For Chicago, Bears’ Victory Is Just Super

This city’s long-suffering sports fans finally had a winner Sunday night, and they celebrated the Chicago Bears’ Super Bowl victory as if it were New Year’s Eve, the Fourth of July or maybe even the end of World War II.

The Bears overwhelmed the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX in New Orleans as they had dominated the National Football League this season, posting the highest score and the most lopsided victory in the history of the game, 46-10. (Details in Sports.)

Street Celebrations

Despite bitter weather better suited for polar bears--or maybe this city’s newest hero, William (The Refrigerator) Perry--tens of thousands of Chicagoans thirsting for a national sports championship spilled out of watering holes throughout the city, taking their celebration to the streets.

All but deserted during the game, the city’s streets were suddenly transformed into a symphony of car horns, a battlefield of fireworks and a chorus of chants and cheers.

Strangers embraced strangers, women in mink coats slapped hands with boys in high school varsity jackets. Grown men, their faces painted as if it were Halloween, danced through crawling traffic while others wore costumes that ranged from refrigerators to furry bears.

Disorderly Conduct

Police began making arrests for disorderly conduct less than two hours after the Bears’ rout of the Patriots brought the city its first national sports championship in more than two decades. At least one car was overturned, and police sealed off the Loop business district, which was jammed by thousands of cars.

Unbareable weather was no deterrent to the celebration, which continued into the early morning hours. People wearing little more than jeans and T-shirts (Bears T-shirts) defied winds and temperatures that created a dangerous wind chill of 43 degrees below zero.

“We did it! We did it!” John Stanko, 35, a high school maintenance worker, shouted as he ran through the streets in the Rush Street honky-tonk nightclub district.

Wearing all manner of Bears paraphernalia, including white headbands made popular by quarterback Jim McMahon, the revelers danced atop automobiles, raised pennants into the air and shouted from open windows in high-rise apartment buildings.

‘Wonderful Experience’

Three women, arms linked, skipped down one sidewalk, singing the team’s fight song, “Bear Down, Chicago Bears.”

“This whole place is up for grabs. It’s wild. This is the most wonderful experience I have ever had in my 27 years,” said Victoria Seay, who works in corporate real estate in suburban Schaumburg.

For a city repeatedly let down by its sports teams in recent decades, suffering through the nadir of winter and rocked by the recent assault of political corruption reports, the Bears’ first national championship since 1963 was a great escape.

“We’re finally world champions,” said Ed Wierzbicki, a 36-year-old lawyer who was carrying a beer bottle and wearing a headband that read “Ditka,” for Bears’ Head Coach Mike Ditka. “This is it. This is the best it will ever get. You wait your whole life to see something like this.”

“People have been talking about the drought in Chicago sports. . . . Well, today’s a hurricane,” said Bob Thomas, a 27-year-old financial analyst and lifelong Bears fan.

“I love it, I love it, I love it,” said John Stephens, a 23-year-old construction worker from Kansas City who flew to Chicago with a friend to watch the game in a Chicago tavern.

Giant Outdoor Screen

While temperatures fell throughout the day about as quickly as Patriot ball carriers, hundreds of die-hard fans proved that they were as tough as the Bears, watching the game on a giant outdoor screen erected across from City Hall.

Here, in an atmosphere that resembled the Bears’ home, Soldier Field, fans huddled under blankets and layers of sleeping bags and filled the otherwise deserted downtown with echoes of cheers.

“It is just like being at the game,” said a shivering Valerie Bosse, 29.

“We’re just like everybody else in Chicago. We’re crazy for the Bears,” said Jennifer Prozek, 18, who was curled up under a thick blanket, cuddling a giant teddy bear.