Pictures soon to come! Here is one of the edits of my impressions of fantastic Sunday night in New Orleans.
I’m not a football fan. In fact, I’ve never truly watched a game. In all my years of being an American, all my years of living in a house with seven men, I still don’t know purpose the little flags serve. Personally, I think it’s to my credit that I’ve garnered that there are flags involved at all.
I understand there’s strategy involved and I know some people like to draw deep wisdom in life from comparisons of football plays, but I personally find watching football to be the most boring pastime in existence.
What I love about football, though, are the fans. Lifetime fans, generational fans, band wagon fans — it doesn’t really matter.
And so I found myself Sunday afternoon heading out of my New Orleans apartment to join the crowds headed downtown for the NFC Championship game between the Saints and the Vikings. Even waiting for a streetcar, the rabid excitement that had a hold on the city was infectious. Two streetcars passed me by, too full of people to fit the five or six of us waiting at our stop. People hung out the windows and screamed to us, to people walking on the street, to cars with their windows down, to anyone that would listen.
A white convertible with three girls in black and gold spandex and jerseys, Mardi Gras masks, beads and pom poms pulled up to the stoplight next to us. Shrieking with laughter and passing a couple of bottles wrapped clumsily in brown paper bags, it was clear their tailgating had started a little early.
A man waiting for the streetcar jumped in front of their car and started dancing to the bass booming from their car, shouting to them, “Y’all, who dat? Who dat?” They blared their horn, shouting and laughing in response before he jumped out of the way and they zoomed off.
Downtown it was a fever pitch of frenzied excitement. Brass bands went up and down the streets playing “When the Saints Come Marching In,” and other numbers while fans in all sorts of costumes and face paint cheered them and danced. It was like Mardi Gras had come early. Denver during Rocktober or the World Series couldn’t remotely compare. New Orleans is a party town even in years with nothing special to celebrate, let alone this year.
The tailgating lots were as jam-packed as a Calcutta marketplace. It was hard to even see which direction I was moving in. Grills, big-screen TV’s, coolers, camping chairs and other traditional elements were all in place. And somehow I managed to become enthralled with the score. Of course, the only way I knew when the Saints scored was from listening to the raucous cheers that erupted. But I was, somewhat, part of the crowd.
For me the highlights were the universally pronounced “bad calls” the refs made throughout the game. At one point, a man standing about six feet, at least 200 pounds and only inches away from me was so infuriated that spittle was literally flying from his mouth in all directions. He crushed his half-full beer can in his hand and stalked away frothing obscenities. Shouldering through, he unwittingly shoved past a police officer who had joined the crowd at the TV.
“Can’t even watch,” he muttered by way of excuse. “Can’t even watch this crap. Makes me so mad. Can’t watch it.”
Equally memorable was his girlfriend, who, in contrast, was maybe barely five four in heels, but just as explosive in her colorful maledictions on Brett Favre’s many supposed injuries.
“Yeah,” she shrieked at the ref on the TV next to the trailer. “You’re amazed he’s
back in the game because he’s not really hurt, you moron. He’s faking, you idiot.”
More than anything else, though, I soaked in and relished the entire tailgating culture. Around a campfire of strangers, I was handed beers, slices of King Cake, hot dogs, a bowl of jumbalaya. I was offered a chair, a cooler, a seat on a bench. I was given dozens of high fives, though I never knew for what. I was hugged by strangers.
When I finally managed to find a cab home, a newly firm Saints lover, only to be kept awake all night by my neighbors’ bonfire and fireworks in the courtyard, I realized something: that I night, became a football fan.
