Josh Allen Selfie Displayed in Buffalo Art Museum
I don’t know how much time Bills Mafia spends in art galleries
The Bills Mafia’s celebration at the airport after Buffalo’s win in Pittsburgh on Sunday night was pretty awesome—awesome enough to go on the wall of a Buffalo art museum.
The Bills beat the Steelers in primetime to clinch just their second playoff berth in 20 years and their first season with double-digit wins since 1999. The accomplishment was noteworthy enough that Bills fans braved frigid temperatures (at least by non-Buffalo standards) and waited at the airport until the wee hours of the morning for the team plane to arrive from Pittsburgh. When the plane touched down, the team was greeted by dozens of appreciative fans.
At the 25-second mark of that video, you can see a fan get on top of his buddy’s shoulders to pass his phone to quarterback Josh Allen, who proceeds to snap a selfie with the throng.
According to ESPN, the duo is Zach Kmitch and Ali Abbas. Kmitch is 6'6", so Abbas climbed on his shoulders to get a better vantage point.
Both guys posted Allen’s photo on Twitter, where it gained plenty of attention.
Another Bills fan spotted the photo and tagged Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery, saying the selfie was worthy of enshrinement. The museum agreed, then posted photographic evidence of a screenshot of the tweet on the wall of the gallery.
The museum is currently closed for renovation, so you can’t actually go see the tweet alongside paints by van Gogh and Renoir.
But as someone who took one photography class in college (B+), let me say that this photo definitely qualifies as art. You might think the focus of the photo is a smiling Allen, or Abbas gripping the barbed wire fence. It’s actually the dude holding a big bottle of Jägermeister at 2 a.m. on a Monday morning in sub-freezing temperatures. That’s the true representation of Bills Mafia—and Allen has the photographic eye to capture it right in the center of the image.
I hope the museum keeps it up.
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