Despite winter wallop, Sunday still Super in Silver Spring
Residents were ready for food, fun on game day
While "Snowmaggedon" ruined the plans of countless county residents this past weekend, it gave Super Sunday a literal meaning to Mamma Lucia chef Javier Juarez.
As lasting effects from the prolonged blizzard kept many of its competitors closed, Mamma Lucia stayed open until Super Bowl XLIV officially kicked off about 6:30 p.m.
"I think we'll be up about 65 percent from what we usually get today," Juarez said. "All these people are stuck, there's no place for everyone to go, and we're the only pizza place around here open. Plus, people normally barbecue for football days, and obviously they can't with all the snow."
Consequently, residents citywide were forced to improvise. At the Giant Food on East-West Highway in Silver Spring, Jacqui Davis stocked her shopping cart with prepared pastas and assorted deli meats four hours before kickoff. Nearby, her friend bemoaned the supermarket's empty salad bar.
Her Super Bowl party was "not going to suck," she insisted, even though the steaks and burgers she purchased weeks ago would not be served.
"Praise the lord Giant has food still; I came through the other day and it was like a billion people here," said Davis, 31. "When I heard this big storm we were in for, I'm like, First of all, what are the boys going to eat?' But we'll make do. At least they made it, safe and sound."
Not all the festivities Sunday involved gathering around the television. Along 16th Street in Silver Spring, teenagers reveled in their surroundings, bouncing tennis balls through vacated parking spots and belly-flopping off snow drifts.
Their merriment fit right in with Davis' philosophy about the storm.
"You can be all mopey or you flip the script," Davis said. "Me, I'm just rocking with it."