Subzero Temperatures Don’t Cool Super Bowl Joy : At Last, Chicago Sports Fans Celebrate

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 and maybe even the end of World War II.

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

Just beyond the downtown Loop skyline, they danced up and down in the streets, embraced strangers, slapped hands, hugged each other as hundreds of police, many on horseback, blocked off streets.

Broke the Quiet

Songs, cheers, fireworks and horns broke the quiet that fell over Chicago in the minutes before the game began and lingered until the final minutes of Super Bowl XX.

A brutal winter day, when the wind and the cold combined to produce a wind chill of 40 degrees below zero, was as much of a barrier to the celebration as the New England Patriots were to the Bears.

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

“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.”

“This is it. This is the best it will ever get. You wait your whole life to see something like this,” he said.

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

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.

Huddled Under Blankets

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