NEW YORK (AP) -With a snowstorm of confetti and paper raining down from skyscrapers, thousands of jubilant New York Giants fans thronged the streets of Manhattan on Tuesday to cheer their improbable Super Bowl champions.
“I still can’t believe it,” defensive end Michael Strahan said as the team was leaving New Jersey to come to New York. “I’m still in some kind of shock.”
Many of the Giants carried video cameras on parade floats, waving to the throngs and basking in the screams of delight.
The parade, featuring 50 tons of confetti, came two days after the Giants upset New England 17-14 to ends the Patriots’ perfect season. Mayor Michael Bloomberg was to give team officials the key to the city afterward.
The parade began at the tip of lower Manhattan in Battery Park and proceeded north on Broadway, going past the financial district and the site of the World Trade Center before a finale at City Hall Park.
The stretch is known as the “Canyon of Heroes,” where ticker-tape parades celebrating everything from Charles Lindbergh’s Atlantic flight to sports championships have been held. The last parade was in 2000, when the Yankees won the World Series.
The last New York team to win a championship in any of the four major sports was the New York Yankees in 2000.
While it clearly was a day for a parade, it was also a day for politics. New York and the 23 other Super Tuesday states were holding primaries that could seal the fates of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.
Just south of City Hall, politics and the parade crossed paths as signs for Democratic candidate Barack Obama were surrounded by fans wearing Giants red, white and blue.
The city had tons of shredded paper on hand for the parade, but some fans came prepared with toilet paper. An hour before the parade, several street lamps along Broadway were covered in streams of white tissue.
Justice Rodriguez, 11, of Brooklyn, was up at 3 a.m. with his father and half-dozen friends to secure a spot along Broadway, complete with chairs, food and a camcorder.
“I want to see Eli Manning,” said the boy, who wore a Manning No. 10 shirt over a puffy down jacket.
“It’s exciting for him,” said Justice’s father, Juan Rodriguez, who took the day off from his car wash job. “You never know when they’ll win again.”
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Associated Press writers Verena Dobnik in New York and David Porter in East Rutherford, N.J., contributed to this report.
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