Gadgetory

I am standing in the middle of a nightmare if you've ever watched the Super Bowl you know it's much more of an event than just a game that adds the tie-ins the spectacle it's all much bigger than what happens on the field but the spectacle isn't just on TV it's a real physical thing that follows the event wherever it goes with TV studios and event spaces and toboggan runs it's like all the ads in the Super Bowl crawled out of the TV and set up shop in the most overwhelming place in New York Times Square this is Super Bowl Boulevard a 13 block stretch of Broadway that's been taken over by the NFL in honor of Sunday's game you can catch a touchdown pass at the Bridgestone tent or Pepsi and Tostitos will set you up performing a fake halftime show almost all of the big corporate advertisers for the Super Bowl have a physical presence here this divider is particularly crazy there's fake icicles fake first down markers to get in we had to buy tickets to look like the actual tickets to the Super Bowl this isn't even real snow its soap suds have you ever wanted to climb inside the body of an NFL wide receiver if so this is your chance this is the Lombardi Trophy right at the epicenter everyone see it get a picture of it many as 30,000 people are gonna see it just today everyone's lined up outside do you want to actually touch it you have to win the Super Bowl this is a big-screen tracking the social media reaction to the different teams and the different players I don't know why they did this Papa John's brought two things a 71 Camaro and free pizza people care way more about the free pizza New York is a weird place to have the Super Bowl it's cold it's crowded it's stressful but the NFL ignored all that because Bloomberg's New York is built for exactly this kind of spectacle Times Square has spent a lot of time preparing for this event cutting off car access and building out pedestrian areas over the course of years and as all this is going on people are still working in the buildings over the street as if nothing's even happening as strange as it feels in 2014 you can build a miniature football Disneyland in the center of Manhattan and the city will just go on around it