Cue Barbra Streisand

I’m not much of a soccer fan and I’ll be honest with my reasons. First, I find it boring, in spite of its fast-paced, non-stop action. Ninety minutes (plus stoppage time) of back and forth and back and forth resulting in a 0-0 draw (nil-nil if I want to appear in the know) or a 1-0 victory just doesn’t do it for me. I admire the tremendous saves and marvel at wildly-angled shots on goal and concussion-summoning headers but still I don’t get sucked in. Secondly — and few people are willing to admit this — I don’t fully understand the game. I don’t know the rules well and I will never understand what constitutes offsides. Not understanding the concepts of a game (beyond the obvious one of getting the ball into the net) puts a real damper on becoming a full-fledged fan. And I don’t want to be that obnoxious person always asking things like “what just happened,” “why didn’t that count,” “why did that count,” and “why do they fake so many injuries?”

In a nutshell, I am a soccer fan who nods and smiles a lot, just sort of pretending to enjoy the game for the sake of others. I’m there for the people-watching. And the beer.

That said, I’m in awe of the level of athleticism required to perform at the highest levels of competition, and I am always drawn in to any large gathering because of the human element.

And in spite of not being a fervent, kilt-wearing, scarf-bearing, flag-waving, slogan-chanting, beer-chugging, traffic cone-crowning fanatic (let’s not forget where the term “fan” originates), I have been fortunate to attend many high-profile soccer games.

I traded an American flag and a US soccer pin for this Dutch rally cap while attending a 1994 World Cup game. I wish I would have thought to get a picture with my fellow trader.

Thanks to North America hosting the World Cup this summer, my brain is speeding along memory lane, revisiting cherished memories from 1984 Olympic soccer matches played at Navy-Marine Corps Stadium in Annapolis, World Cup games at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in 1994 and more Olympic competition (both men and women) in Atlanta in 1996.

My 1984 memories remind me of my unfortunate transportation situation. The brand-new Honda Accord I had bought in May was less than six weeks old when it was rear-ended as I sat at a red light on Rt. 40 in Rosedale. The impact was hard enough to push me into the intersection, where I was hit on the driver’s side by another vehicle. I was carted off to a local hospital and the car was towed to an impound lot.

Because the car was so new and the damage was so extensive, it took about eight weeks for repairs to be completed. In the meantime, this tried-and-true Honda driver (I had owned two Civics before proudly moving up to the Accord) was driving a rental Ford LTD. I swear I could hear that car slurp down gasoline the second I started it. So I was not happy to be driving a gas hog at a time I had plans to drive to and from Annapolis several times.

That car and I made the trip to Annapolis a bunch of times that summer. Armed with tickets bought at JC Penney — an official sponsor of the Olympics — I attended several games by myself and convinced my then-17-year-old sister to go to at least one with me. I truly don’t remember any of the nations in the games I attended, or any final scores. I remember the crowds, the noise, the cheers, the flag waving, the general atmosphere. And the pin-trading!

I attended ’94 Cup games thanks to my friend Michelle Park, who was one of the most connected people I have ever known. She knew someone who worked higher up at Visa, and this someone offered her some VIP tickets for games at RFK. She excitedly called me with the invitation to go, proclaiming the World Cup experience would provide crowd training for our planned trip to the Atlanta Olympics two years later.

Again, there are two main memories that stand out from the two games we attended. One was the enthusiasm of true soccer fans, and the other was the effort to get on the subway/light rail to go back to Michelle’s Georgetown apartment. Getting to the stadium was easy because fans trickle in over a period of hours. Leaving is a completely different story, with nearly 57,000 people leaving all at once. We let a few trains pass us by because they were too crowded. When I balked about getting on a third, equally-packed train, Michelle said, “We could be here all night if we keep waiting for a less-crowded car. Come on.”

