When I first heard about tailgating – a pre (football) game tradition – I imagined a few people bringing single-use bbqs to the carpark grilling some sausages and having a few beers. Boy, was I wrong…
What is tailgating?
Some scholars say that tailgating has its roots in the fall harvest celebrations of Ancient Greece and Rome, where people would come together in a celebration of music, food and drink. Others claim that it goes back to July 21, 1861, when Washington residents packed picnic baskets and gathered in the Virginia countryside to watch the Civil War’s First Battle of Bull Run, which later became known as „the picnic battle“.
While both of these theses seem a bit far-fetched, there is one that makes sense to me personally: The rise of college sports and the automobile in the US coincided. So in the late 1860s and early 1870s more and more people started attending sports events at ivy league colleges like Harvard, Yale and Princeton and the students at these high class colleges were the ones who could afford cars in the early days. It just seems logical that they would have packed a few snacks and drinks for game days.
A Giant(s) Tailgating Party
I went to see the NY Giants play the Baltimore Ravens at Metlife Stadium. As soon as I got to the car park I realized that my idea of tailgating was quite off. There were no single use BBQs and no 5 liter kegs of beer. Instead, people were putting on lavish displays of food and drink that probably took them 2 days to prepare and another 2 days to load into their trucks.
I loved walking around the car park and checking out all the stuff that people brought for a single game day. Most of them had cornhole boards, high power grills, tons of different salads and a surprisingly good selection of alcohol. Yes, the snobby European in me was expecting Bud Light and maybe some Jameson’s but there was more than one set-up with really good bottles of Scottish whisky or the likes.
The problem was though: I am not really one to simply walk up to strangers and to make conversation. I quickly looked up some beginner’s guides to tailgating and felt a bit foolish (again) because I should have prepared better. For instance, I could have brought some good beer from Germany to get a conversation going and to trade in for some food. Or I could have at least bought some cupcakes earlier to share with people. But there I was, at the gigantic Metlife car park, empty handed and with nothing to offer.
So I had to make a decision: Simply enter the stadium 2,5 hours before kick off and pay $27 dollars for a can of Bud Light and a hot dog or to bite the bullet and just talk to people. It was a monumental fight between my inner cheapskate and my inner anti-social introvert persona. In the end, the cheapskate won and I gathered all my courage.
“Hey, I like your booze!”
I looked around a bit to make out my “victims”. I opted for a fairly quiet but big stand where some people my age and some older people were laying out gigantic amounts of food. I also opted for this stand because the people there seemed to have brought their full house bar to the car park and I was impressed. So I walked up, asked whether I could take a photo of their bar set-up and told them that I really liked their selection, which featured everything from supermarket staples such as Bacardi to Taiwanese Kavalan whisky (something I was definitely not expecting to see at tailgating).
I realized quickly that I picked the right stall. The people were enormously friendly and after a one minute chat about whisky, I found myself standing there with a bottle of beer in the one hand and a plastic cup of Bourbon in the other. Turns out that the stall owners love Germany, had just come back from a trip to Ireland and Scotland and were planning to see Prague and Vienna next. From there on, conversation was easy. We had found common ground and they were happy to host me for my first tailgating. By this point, fresh beers had been opened, my Bourbon cup was refilled with 25 yo Speyside whisky and I was given a plate of freshly grilled, succulent ribs. I fully realized that I had “won at tailgating” when a seemingly loaded couple walked up to the stall, rocking matching Louis Vuitton scarfs, waving some dollar notes and asking whether they could buy a shot of whisky. They were nicely yet resolutely turned away because “food and drink is not for sale but for friends and family only”. Ha!
Carpark Lobsters
The stall owners told me that they do tailgating for every Giants home game and that the family patriarch, lover of whisky and cigars, is the mastermind behind it all. Quote from his wife: “He just loves feeding people.” He even seemed a bit apologetic that this time he could “only” feed me ribs and burgers, when for past tailgating experiences he had brought oysters, made a seven fish stew and had even cooked some lobsters at the carpark. I swore that I was totally happy with that and continued happily eating my body weight in ribs. I hadn’t even noticed that the family had already turned the salad bar into a dessert buffet featuring Tiramisu, fresh fruit, donuts and an assortment of boozy chocolates. I was in tailgating heaven!
At last, it was about 30 minutes to kick off, some final beers were opened and I helped load stuff back into the car. Finally, I noted down their address, promised to send a bottle of whisky over and we said our goodbyes as the family patriarch ceremoniously resolved to bringing down the US flag from the extendable flagpole that had been standing next to the car.
Couch Potato Chronicles 