Week 10 Makes a Nation Proud

Bag alum Boe-Boe Bendler and I recently exchanged some text messages about just how shitty our teams are these days.  Once powerhouse programs, his Syracuse Orange(men?) and Washington Red(fore?)skins are both skidding like the penguin in that addictive flash game. Here's some samples....

Boe-Boe:  Are they ready to be D2 yet?

Me:  When was the last time Cuse had a winning season again?

Boe-Boe:  No idea. They were .500 the last time they got into a bowl.

Me:  Maybe Boeheim can coach the football team!

Boe-Boe:  I wish I liked lacrosse.

Boe-Boe:  Sorry about the Raiders. Tell Nettie I hate the Steelers. She is spanking me!

Me:  LOL, Moss I guess?

Me:  I mean Holmes.

Boe-Boe:  You've reached whiskey mode already I see.

Boe-Boe:  F the spankees.

Me:  You're such a bitter, sad little person. Is it because all of your teams suck so bad?

Boe-Boe:  Game 1: fail.  But to answer your question, yes.

We followed this up with some spirited in-person banter at Copper Door one day, and Boe-Boe asked me how I deal with it - my team sucking so bad year in and year out.  My response?  I figure if I spend more money on them, they'll get good all of the sudden!

....which brings me to this weekend's debauchery.  Sunday was Raider Dave's 40th birthday, and like a good man-friend, he went ahead and planned the entire celebration himself.  On Friday morning, Dave and his wife Elissa, Jukebox, wifey and I hopped on a flight to Oakland for the big bash, the centerpiece of which was Raiders/Chiefs at Network Associates Mcafee the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.  Here was our chance to not only kick off the Raiders post-bye season with a win, but to beat our most hated rival (yet one of my bag teams) in the process.  What could go wrong?!?

After braving the Bay Bridge and taking a lot of pictures of islands that were, in fact, NOT ALCATRAZ, Our hotel was conveniently located in the middle of San Francisco's Marina district, in an area called The Triangle - Lombard and Fillmore.  The Marina is kindof Abercrombe and Fitchville, but there are also a lot of good shithole bars in the area also.  The Triangle is called that because there used to be three of the most popular bars in the city in a 1-block radius of that corner, but things had changed.. for the better.  After 10 minutes googling "dive" and "marina san francisco," I  came up with a 6-bar crawl, scrawled on a piece of hotel stationary in my barely-legible-even-for-me chicken scratch and we were off.

Our first stop was a nice little Irish tavern called Kelley's, or KT's for short.  Dave is one of only two Raiders and Gators fans I know (h/t to you, Phredkid), so it was crazy that the bartender at KT's was not only a Gator fan, but a UF alum originally from Tampa.  After a couple of shots (and a couple of glasses of shots), we headed over to nearby Chestnut Street for another couple of shitholes.

The next couple of bars on Chestnut are where things really got blurry.  At this point I was drinking Jameson pretty religiously, and although there was a lot going on around us, we really weren't paying the crowds too much attention.  After the most excellent Horseshoe Tavern, we moved on to another Irish dive called Delaney's, and as one of the Yelp reviewers suggested, found the less-populated back area of the bar by the popcorn machine to settle in.  You know those bar game machines you always see?  You end up sitting in front of them and within 15 minutes, you're playing that nudie picture match game where you have to find the five differences in the pictures.

The last bar of the night turned out to be a place called Balboa Cafe, on the block behind our hotel.  By this time we're all pretty shitcanned, but we figure this is as good a spot as any to get our last drinks of the night.  Sounds simple, right?  Well, we get seats at the bar and Jukebox eyes this bottle of Booker's and says "hey, I've never had that stuff, let's try it."  Um, let's just say Jukebox is not the most educated bourbon drinker in the world, because he clearly had no idea that "Booker's bourbon is aged between six and eight years and is bottled un-cut and un-filtered at its natural proof between 121 and 127."  He had some trouble drinking it!

I didn't, though.  I could tell he wasn't going to finish his (and later, he told me he didn't remember much of anything after that), but I wasn't about to leave a nice glass of bourbon.  Oh, did I mention there was a KFC/Taco Bell combo across the street from the hotel?

After walking out with the glass of Booker's in my hand, I had Jukebox and Dave stand outside and watch it while I got a 6-pack of tacos and an order of chicken strips.  I think the strips were for Nettie, who'd presumably been passed out for hours by this point.  What can I say, I was on autopilot at the time.  Eating this kind of shit isn't smart, any time... but somehow it seemed like a good idea.  I got a nice kick out of the scene when I woke up the next morning.

We spent the next day watching the Gators win a nailbiter against South Carolina at a Hooter's in the Wharf with the South Bay Swamp Gator Club. The boozing started around 10am since the game was a 12:30 pacific start, so of course Saturday night ended in complete and total blackout as well.  During halftime of the Gator game, they sold raffle tickets for some scholarship.  The Gator club rep punched me in the shoulder when I remarked about how all the stuff they were giving away was crap, but somehow or another wifey cleaned up and won half the items.

Sunday was obviously the big day.  I started it off at 8am by throwing ice in the glass of Booker's from Friday night (you wouldn't have expected any different, would you?) and we hopped in the minivan.  Dave had hooked up with some Raider fans that we were set to tailgate with so all we had to do was make it to the tailgate in one piece.

Unfortunately that proved to be harder than I thought it would.  First the exit for the Bay Bridge was closed, so we had to drive around SF for a half hour trying to find a way onto the bridge.  Then we hit this absolute fucking MAZE of an interchange right after the bridge, and not really knowing what we were doing, of course went the wrong way.  All of this is happening while Dave is freaking out, everyone else in the car is hysterically laughing and making fun of us (I was navigating from shotgun) and I'm gulping Booker's as fast I can.  Oh, and I'm also talking to no less than three of the Raider fans we're meeting at the tailgate on Dave's phone, trying to figure out not only how to get us out of the current mess we were in but also get us to the tailgate.  It was not fun.

Fortunately, the tailgate made up for all that.  I said several times while we were there that this was easily one of the best tailgates I'd ever been a part of, if not THE best.  If Raider fans know how to do one thing, it's tailgate.  Last week, Deadspin posted a link to a professional photographer's images of the Coliseum parking lot, and many were taken at this particular tailgate spot. Raider Greg of the Raider Nation Podcast is shown in picture #11 with the world-famous Gorilla Rilla (more on him later, but you HAVE to look at that photographer's pics, they are awesome!), and after he, his wife and his friend Randy talked us through getting there, they made us feel right at home and deserve special thanks for that.  Also due much respect are the guys from the Bad Boyz of BBQ, who for $20 (they give you a wristband!) made one of the most awesome game day spreads you'll ever see.

Other than the shitty game, it was a helluva trip.  Raider fans are the best fans in professional sports, and I can't wait to get back to Oakland again.  This post wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention that besides the trip, I had to come through on the credo of spending more money on your team when they're losing that I told Boe-Boe about.... so on the way to the airport, we stopped at the Raider Image so I could pick up thie SWEET Mitchell & Ness 1987 #75 Howie Long road throwback jersey ($259.99 plus tax, ouch):

Until next time....