surmised - who left their bars at halftime, but they all went back inside to watch the game when the second half started. The Broad Street was still open to traffic then.
You can see the photos from Inquirer photographers here. Photos by the wires are here. Sure, we didn't get the burning trash can, or the car that got turned over. But I leave it to you to decide what the night was really like.