She literally grabbed me by the front of my T-shirt and pulled me in behind her. We just got onto the floor inside the door when we came to a sudden stop, thanks to the mountain of humanity in front of us. The doors started to close, and then reopened with a buzzing sound before trying to close again. After a couple of rounds of this, we figured out that, while I was in the train, my knapsack was not. The door kept reopening after hitting it. Everyone literally took a deep breath, Michelle gave me another tug and the doors were able to close.

Once the train started moving, a few people around me pulled out pins for trading and I got in on that action. Pins were an international language.

I came out of the Netherlands-Saudi Arabia match with two souvenirs I traded for — a Dutch orange rally cap and a green plastic Saudi flag. I know that the Dutch won that game 1-0, but only because I looked it up. I truly didn’t remember the score but I can still conjure the faces of folks in the stands, in concession lines and on the trains.

It’s all about the people and this year’s World Cup is showing us that all over again.

 

Beer diplomacy

One of the cool things about global sports gatherings is the opportunity to learn more about others’ cultures and traditions, as well as to get a true glimpse of ourselves as we act on a global stage. The World Cup is a prime example.

I’ve watched very little soccer action but I know all about the Tartan Army’s takeover of Boston, the Dutch double-decker orange bus that’s cruising the streets of Galveston, and the Japanese fans who clean the stadium after a match. I’ve watched hundreds of Norwegians “row” their way through a stadium, I’ve seen cones placed on statues and I’ve enjoyed the enthusiasm of Dutch fans doing their synchronized dances in the streets.

Online sources state that Scots brought cones with them to carry out a beloved tradition.
Credit: Scottish Aye Facebook page

But I’ve also shamefully watched the treatment of some national teams at the hands of our government, which brings me to my next happy observation.

While the federal government is doing its best to target certain teams, disrupting their practice schedules, interfering with their housing arrangements and even ordering them out of the country, average Americans are acting as temporary diplomats, throwing their collective arms around soccer (football to the rest of the world) players and fans from every corner of the world. 

I choose to believe that, given the chance, most Americans are friendly, welcoming and accepting of visitors. And judging from the stories coming out of host and training cities and towns, those average Americans have accepted the challenge and have seized the day. They’ve acted as tour guides, given advice on restaurants and must-have foods, traded clothing and memorabilia, learned songs and anthems, bought rounds of beverages at local pubs and opened their homes to visitors.

That homespun diplomacy is apparently working. In one televised interview, one Scotsman gushed about how beautiful and welcoming America is. “We’ve been lied to about America,” he said.

And that in a nutshell is what we need to remember. I like to think that this country, or at least the majority of it, is not the hateful, judgmental, racist, homophobic and misogynistic place that is being projected to the rest of the world, based simply upon the behavior and history of the White House occupant.

Average Americans have rolled out plaid, orange, blue, green and red carpets to welcome athletes and visitors from nations great and small — the powerhouse countries and the underdogs, the wealthy and the poor. All are welcome here and all are being embraced by our citizens who don’t care about the political flavor of a home country and wouldn’t deny visas or otherwise bar entry to athletes who have earned the right to be at this tournament.

In coming days, I’m going to spotlight some of the more prominent stories of enthusiastic fans, their traditions and customs, and the role Americans are playing in making their experiences those of a lifetime.

I’ve often thought of sport and the arts as bridges that connect us through commonality, appreciation and awe. As simple as it sounds, towns running out of beer, municipal officials looking the other way as statues are scaled so they can be crowned with traffic cones, dancing in the streets, doing the wave in a stadium and trading pins and other memorabilia is a form of diplomacy that can't be bought, planned or taught.

It’s average human beings embracing and interacting with other human beings despite language, cultural and religious differences.

The world could learn a thing or two by observing this gathering as if it were a laboratory in diplomacy and statesmanship. And our federal leaders sure as hell could.

A breath of fresh customer service air!

I’ve had a rough 10 days or so, dealing with the real world. I had my debit card number stolen and my checking account balance wiped out. My bank is working on it, but my balance hasn’t yet been made whole. I also depend heavily on deliveries of household goods and other items, and have become increasingly frustrated at the inability of services to deliver products in a usable condition. Items come crushed, broken or leaking. Navigating the “contact us” systems of various vendors is frustrating on a good day and elicits blood pressure-raising anger on a bad day. Many times, the process is so nasty, I just give up and take the loss.

