Skip to content
Sports
Link copied to clipboard

Huge mess left behind after Eagles parade

Plastic bottles, a propane grill, plastic lawn chairs, couch cushions, balaclava, a shopping tote and more were on the city's streets.

People walk past trash along the Ben Franklin Parkway after the Eagles’ Super Bowl parade on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018.
People walk past trash along the Ben Franklin Parkway after the Eagles’ Super Bowl parade on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018.Read moreTIM TAI / Staff Photographer

Is anyone else having a flashback to the day after the annual Mummer's Parade?

After fans swarmed downtown Philadelphia on Thursday to celebrate the Eagles' Super Bowl victory, there was a big mess left behind.

The trash included a propane grill, plastic lawn chairs, couch cushions, a balaclava, a shopping tote, a roll of toilet paper, a tarp and much, much more.

The only difference was that, instead of Two Street, the garbage seemed to be most concentrated on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. There was even glitter on the streets.

At about 4 p.m., staff writer Samantha Melamed said "pretty much every square foot of the Parkway" looked like this:

Other snapshots of the Parkway and Center City seemed just as bad. On the Oval, city workers used leaf blowers to clean up the garbage.

Staff writer Frank Kummer said that, as of 5 p.m., there was still a massive amount of trash on Broad Street near City Hall as well. With fans still swarming the area, cleanup appeared to be tricky.

The mess also included at least one instance of graffiti. Someone painted an, ahem, profane instruction to New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady on a wall.

Despite how bad things looked in some parts of the city, a spokeswoman for the streets department said at 5:17 p.m. that the clean-up was going according to plan.

"All streets south of Chestnut Street have been cleaned and open for traffic," said Keisha McCarty-Skelton. "South Broad Street has been cleaned and opened by rush hour as predicted. Crews are currently servicing around City Hall and surrounding Center City Streets and moving towards the Parkway."

McCarty-Skelton added that "as we previously stated, the Parkway and museum area clean-up would be contingent upon when the ceremony concluded and the crowd exited the ceremony. When accessible, crews will clean and expect to have all streets, including Parkway, opened later this evening."

The topic of garbage came up on city's police scanner: At about 5:25 p.m., a man said, "It's a mess everywhere. We can't close everything down."

Believe it or not, some people saw beauty in the trash. At least the sparkly kind.

According to Melamed, the trash became less overwhelming the further you moved away from the Parkway, though. In fact, some areas looked sparkling clean by the early evening. Well, almost.

Staff writer Maddie Hanna contributed to this report.