And on Friday afternoon, shortly after the
Bob Kraft news broke, it’s full of people seeking, more than anything else, a memorable photograph. The area in front of Orchids is so clogged with gawkers taking smartphone photos and videos that car traffic backs up along the curb. For the most part, no one is honking—virtually every car that passes has at least one person taking video out of an open window. The rare drivers there to do actual business generally seem too confused by the crowd of onlookers to notice why the line isn’t moving; the one time a horn is heard, it comes from a man who is impatient about pulling his SUV in front of Orchids, so that he can pause and take his own video.
The conversation on the shaded sidewalk in front of Orchids is all about Bob Kraft. A local reporter grabs anyone passing by for a quote or perspective. She tells me people have been trickling by for selfies and Instagram videos since the morning, before Kraft’s name was even in it, but that the crowd has grown noticeably since the
morning press conference. An NBC Boston reporter grabs a grandmotherly woman with a heavy New England accent, who tells her she’s here on vacation and is inclined to give Kraft the benefit of the doubt, because he’s
“a good man” who has done so much for Boston and for “the National Football League.” A photographer coaxes a triumphant barefoot man in a Giants t-shirt into shouting “Go
New York Post” for a brief cell phone video. A beaming elderly fellow is saying “Perverted Patriots!” over and over again, because, he explains, soon the phrase is going to be “a thing.”