So when I recently received some canisters of a nuts, berries and dark chocolate trail mix that arrived as molten clumps, I thought, here we go. I’ll never get this resolved. I figured I’d eat the $48 and maybe try again in January.

And I will fully admit that I clearly read the disclosure on the company’s website that stated they do not use freezer packs or similar packing materials when shipping chocolate items. I read it and thought, not a problem, it’s April. The day the package arrived, there was a high of 57 degrees but the package came from Michigan and took more than a week to arrive so who knows what kind of conditions it experienced in its travels.

When I called Ferris Coffee and Nut Co., I was pleasantly surprised to find a simple menu at the beginning of the automated answering service, and I dutifully pressed zero to continue my business. A woman answered the phone and, upon hearing I ordered online, she asked me to hold while she transferred me to the department that could help.

Jessica then got on the phone and couldn’t have been more polite or helpful. When I described my molten mass of trail mix ingredients, she did mention the disclaimer about the chocolate products. I told her I am a thorough reader and I saw that disclaimer, but didn’t really think April would be a problem. She agreed and offered to refund my amount to the same source used to pay for the order.

I was thrilled for a nanosecond before I remembered that the card used to place this order was canceled; dead as the proverbial doornail (see paragraph number 1). I explained that to Jessica, who told me a store credit was the other option. I asked her if I could give her the new card number, knowing — and almost hoping — that the answer would be no. She didn’t think that was possible and said she would have to talk to someone in the accounting department. She said she’d call me back within an hour.

Fifteen minutes later, Jessica called back (imagine being able to talk to the original person instead of having to explain your situation to 15 different people!) and said that, as suspected, a refund could not be made to a new card number. I could get a store credit, they could cut a check or — and get this level of customer service — Jessica said she talked to the shipping department and they would be glad to replace the order and ship it with ice packs! I told her that would be great because I truly did want to try the products. And while the molten clumps might be edible, it certainly wouldn’t do justice to the products of a company that obviously takes pride in its work and prioritizes customer service.

In a world of international call centers employing people who way too often speak in English so heavily accented that it can’t be understood, this experience has been the best customer service experience I’ve had in years. Maybe ever.

So here’s a big shout out to Jessica and the Ferris Coffee and Nut Co. If you feel so inclined, give their website a look! They have lots of scrumptious, somewhat decadent offerings. Treat yo self!

Now, if I can just get my bank on board!

Pssst! Wanna buy a bourbon?

So — she started a sentence with, even though she hates when that happens — the other day, I made a Facebook post about the ridiculousness of all the niche distilleries that think their sourced bourbons are all worth $90 a bottle (or more).

The American Woman Spirit Co. bottle lineup.

I suspect a lot of these “distilleries” are little more than drop shops that source liquor from factory distilleries and slap their private labels on the bottle filled with someone else’s product. I don’t have any proof of that but I just don’t think all of these places are actually producing their own booze. As sort-of proof, I know of one local, rather high-profile distillery that used whiskey from other sources for the first several years it was in business because aged whiskeys don’t just happen overnight. Throw in the need for machinery, barrel storage, tasting, monitoring and tinkering with the batches along the way, to say nothing of the distilling experience and expertise needed, and I just don’t buy it. But I digress.

Within 10 minutes of publishing that post, my feed was filled with advertisements for all things bourbon. I’m not exaggerating. A bourbon- or liquor-related ad popped up almost every other post. I took screen shots as proof!

The ads ran the gamut from niche distilleries and online liquor stores to specialty offerings like bourbon brownies, bourbon tea towels and bourbon salted caramels. I was enticed with the perfect glass from which to sip my chosen beverage and encouraged to buy granite stones for chilling. 

This is just one of four pages of notes resulting from Facebook ads.

