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Super Bowls come with parties
By Kalea Hall
YOUNGSTOWN
On Super Bowl Sunday, business at Wedgewood Fernando’s Pizza triples.
“It’s our busiest day of the year,” Wedgewood owner Anthony Pellegrini said.
Inside Wedgewood on South Avenue in Boardman, a swift assembly line of pizza-making was underway Sunday evening. There were order takers, pizza makers, bakers and boxers. Orders seem to come in as quickly as they went out.
Before kickoff for Super Bowl LII between the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots, a mix of football and pizza fans filed in for their orders.
On a typical Sunday, Wedgewood would make 300 to 400 pizzas, but this Sunday they made 1,100.
Wings are also a top seller on Super Bowl Sunday. Wedgewood would typically sell 200 to 300 wings on a Sunday, but this Sunday they sold 800 to 900.
“It gives them a reason to all get together to party,” Pellegrini said.
At Crickets Bar and Grill on Midlothian Boulevard, Patriots’ and Eagles’ fans were partying together.
Lifelong Eagles’ fan Rob Briggs, 26, of Youngstown made sure to wear his Eagles’ hat, gloves and jacket on Sunday. Underneath his jacket was a 2005 Eagles’ jersey from when the Eagles last went to the Super Bowl and lost to the Patriots.
“I came out of the womb liking the Eagles,” Briggs said while waiting for the game to start at Crickets.
The Eagles, Briggs said, are the best team in the NFL because of several of the players and coach.
“We are going to win,” Briggs said.
Across the bar, in the Patriots’ hat his grandchildren bought him sat Rob Shingleton, 47, of Struthers, a lifelong fan of the Patriots who thought otherwise about who would win this game.
Shingleton has rooted for the Patriots since he was a little boy, but he doesn’t know why he started.
He did know he was very confident in the abilities of Patriots’ Quarterback Tom Brady to bring another Super Bowl win home. “Brady is going to win,” he said. “He’s gonna win six of them.”
Philadelphia won Super Bowl LII.