Anyone who knows me will tell you that the besides beer, the greatest passion in my life is football(soccer). In fact, I'm actually quite obsessed with it. I use the word obsessed because I willingly acknowledge that my love of soccer is neither sane or even healthy. I do things for soccer that I wouldn't even do for some of my closest friends. I wake up early every weekend to watch a game being played half way around the world. Sometimes I have to watch satellite streams from countries like China, Serbia or Iran if the game I'm watching is being televised here in the states. Last year, I used the bulk of my student loan money to fund a trip to England to see my beloved Liverpool FC play during my spring break. Yes, it seems that I have an ugly obsession with the beautiful game.
Today my friend Ritchie invited me to board a charter bus with a bunch of drunken, unruly quasi-hooligans headed to Oakland to watch the rivalry match between the Los Angeles Galaxy and the hated San Jose Earthquakes. Normally the thought of being crammed into a reeking, sweltering bus with 50 strangers wouldn't appeal much to me, but when you throw in the combination of beer and football, well then I'd probably travel to the ends of the earth. We departed from Los Angeles around 7:00 a.m., and the booze started flowing shortly after. After about 6 hours on the raod, and about fifteen beers, I was pretty much good and tanked when we got to the stadium in Oakland. By this time I had consumed enough alcohol to sedate a small elephant, but in the spirit of soccer fandom, to booze train kept a-rolling.
After we'd finished our case of beer and pilfered a few more from our unsuspecting travelling companions, we we're getting ready to head into the stadium when we were confronted by a group of about ten San Jose Earthquakes fans who came looking for a fight. This is the inevitably ugly result of combining alcohol with American soccer fans who want to play hooligans and act like the British "fans" they've seen on T.V. by picking fights and raising hell. Violence and soccer have always had a stange and intimate relationship, and before I knew what was happening, some bald headed neanderthal from the 1906 Ultras (The name of the S.J. Eathquakes supporters club, which is basically a front for assholes who want to an excuse for a fight.). People began pushing, posturing and generally acting like imbiciles until the police arrived quickly and diffused the situation before it turned into anything serious. To be honest, I was drunk enough at this point to have possibly thrown a punch. I could have easily gotten swept into the senseless violence, and I nearly did before the police arrived knocking people to the ground and apprehending the main instigators.
By this point I had consumed so much alcohol that the game had become somewhat of an afterthought. We snuck a couple of extra beers into the stadium, continued to drink heavily, and watch out team limp their way to a one all draw. It was a long match, and as my drunkeness eventually ebbed away, I felt exhausted and frankly wanted nothing to do with piling back onto a crowded bus with 50 other people who looked as miserable as I felt. It wasn't until I was about to board the bus that I realized I had not had my "beer of the day" yet. Sure, I'd been drinking beer for over 12 hours straight, but I hadn't had any different beers yet. I frantically dug through a couple of coolers that were stacked by the bus and found a can of Tecate, which I drank just about as fast as was humanly possible. Given the choice, Tecate would have been some like 5,300,234 on the list of beers that I felt like drinking at that moment. I've made it pretty clear how I feel about Cervezas, and Tecate is pretty much the worst of the bunch. For me, it's Mexico's version of Coors Light, which is one beer that I refuse to ever drink out of prinicple. There was nothing remotely enjoyable or satisfying about this beer, but when I heard an earth shattering boom only hundreds of feet away from where I was standing, I was able to put this horrible beer out of my mind at least for a little while and just watch the fireworks. This of course was an emergency. I don't not recommend every drinking Tecate unless you are in absolute dire need of a beer, which I was. I don't know if I'll ever take the bus to San Jose again, but if I ever do, you can bet that I will be prepared so I won't end up drinking a Tecate again.
Salud!
Ian
No comments:
Post a Comment