I live on the South Side, and my wife and I watched Game 7 at a favorite East Carson watering hole. We started our walk home in the middle of the on-ice Cup-hoisting ritual, but got only as far as the corner of 17^th before we stopped to watch the ruckus in fan-clogged streets. It wasn't nearly as large, or as carnivalesque, as the Super Bowl victory melee a scant four months ago -- that one had a guy in a kilt, after all -- but it was still quite diverting.

Yet, despite the brandishing of ersatz water-bottle Stanley Cups silvered with duct tape; the sore-winner cries of "Fuck you, Hossa!"; the rather-moot-by-now chants of "Let's go, Pens"; the senseless twirling of hand-towels at police; the riot-geared cops shaking up cans of Mace (but apparently not using them); the seeming good humor of the poor farkers on the 51C that on a nominally open-to-traffic street took 45 minutes to get from 17^th to 14^th streets; and the lady rather poetically blowing soap bubbles from the third-floor window over Slacker, I have just one question:

Why do the two guys who trundle the Cup onto the ice after the final game wear white gloves to deliver it for kisses and man-hugs to a bunch of sweaty, heavily bearded hockey players? It's like having butlers at a keg party.