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Workers in high-rises tossed confetti -- and later entire pieces of papers -- from their windows.
Jun Kim, 28, a Korean linguist at the law firm Kenyon & Kenyon, reserved his biggest batch for Manning. "You are a star!" he yelled as the quarterback passed by. "People thought he would crumble under pressure, but he didn't. He's the best."
And once, so were four former Giants players who all starred in past Super Bowls and joined Kim on the 11th floor of Number One Broadway, watching from a balcony "with the best bird's-eye view of the parade," said managing partner Michael Loughnane.
Howard Cross, a onetime Giants tight end, said he only caught a few seconds of the parade from the drop-dead height because "I'm scared -- I don't lean over edges!"
Three other former Giants were also at the confetti fest in the 19th century building: Otis Anderson, George Martin and Sean Landetta.
Just moments after the parade passed around noon, a lineup of sanitation plows scraped their way up Broadway, pushing mounds of confetti -- some as high as 5 feet.
Fans stood on sidewalks ankle deep in the paper that was later sucked up by sanitation workers armed with hand-held vacuums.
Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said he expected about 40 tons of paper to be thrown. That's a lot but not one for the record books: The city threw 5,438 tons of ticker tape on returning veterans at the end of World War II in 1945.
The actual ticker tape from those days has been replaced by recycled paper that's shredded into confetti. About 34 tons of paper were cleaned up after the Giants' 2008 parade.
Mindy Forman, 53, of Yorktown, was one of the lucky few who scored a ticket to the festivities at City Hall. She said the win was a much-needed victory at a time when many could use some cheering up. She counted herself among that group: She was laid off two weeks ago from her job as a college administrator.
"It celebrates New York," she said. "It celebrates the city. It celebrates the state. And it gives people something to believe in in very hard times."
New York has feted its public heroes since 1919, with the first parade for World War I General John Pershing and his victorious troops.
They were followed by more than 200 parades honoring such people as aviator Charles Lindbergh, scientist Albert Einstein, Pope John Paul, South African leader Nelson Mandela and pianist Van Cliburn. Their names are chiseled into the Broadway sidewalks.
[Associated Press;
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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