A Night in the City

It's been an introspective week for the Glass Man. A week ago yesterday, for the first time in my life, a team I rooted for won it all. Where the '94 Knicks and '99, '00, and '06 Mets had failed, at last the '07 Giants succeeded.

It was an odd kind of feeling. I rooted for these Giants pretty intensely beginning, say, with Week 5, after the '07 Mets had confirmed all my worst fears about them. I sat riveted through the ups and downs of the playoffs, but when the Giants won it all, I almost didn't know how to feel.

I knew I should be happy, and I was, but in all the excitement of the moment, my thoughts couldn't help but drift to the Mets.

After it was over I began hearing cheers from outside my fourth floor window, where normally only passing sirens and the fog horn interrupt the silence. I had to get out of my apartment. I had to see what it was like.

So me and a few friends ambled down Henry and popped in to Floyd, my favorite bar in the new neighborhood. As time passed the place got more and more crowded. Giants fans, New Yorkers really, gathered there to share stories about David Tyree's catch, or the D-Line, or sweet Eli Manning.

New York hadn't been this happy since the Yankees brought it all home in 2000 (salt).

Amid the euphoria and the Giants jerseys, I saw here and there a hint of blue and orange, Mets hats and t-shirts worn by the faithful. Johan Santana was signed, sealed, delivered, and somehow, that Sunday night after the Giants won the Super Bowl, it was as if all the gloom attendant upon the collapse (lower case please, thank you) that had been festering since last September was lifted.

As important as it was to be out with the city that night, and as tremendous and immediate as the feeling was, for me, and for a lot of Mets fans I bet, the Giants' win was less about the joy of the present or the heartache of the past 25 years (if you turned 25 in December, chances are you don't remember any aspect of '86). In some strange, unexpected way, it was about the next 6 months of Mets baseball. And it was about one salient thought: If the Giants can do it, why can't the Mets?

Maybe it's just me. As I've said many times, there's no team I'm as close to as the Mets. There's no other team whose offseason moves I obsess over like the Mets, there's no team whose players I feel so much attachment to. For me there's the Mets and there's everyone else.

So when the Giants won I was happy, yes, and I was aware that I was watching something I'd never seen before -- a team I rooted for had just won it all, and it was fun and it was exciting and it was great feeling that electricity all around you.

But someday it'll be the Mets. And no moment I've yet experienced, including that Sunday when the Giants won the Super Bowl, has prepared me for the emotions I expect to feel when that day finally comes.

* * * * *

Let me tell you about the future of tonic water. Q Tonic.

My god that bottle's sexy.

Just, think about it like this. A gin and tonic consists of, say, 30% gin and 70% tonic. So it's only natural that you'd want to put in a high quality tonic water, isn't it? I mean, you agonize over what type of gin to buy, then you throw in some low quality tonic water.

For years you had no choice, but that all changed a year or two ago when Q dropped. It's available in cities across the US and bars / stores around New York City. Check it out.

- A.F.O.M.G.