Fight For Your Right To Octobong

October 1, 2013 4:03 PM

It was never pretty. On Sunday afternoons, you’d walk through the parking lot and swear you could hear the sound of human evolution giving up: “Screw it. I’ve done all I can for you people.” Bottles were hurled. Flaming debris spilled from garbage cans. Men (and at least one woman—I will always remember this woman) used porta-potties by peeing against them, not inside them. It was the kind of bleak dystopian hellscape that would have made the guy in Mad Max feel better about his situation. A Canadian journalist's take on the American tradition of tailgating.
posted by mannequito (18 comments total)

Of COURSE it's a Bills game
posted by gorbichov at 4:30 PM on October 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

I don't believe for a second Margaret Wente didn't write this under a pseudonym by imagining what tailgating must be like.
posted by Space Coyote at 4:31 PM on October 1, 2013 [7 favorites]

The dumbth is strong in this one.
posted by sneebler at 4:52 PM on October 1, 2013

Yes, such depravity could never be so deeply ingrained in Canadian sport.
posted by basicchannel at 5:14 PM on October 1, 2013

Said one Canadian to the next: "I'd tap that maple tree ..."
posted by ZenMasterThis at 5:37 PM on October 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

Bwithh: "What do Canadians do at hockey games? Make snow cones and tap maple trees together?"

oh no, the fun police would never let that fly.
posted by mannequito at 6:01 PM on October 1, 2013

(but he talks in the article about attempting to tailgate at an Ottawa Sens game)
posted by mannequito at 6:08 PM on October 1, 2013

I'm a Giants season ticketholder. The tailgate atmosphere before a Giants game is lighthearted and jovial, like a graduation party or something.

One time, back in 2009, I went to a Jets game with a friend. It was a win-and-they're-in situation against the Bengals, and a night game. The frozen tundra of the parking lot combined with the fans' desperate thirst for victory, like a vampire smelling blood for the first time in a long while, along with the black sky, subzero temperatures and smattering of weber grill campfires gave the whole thing a pretty serious post-apocalyptic vibe. I would not have been surprised to see Gordon Freeman wandering around wrecking giant alien spiders with a crowbar. The Jets won that game 37-0 and played the Bengals again the following week, in the playoffs, and lost.

So if the Bills are basically the Jets of western New York, yeah, I get why the fans would want to be drunk all the time.
posted by ben242 at 6:19 PM on October 1, 2013 [2 favorites]

This is like I remember going to the drags in Edmonton in March or April. Somebody had something called "elephant pot". I do remember people were carrying in cases of beer, and the cops just let them. Everyone was wearing blue down jackets and jeans. After a while some guy took his jacket and shirt off and ran down to the bottom of the stands and picked a fight with another guy. It was very very high in there. In conclusion, it's FUCKING COLD IN MARCH.
posted by sneebler at 6:21 PM on October 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

Oh, it's Scott Feschuk! That explains everything. (He's hilarious.)
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 7:12 PM on October 1, 2013

So I really hate team sports, and only grudgingly respect the Packers for being... The Packers.

That said, a friend of mine from High School happens to own and tailgate with...

The Lambeaulance.
posted by symbioid at 7:13 PM on October 1, 2013

I participated in a pre-wedding tailgate in the parking lot of a (I think) Lutheran Church. (It's the one in St. Paul on Snelling a little south of Grand Avenue, facing Macalester. Are they Lutherans? Whatever.) We had brats, and it was awesome in a quiet way.

But I have also tailgated at Boston College football games when it was a weird mixture of FoaF's moms handing out little sandwiches and everyone cadging cans of Keystone Light. *shrug*

But this thing they describe, this isn't tailgating.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:02 PM on October 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

I participated in a pre-wedding tailgate

Pre-wedding tailgate? I've never heard of such a thing. That's brilliant!
posted by hapax_legomenon at 10:22 PM on October 1, 2013

Last year a group of my fellow Vancouver Southsiders - the biggest Whitecaps FC supporters group - went across the street to add some atmosphere to a Vancouver Canucks game.

They got kicked out for cheering.

We try. Honestly we try.
posted by salishsea at 10:31 PM on October 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

symbioid: "... That said, a friend of mine from High School happens to own and tailgate with... The Lambeaulance."

While I love a good pun made manifest, did you people not notice that it's snowing? And in one of those pictures, the thermometer registers a temp below 30? The tailgating thing, I understand...I've been in Texas for 30 years, I know from football traditions....but good lord y'all, it's snowing! How do you even keep the grill lit with all that water falling from the sky?
posted by dejah420 at 6:22 AM on October 2, 2013

LOL - Packer fans are nuts. I don't think snow would put out a grill unless it's coming down super super heavy. It's not like rain where it just dumps on it. I wouldn't know, though, as I don't 'gate (since I don't really do sports).
posted by symbioid at 6:32 AM on October 2, 2013

While I love a good pun made manifest, did you people not notice that it's snowing?

As it should be when you're playing football. You want nice weather, I suggest baseball. Or cricket. Or croquet. I think Texas might be able to handle croquet.

Maybe.
posted by eriko at 6:46 AM on October 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

Pre-wedding tailgate? I've never heard of such a thing. That's brilliant!

It was quiet, as I said: just a few of us sitting around a hibachi under what we guessed was the pastor's window. Thoughtful, even. The day of my own wedding didn't allow for such a moment, but I thought of it wistfully all morning.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:58 AM on October 2, 2013