Beards, panda hats and a citywide party
on November 4, 2010
San Francisco threw a giant party Wednesday, as hundreds of thousand of Giants fans flooded downtown to celebrate their baseball team’s first World Series title since moving to the Bay Area more than a half-century ago.
“It’s surreal,” Bob Wilson, a lifelong Giants fan, said of the World Series victory. “You kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it finally happened.”
Wilson, 44, said the drive from his home in San Jose to Daly City usually takes 45 minutes, but traffic was so heavy Wednesday morning that he was on the road for two and a half hours on his way to the parade.
The World Series victory was the first for the Giants since moving to San Francisco in 1958. It was the city’s first-ever major league baseball championship and the Bay Area’s first major sports championship since the San Francisco 49ers won the Super Bowl following the 1994 season.
Fans lined the streets as the Giants players, coaches, former players and front-office staff paraded along a 1-and-a-half-mile route that passed through downtown and ended at Civic Center Plaza, where the players gathered in front of City Hall and addressed the crowd that packed into the plaza.
Jackie Sutton, 48, said she is in the process of moving from Antioch to Hawaii, but took time off from packing to join the celebration. “I came over by myself,” she said, “just because I had to be with my kind.”
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