I would imagine most of these labels are not available in the corner liquor store. Some of the ads were for Wyoming Whiskeys, Mythology Distillery, Nelson’s Green Brier, American Woman Spirit Co., Traverse City Whiskey Co. and Milam and Greene Whiskey. Trust me when I tell you this list is just a small portion of the flood of offerings.

Some of these companies have marketing hooks to grab a portion of the market. American Woman Spirit Co., for example, puts its product in a bottle in the shape of the female form. Knobel Spirits appears to be owned by Baltimore native Mike Rowe, perhaps best known for hosting “Dirty Jobs.” Knobel Tennessee Whiskey is named for Rowe’s grandfather and while the whiskey is pricey, a portion of online sales benefits the mikeroweWORKS Foundation. The website provides a little bit of the story behind the name of the product but doesn’t really explain who actually distills the product and where that happens, other than using “the finest ingredients from local farmers in Tennessee.”

Mike Rowe with Knobel.

Much of American Woman Spirit’s online story is dedicated to the story of the “unique custom sculpted bottle.” The company “collaborates with an esteemed U.S. distillery” to produce its products, which include two varieties of tequila and a rye whiskey in addition to three bourbon offerings. The basic bourbon is $74.99 and the cask strength is $99.99. The tequila ranges from $80 to $120.

But the bottles are pretty.

The custom sculpted American Woman Spirit Co. bottle.

I’m not going to bore you with similar details for all the bourbons that decided I needed to know about them, but it was fun to check out their websites, read a little of the history and ogle at the prices.

As I stated in my original post, I am far from a whiskey snob and I do not have a refined palate. I enjoy single malt scotches but usually settle for Chivas Regal, my favorite blended scotch. I’m a scotch on the rocks drinker, so watering down hugely expensive labels insults the distiller and takes away from the intended flavor. My consumption of bourbon tends to be in the form of Manhattans so again, I would be doing a disservice to a high-end whiskey by adding vermouth and throwing in — gasp — a cherry or two.

I marvel at the folks who can take a sip of any fine whiskey and then talk about the notes of dark chocolate, cherry, vanilla, nutmeg, brown sugar, toffee, butterscotch and caramel detected as the liquid hits the front, middle and back portions of the tongue. They can identify the percentages of grains used and know that it was finished in a port barrel. And that’s after they identify the 27 elements of the nose.

Me? I know smooth versus rough, and quite simply, whether or not I like it. I’ve spent big money on some niche bourbons that I assumed, based simply on price, would be good sipping bourbons. I was wrong — like lighter fluid wrong — and learned not to buy expensive, boutique booze untested. Many liquor stores, including Midway, offer free in-store tastings from time to time, with an expert on hand to teach the characteristics of each offering. That's a much cheaper way to learn what you like and what you don't.

Honestly, my favorite common bourbon is still Wild Turkey 101. Prices vary from store to store, with some little neighborhood shops charging as much as $27-30. Total Wine and More offers a 750 ml bottle for $21.99 and Wild Turkey Rare Breed, which I do enjoy as a sipper, is $55.99.

So — and there’s another “so” beginning sentence — I guess the point of this post is that my online bourbon bashing had to become your bashing. Share and share alike, right?

But about those bourbon brownies …

An Easter egg hunt for the ages

I hard-boiled some eggs the other day, and I guess the proximity to Easter brought back some memories of a recreation council Easter egg hunt that went terribly wrong.

Travel with me to the late 1970s, when the Bengies-Chase Recreation Council’s annual Easter egg hunt was a pretty big deal. It was held at Seneca Elementary School and attracted a huge crowd — more than 100 kids in each of about five age groups.

I spent most of my college years working as a part-time rec leader for the Baltimore County Department of Recreation and Parks. You name it and I did it: I lined baseball, softball and soccer fields, ran drop-ins and after-school programs, was a summer playground leader, I set up chairs for dance recitals, cleaned up vomit, cradled and consoled crying kids, administered first aid and sat on curbs with kids whose parents were a “little late.” I’m Facebook friends with a lot of the “kids” from the best roller skating program ever.

