BOSTON – Just like their beloved Boston baseball team proved to be in the playoffs, Red Sox fans were very resourceful Saturday when it came to securing the best possible vantage points for viewing Boston’s big victory parade.

With people standing at least six deep from the barricades bordering the 4 1/2-mile parade route, the more ingenious Sox fans set out to find overlooked and unobstructed viewing spots.

Building roofs, ledges, overhangs and even awnings were tested and used. Church alcoves, decorative nooks and crannies on old buildings and even stone gargoyles were used for purposes never envisioned by their designers: to support human frames and weight. Fans climbed small trees, scaled iron fences and telephone poles and even climbed up traffic lights or lamp posts to see above the fray.

Several hundred people stood on traffic medians that sported flowers, plants and bushes. At first, people took care not to stand on any shrubs or plants, but soon every available space – on top of or beside anything with roots – was taken up.

After the duck-boat convoy of players and team personnel went through and crowds dispersed, the vegetation was trampled, uprooted and squashed as if a tornado had blown through the city.

People stood on top of trash cans, newspaper dispensers and vending machines. Photographers shot footage from cherry pickers, pneumatic lifts, staging, bucket trucks, rooftops and helicopters.

Then there were people such as Mark Hagopian, a longtime Sox fan and co-owner of the Charles Mark at Copley Hotel. They simply went to work.

Hagopian already had an enviable setup with a second floor, glassed-in lobby overlooking one of the prime parade route spots on Boylston Street. Then he got greedy and got an idea to make it even better.

“I carried an 8-foot ladder out to the sidewalk and climbed up on top of it so we had the best view of anyone on the street,” the Cambridge native said. “There were three of us on it.”

Hagopian has been a Red Sox fan since he was 5, when his father bought him a 1967 Boston American League champions pennant. It’s one of four framed pennants hanging in his lobby.

“This one a friend of mine bought for me at Game 6 [1975 World Series] and this 1986 [World Series] one I bought outside Fenway Park. I didn’t have enough money to get into the game,” said Hagopian.

The fourth is the 2004 American League champions pennant, which he bought while attending one of the two ALCS games he attended. They were two of four postseason and 25 total Sox games he has been to this year. The other two were Game 3 against the Angels and the first game of the World Series.

After so many disappointments, Hagopian still finds it hard to believe the Sox have finally won it all.

“I told my friends, ‘Look, we’re on the deck of the Titanic. Have a great time, the band’s playing, drink a lot of champagne … but just know you’re going down,'” he said. “That’s the way you have to look at things as a Red Sox fan.

“Now that we’ve actually won … I don’t know. It’s still taking a long time to sink in.”

It’s a good bet he’s not alone, but judging from the mounds of trash, bottles, cans and empty Dom Perignon champagne bottles strewn all over the parade route, some 3.2 million people are getting used to the idea fairly quickly.