The Time I Kissed the Stanley Cup

My fun-filled weekend continued on Sunday when I woke up early to attend the 41st Annual Chicago Pride Parade in Boystown. I went for a few reasons:

1) To experience one of Chicago’s biggest events (1.2 million turned out for the parade)

2) To experience a parade other than a sports championship rally (a la Celtics and Blackhawks)

3) To do some reporting for RedEye Wrigleyville, seeing it was one of the biggest weekends for our neighborhood blogs.

Going into the parade I planned to find out how the community--the gay community in particular--felt about having participation from both the Blackhawks and the Cubs this year. Blackhawks player (well, former player--he was traded last week) Brent Sopel was carrying the Stanley Cup at the parade (it's actually a really great story) and for the first time ever, the Cubs had a float in the parade.

The parade was fun to watch and the overall experience and atmosphere was overwhelmingly positive and beautiful. There is so much hate and violence in this world that it was very nice to see a million people coming together to show love and support for each other whether they were black, white, gay, straight, etc.

Although fun, the parade was very long. I left before it finished in order to shower and relax after a busy weekend. Upon returning home, I accomplished the shower part, which felt good on my slightly sunburned skin. However, I was right back out the door 30 minutes later when I found out that Brent Sopel and the Stanley Cup would be at a bar in Wrigleyville and like any good reporter covering her beat, I decided I needed to find out what was going on. And I've always wanted to see the Cup, my favorite sports trophy of all time.

When my roommate Laura and I got to the bar, we were asked to donate $10 which guaranteed us a chance to take a picture with the Cup (the money went to Sopel's charity). The Cup left at 5 p.m., we got our picture taken with it at 4:58. Just in time! After I snapped a photo with the Cup, I laid a big fat one on it. It was cold. And if I caught cooties from it, I wouldn't have even cared. I kissed the Stanley Cup. The only thing that would have made this better would be if it was in Boston and belonged to the Bruins.

After I stepped away from Stanley, the day got even better. After following around and asking--and in turn probably annoying--the event organizer, I was able to ask Sopel a few questions for a post on the RedEye Wrigleyville blog. They were both really nice and I was proud that my curiosity turned into a stellar scoop for the blog! And I got to kiss the Cup. Did I already mention that??

Here is the post I wrote about the event, including my interview with Sopel. I tweeted the story out the next day (aka sent it out on Twitter) and Sopel tweeted me back thanking me for it!

I'm not sure how July is ever going to compare with my extremely eventful and exciting June (meeting Evan Lysacek and kissing the Stanley Cup), but it's surely set the bar pretty high!