Giants fans cope with week without football

Giants fan Richard Romanik of Hicksville expects to live in the past this weekend.

After 17 weeks of football -- including a bye week -- and the past three weekends of playoff games, Romanik and his buddies must wait until Feb. 5 to watch the Giants take on the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI.

"I'm going to parade around Long Island driving my blue car, showing off my New York football Giants BIGBLUE vanity plates," Romanik, 52, said Friday. "After that I got a couple of guys coming over to watch all the Giants games I recorded.

"We're going to watch all the playoff action: the Falcons, the Packers and the 49ers," he said, referring to this month's Giants playoff victories.

They might also watch a few regular-season games, such as Giants-Jets and Giants-Cowboys, all wins for his team, he said. "And we'll have a little outside barbecuing," he added.

Romanik joins the thousands of other Big Blue fans this weekend who find themselves with no games on TV (not counting the Pro Bowl).

Marianne Stone, 48, of Lynbrook, said this weekend she was looking forward to savoring a shipment of sourdough bread -- payment of her bet with San Francisco pal Mary Beth Marmur, whose 49ers lost to the Giants in the NFC Championship last Sunday.

"They just arrived. I just opened the package," she said Friday evening. "Two loaves from Boudin San Francisco Sourdough."

"I'm not doing anything special this weekend. I'm just now becoming a [Giants] fan and I won't miss it," Stone said of football. "But I will be watching the Super Bowl."

Lifelong Giants fan Jerry Damadeo, 83, of Deer Park, was still a bit hoarse from screaming during last week's game.

"You know, my daughter asked me what I was going to do this weekend," Damadeo said Friday. "I've got a big family -- I'm going to try to round up as many of them as I can and treat them at Miller's [Ale House]," he said.

Season-ticket holder Melissa Bernstein of Woodmere, who has had her fingernails done in Giants blue for the past few weeks for luck, doubled down this week and also had her toenails done blue.

"Well, Sunday without football is always tough," Bernstein said. "But I guess it would be a good day to take my mom to a movie."