Washington Capitals Championship Parade – 6.12.18
Last Thursday the Washington Capitals beat the Vegas Golden Knights to win the first Stanley Cup in team history. It was the first major Championship in my hometown of DC since 1992 and the first championship team that I have rooted for in my life. After celebrating all night at the NYC Caps Crew bar Jojo’s Philosophy in the West Village I started planning my trip to the Capitals parade in DC.
My plan was going to go down with a few people on Monday afternoon, beating rush hour and getting to my parent’s place in Northern VA with plenty of time to sleep, but on Sunday night the Capitals announced that star players Alexander Ovechkin and Braden Holtby were going to be in NYC with the Stanley Cup for the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. I couldn’t believe it. Not only was the Stanley Cup going to be in NYC, but they are going to the show where my friend Seth Herzog works as the warm up comic. Heroically Seth got me backstage where I not only got to check off a major bucket list item and hold the Stanley Cup but I got to meet Holtby and Ovechkin. Ovechkin just happens to be my favorite human of all time.
After Fallon was over I met up with my friend Sam who I have been watching hockey with since 1991 and my friend Justin who is part of the NYC Caps Crew and we drove south and got to my parents house around 2am. After a few hours of sleep we hit the parade. We got to the National Mall around 9am and it was packed with people already. We found a spot near the end of the parade route under a tree which was ideal given that we were going to have to stand there for four hours. When the parade finally started I made my way a bit closer to the street but still was behind a ton of people. I brought my camera just because I felt like I had to, but I didn’t even bring a long lens so my parade photos were pretty pointless. I got a few decent shots, but mostly garbage. I was just happy to be there.
I shot a few more photos of the crowd on the mall, but we were so far from the rally stage and just exhausted so we texted all of our friends and had them meet us in Arlington at the Arlington Rooftop Bar & Grill for an after party thrown by Russian Machine Never Breaks. RMNB is probably my favorite sports blog of all time and it was great to finally meet Ian who runs it. A bunch of the NYC Caps Crew made it out too, and I got to hang out with my friend Jamie who with Sam is one of my oldest, closest friends and is another person I’ve been watching Caps games with since childhood. I ran into a ton of people I know from hockey Twitter as well and it was just a really good time.
I decided not to go out after that because I hadn’t slept at all and was pretty exhausted so I came home and edited these photos and crashed, but my Championship week isn’t quite over. Today I am going to get a Stanley Cup tattoo at Jinx Proof tattoos in DC which was the first place I ever got tattooed almost exactly 20 years ago.
It’s been one hell of a week after a lifetime of sports related suffering. I realize many of you can’t possibly imagine why I would care so much about sports but if you are interested in knowing a little bit more about how I felt, I wrote something for the NYC Caps Crew blog about it. Some of it might not make any sense if you aren’t a Caps fan, but I actually started crying while writing it, so it means a lot to me. And if you still don’t care about sports, don’t worry, I will go back to posting parties and nudity ASAP and won’t bug you with any more sports related content until September when football season starts…
