Deborah Hirsch’s blog

My head is swimming with words like “twitter” and “convergence” and “web ninjas.” I guess that’s natural after spending Friday and Saturday at the Society of Professional Journalists regional conference.

Saturday was really cool because we had the chance to attend sessions focused on the technological end of sharing information. These were hosted by Barcamp, a free conference where the people who attend actually present the sessions. There’s a board with blank note cards in each hour-long time slot, and you can literally pick one up, write a topic that you want to discuss on it and then wait to see who shows up. It was such a cool concept. You end up with a much more collaborative, interactive forum rather than a session where someone is talking and everyone else is listening for the majority of the time.

Anyway, I learned quite a bit. It also pushed me to test out the latest fad – twitter. We’ll see how much time I have for it. I worry that it’ll become like blogging – something I enjoy doing but find myself forgetting to do because I just have too many other things going on. I wonder how much more time I’ll have when I’m done with the wedding planning. Seth thinks I’ll just find other things to fill my time. He’s probably right.

I heard some pretty incredible live jazz when I was in New Orleans a couple of years ago, but the musicians I heard this past weekend in New York have blown that out of the water.

We went to Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola at Lincoln Center for a friend’s birthday. (Good call, Clair.) I think my favorite part was the dance-off between the trumpet and trombone players, peppered with competitive musical riffs. At the end of the show, a horde of current and former students joined in a classic funeral march. I wouldn’t have guessed they were students by the quality of their sound.

If I hadn’t been so exhausted from the trip up, I would’ve stayed for the late-late night set that started at 1:30 a.m. I highly recommend checking this place out if you happen to need something to do in NY. There’s discounts for student IDs and paid admission to the late show gets you free entry to the late-late set.

In other news, the past two months have been packed with wedding planning. I didn’t think my dress alterations made for exciting blogs, so that’s why I spared you the details. I also went to an exercise conference in late February. I’m now certified to teach “striptease aerobics,” which means I can “officially” require my cardio students to get raunchy in class.

Practically the entire reporting staff was assigned to cover the parade honoring the Phillie’s World Series Championship on Friday. Somehow, I was sent to Citizens Bank Park stadium, where I was supposed to cover the closing ceremony. Seth was EXTREMELY jealous that I was not only able to get in the stadium but also into the press box.

To be honest, most of the day was pretty boring. After hours of interviewing fans, you start to hear the same things over and over again. I had been instructed to get to the stadium around 10 a.m. to make sure I didn’t get tied up in the overloaded public transportation system. As a result, I was really ready to go when the Phillies parade finally made it to the stadium around 4 p.m., at least two hours behind schedule. But, there was an unexpected bonus – all the reporters got a chance to go on the field to interview the players after the ceremony. I felt bad that I was there instead of some other reporter who’s a bigger Phillies fan. Of course, this was the one time the players weren’t wearing their names on their shirts, so it was even more obvious that I was clueless when I had to ask my coworker to help me identify who was who.

Here’s a picture of shortstop Jimmy Rollins that I snapped with my phone.

Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins

I also want to add that I had a much better impression of Phillies fans on Friday. There were still plenty of people who had been drinking beer for hours, but they weren’t as destructive. I think the daylight helped. They weren’t selling any alcohol inside the stadium, either.

Believe it or not, when I moved to Philadelphia about four months ago I was actually looking forward to joining the ranks of the city’s die-hard sports fans. If you’re reading this, you probably know me enough to know that I’ve never been into watching team sports and I don’t have any connection to Philadelphia other than the fact that I call it home now. But I had heard how much sports mattered to so many people across the region and I thought it might be fun to share in that part of Philadelphia’s identity.

Pretty good timing that I moved here just as the Phillies were on their way to winning the World Series for the first time in 28 years. I have to say, it was pretty energizing to watch the final game in an Olde City bar with hundreds of cheering fans decked out in Phillies red. I didn’t understand all the plays and I still struggle to understand how people get so emotionally distressed from watching a game. I mean, seriously, it is just a game – not a presidential election, nor a matter of life or death.

That said, I was glad to be a part of the shared excitement. It was great to see strangers hugging and clapping each other on the back after each home run. After the team won, we high-fived passerby out the window of the cab that took us to City Hall. It really was the “City of Brotherly Love.”

