they were climbing the light poles in Tokyo

Go Birds

There are, I think, three things you need to know to fully understand why a viral video of people climbing light poles on a Tokyo street this weekend was so beautiful to me. Let’s address them one at a time.

ONE: The Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl

This is true. They did win the Super Bowl. The final score was 40-22 but it wasn’t even that close, which is saying something because 40-22 isn’t particularly close in the first place. It wasn’t that exciting as an actual football game either, unless you were a biased observer (like me, Go Birds) or unless you are the kind of hater who enjoys watching the total dismantling of a team that was heralded as a burgeoning dynasty by hundreds of talking heads with microphones and very expensive haircuts in the lead-up to the game (also me, also Go Birds).

A lot of people ended up in that second group, actually, thrust into a position where they became Eagles fans just as a way to combat their exhaustion with the increasingly ubiquitous Kansas City Chiefs, with their television commercials and Hallmark movies and celebrity-filled luxury boxes. As an Eagles fan, I welcomed these temporary additions to our ranks. To paraphrase the famous proverb, the enemy of my enemy is my friend unless the enemy of my enemy roots for the goddamn Dallas Cowboys.

So, for me and the haters, it was a lovely football game. The team gave the coach a celebratory Gatorade bath with three minutes left on the clock. The backup quarterback got onto the field to mop things up at the end. I spent the whole fourth quarter just scrolling on my phone as I cackled like the Joker. A solid 10 out of 10 Super Bowl experience. Would recommend.

TWO: The people of Philadelphia like to celebrate by climbing on top of things

This is also true. It started years ago. Every time one of our sports teams — I am speaking about the Phillies and Eagles here because the Sixers are not so much a basketball team as they are a psychological experiment to see how much damage you can inflict on a fanbase before they crumble into dust — makes a run into the playoffs, whoopie, there we go climbing on stuff. It is one of those things that makes no sense at all but also feels perfectly logical. This year the city parked garbage trucks at intersections to block off traffic during the celebrations. Guess if people climbed on top of the garbage trucks.

It’s usually light poles, though. And other poles. Just hundreds of people scaling light poles and traffic signs and whatever other structures point up in a relatively straight line from the sidewalk toward the sky. It got so bad one year that the city decided to lube up the poles with grease in an attempt to prevent people from climbing them. Guess if this backfired. Guess if hundreds of Philadelphians heard “they greased the poles” as a challenge to climb the greased poles instead of a reason not to. This sums up the culture of Philadelphia pretty well if you ever need to explain it to someone.

Anyway, this brings us to the video of Eagles fans in Tokyo scaling poles after the Super Bowl…

… which I enjoyed very much when I saw it Sunday night during my aforementioned scrolling and cackling. But then, upon a second or third viewing, I noticed something else in the video…

THREE: I had seen this particular light pole before

Back in August, as the Phillies were gearing up for their own playoff appearance, the ABC affiliate in Philly, Action News, did an incredible segment about a cheesesteak restaurant in Tokyo. It’s owned and operated by Kosuke and Tomomi Chujo, a married couple from Japan who are just deeply obsessed with all things Philadelphia. They’ve traveled to Philly multiple times to perfect their cheesesteak recipe and make it authentic. Their bar is littered with Philadelphia memorabilia. Kosuke has a Rocky tattoo. His favorite store is Wawa. I know this last thing because there’s a moment in that video where he looks straight into the camera and then points at a Wawa sticker on his wall and says “My favorite store is Wawa.” Here, look.

I bring Kosuke up today because I will always take the opportunity to bring him up and because, if you look at that video of the man in Tokyo climbing that pole, you’ll see a small green sign in the shot that says “philly.” It looks exactly like the small green sign outside Kosuke’s restaurant, which is called Nihonbashi Philly.

So, I poked around. The man who posted the video is named Dan Orlowitz and is a Philly native and journalist who lives in Tokyo. I looked at the other things he had posted from the city on the day of the Super Bowl. And I quickly discovered, well, this.

What we have here, to be very clear, is an absolute mess of people lining up on the streets of Tokyo at 6am on a Monday morning — time zones are wild — to watch the Eagles play in the Super Bowl and eat cheesesteaks and drink beer inside a restaurant run by a Japanese couple who adores Philadelphia. The video of the celebratory pole-climbing was posted just after 10pm on Sunday night, East Coast time. This means that, factoring in the 13-hour time difference, it was about 1pm on Monday when it was happening there. Lunchtime on a weekday.

I would give anything to hear what the people working in the building across the street thought was going on. I would give anything to hear their general opinions of Philadelphia based only on working near a restaurant that serves cheesesteaks and occasionally encourages its customers to climb street fixtures in broad daylight while a group of people stands below them doing loud chants in English. As type this, I realize their perception of Philadelphia is probably not that different from the perception of most people in America. No one is entirely wrong, either. We are a passionate and occasionally destructive people, but we mean well. Usually. Sometimes.

So, yes, of course, enjoy the video of Eagles fans climbing light poles halfway around the world to celebrate the thorough championship whomping the team delivered to the Chiefs. It is a beautiful thing even when taken only at face value. But take a minute today and think about the moving pieces at play, too. Think about a guy in Japan falling in love with a city so far away that it’s technically yesterday there when he’s getting ready for the lunch rush at the cheesesteak restaurant he poured his whole heart and bank account into. Think about the people from the Philadelphia area who live in Tokyo now and showed up at this restaurant before sunrise to watch the Super Bowl in the closest approximation of home they could find, right down to the authentically prepared local delicacies. Think about how cool it is that sports can do that for people, bring them together over a bond of team pride and greasy sandwiches and dangerous feats of pole-based celebration.

Am I biased here? I mean, sure. My beloved Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl by dominating the two-time champs and putting their superhuman quarterback in hell. That was fun. I might watch the highlights again right after I smash publish on this sucker. But I’ll be thinking about this part of it for a while, too. There’s a lot that divides us out there and I don’t need to make a list here for you to know what I mean. There’s also stuff that unites us. You take that stuff wherever you can find it. Sometimes you find it on top of a light pole at lunchtime in Tokyo. That’s pretty cool.

Go Birds.