The day of the egg hunt, I arrived at Seneca at the crack of dawn (or so it felt to a 20-year-old) to start setting up and organizing for the oncoming crowd. The rec center supervisor (and my boss) was Kathy Tully. She handed me a cup of coffee and we got to work. Registration tables needed to be set up, bathrooms needed to be opened and inspected, the eggs had to be “hidden,” the Easter Bunny had to be greeted and hidden for her big entrance, the bullhorn needed to be tested.

After most of the more mundane tasks had been completed, a crew of volunteers started hiding eggs. While there were a few nooks and crannies in which to tuck eggs, hiding eggs basically meant rolling them out across a roped-off grassy area.

So with that mental picture in mind, time-travel again with me to the previous week. As hard as it is now to believe, back in the day most public egg hunts used real eggs. That’s right — the real McCoy, bought by the pallet (I exaggerate slightly) at the local grocery store.

Just a couple of miles from Seneca Elementary was the Bengies-Chase Community Building. It was a former two-room Black schoolhouse that was preserved and cherished as a community hub. At a renovation ribbon-cutting much later in my full-time recreation career, I observed in my comments how appropriate it was that a building that once stood to keep people apart now stood to bring them together.

The building housed the council’s community office and also was home to a variety of programs, including Tot Fun Center, tap and ballet and two longstanding Golden Age clubs. 

Those Golden Age clubs played a vital tole in the egg hunt. Members hardboiled and dyed the hundreds and hundreds of eggs for the big day. The community center had a pretty big kitchen with a huge commercial-grade stove. The seniors would come in every day of hunt week, hunker down in that kitchen and get to work. Boil the eggs, cool them, dye them, repack them in the original cartons and refrigerate them.

The seniors loved their role in the annual event and they looked forward to contributing each year. It was a fine-tuned machine, a choreographed production of volunteers carrying out their assigned tasks.

Or so we thought.

Travel forward again now to the morning of the hunt. The landscape of the school campus has been transformed, the parking lot is filling early with families who don’t care they’ve arrived an hour early with hyped-up kids they expect us to entertain. Volunteers grab armloads of egg cartons and head out to set up the various age-group areas.

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but sometime during the hiding process, a volunteer who accidentally dropped an egg discovered it was raw. We tested every egg in that carton and all were raw. Beautifully dyed but nonetheless raw. We threw that carton away and hoped and prayed that it was an isolated incident.

It was not.

Pretty soon, volunteers all across the hunt area were reporting raw eggs. After a quick meeting of core organizers, we decided we would carry on with the hunt, announce before hand that eggs might be raw and if eggs broke after kids found them, we’d count the shells so they got credit for all the eggs they found.

The hunt went on as planned, many more raw eggs were found and counting eggs was a messy task. The Easter Bunny made her appearance, photos were taken, prizes were distributed, crowds dispersed, cleanup commenced.

Raw eggs aside, the hunt was a success. Hundreds of community children had a blast, area volunteers turned out on a Saturday to serve their community and they earned their pay in the currency of smiles, giggles and hugs.

A gentle investigation the following week uncovered a not-so-surprising reason for so many raw eggs escaping the boiling process. The problem was traced to one particular day when there were literally too many cooks in the kitchen. Someone would put a pot of eggs on the stove, walk away and someone else would walk in, take that pot off and put a new pot on. The eggs were extremely clean but no less raw. Looking back it seems strange that no raw eggs were discovered during the dyeing process because they get banged around quite a bit. Who knows? Maybe there was a coverup??

When I think about it, the raw eggs perhaps served a purpose. Many special events just blend into one another — they tend to be the same version, year after year. Maybe a new element gets added from time to time, but the formula remains the same and they get carried out almost by muscle memory.

Thanks to the raw eggs, maybe folks still think or talk about this particular hunt from time to time, as I do.

But we started using plastic eggs the following year. The Golden Age Club members gladly embraced the task of stuffing the plastic orbs with goodies and the hunt with multi-generational involvement carried on.