On Broad Street, I cheered along with everyone else as revelers chugged beer, dropped confetti from high-rises and sprayed champagne over the crowd. Someone tossed up a balloon made from a condom. One guy barreled through the sea of people with a floor lamp. Not sure what that was about.

Then, the merrymaking began to shift to destruction. Someone triumphantly broke off a piece of a traffic light. Dozens of people climbed onto a fire truck and hung on even when the truck resumed moving. Drunken teenagers climbed signposts to pull down World Series banners. I was sure I was going to watch someone take a nasty fall. Fireworks exploded from the middle of the crowd. A group of people knocked over a planter. Others ran by with shrubs they’d uprooted and branches they’d broken off of nearby trees. Three boys began shaking a small tree in a concrete planter as the crowd egged them on.

At that point, my mood soured. I can relate to drunken stupidity, I’ve been there myself. Thankfully, I’ve never been idiotic enough to put my life in danger by climbing a moving vehicle or a wobbly sign post. If other people choose to do that, at least theoretically they’re not going to endanger me if they hurt themselves. But ripping up city property, and worse, nature? That burned me. Why in the world would people celebrate their beloved sports team by literally destroying property they paid for with their own tax dollars?

I was relieved to see two men break up the attempt to tear down the tree. I had worried that I was the only one who found this completely abominable. Of course, a few minutes after the men left, another group of zealous jerks hopped up and began shaking the tree. I was so furious that I climbed onto the planter and tried to tug them away. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a good idea to do that, but I figured they wouldn’t have the guts to hit a woman. Who knows if they were simply surprised at my passionate outburst or feared that others would join me in ganging up against them, but they left.

I stood in front of the tree, no longer feeling celebratory. Then, another guy jumped up and grabbed the branches that extended over me. “Let’s take down the tree!” he crowed, swinging his full weight against its trunk. I tried to push him away, partly because he was rushing right at me. At first, he seemed too drunk to realize that I was trying to stop him instead of help him. He persisted, so I made a fist and aimed for his crotch. Stunned, he stopped and looked at me.

Finally, I thought I had made my point. But my victory was short lived. I watched the melee from my guard post until yet another brilliant party-goer scaled the tree from behind me, ignoring my protests that it was too small to support his weight.

I wanted to stay there and fight it out for this tree, even though I knew it was futile. But Seth was afraid the climber would fall on me and didn’t want to risk being around if things got even more out of hand.

Here’s a link to a YouTube video someone edited together – it gives you a good picture of what I saw. I don’t believe the tree shown in this video was the one I was trying to protect, but it’s hard to tell. There were several planted along the street.

Later, we learned that the mob had also overturned cars, commandeered a news vehicle, thrown bottles at police officers, broken into a furniture store and even set trees on fire. Seth told me that major game wins have caused bigger problems in other cities. I don’t doubt that after what I saw Wednesday night. That doesn’t make me any less disgusted, though. It’s too bad that a couple hundred unruly fans spoiled my first impression of Philly sports celebrations. I’m sure that there are thousands of other fans who are more respectful of their city and each other, but I certainly won’t be so eager to jump into the jubilance next time.

On Tuesday, Oct. 21, Seth and I were eating a late dinner when I heard what sounded like tribal chanting outside. After opening the window, we were able to make out that this was not some kind of Native American chant, but a variation of the Hebrew song “Hiney Ma Tov Umanayim.”

Jews, singing, outside?? We grabbed our jackets and headed downstairs. Two doors from us, at least 50 Jews were dancing and singing in front of Red Sky nightclub. Three Chassidic men held up Torahs while the others filed by the club for a shot of alcohol. They were celebrating Simcha Torah, a holiday that marks finishing the annual cycle of Torah readings and restarting from the beginning. If I hadn’t been flying to Wisconsin the next day, I would’ve joined in. Instead, we sang along for a few minutes until the crowd moved on to serenade another bar around the corner. What a sight. How cool that I live in a place where dozens of Jews might just happen to be singing outside my apartment. And not just singing, but singing with TORAHS on a BAR CRAWL. I’m sure I would never have seen that in Charlotte.