Nott What You'd Expected...

Pitchers, Pianos, Riots, Reds, Football and Fighting.....

Best Weekend Ever....so far...

This weekend has been a cultural experience to say the least. The flatmates stuck together, and had a great time. Friday was a clubbing night, while Saturday (still going on, actually) was our first trip to the Forest football match, and a very calm night of decompressing back at the flat.

Last night we made our way to Lace Market (area of the city, former lace manufacturing area) and hit up Tantra, Pitcher and Piano, and Dogma. Tantra is, as it sounds, a semi-swanky club complete with red/black lighting, a great dj, and couches and pillows everywhere. It was atmospheric to say the least, but impossible to hear anyone.
Pitcher and Piano is a landmark as far as i'm concerned. Built in the center of an old church, it's amazing. I took some video of the inside, while a couple danced across a suspended bridge, and you can see the huge gothic arches and stained glass. The DJ was lame as crap, but it was kinda fun to hear old US hits (Neil Diamond, Grease, Michael Jackson) while sitting in such an awesome space....
Finally, the girls were told to meet up with their 'new friends' from Pitcher at a club down the street called Dogma. It could have just as easily been called "Roscoes UK".. the basement was dark, sticky, and dingy. The music was really good, but at this point, we were tired and ready to head home. After walking for blocks trying to find a cab to take 7 people home, we managed to flag down an oversized Mercedes Taxi and make our way home.
I stayed up entirely too late IMing and Skyping friends from home, and 5 hrs after hitting the pillow, it was time to get ready for the Forest game.

While these pictures are awesome and the videos help to illustrate, there were so many differencs from the typical American Sports Experience, that LIST form is the only way to portray:
1) there was no announcer... people were there to watch the game and support their city. no need to be entertained by some talking head. The cheers and chants were entertaining enough.
2) no music either. why sit through crappy 80s music when all you want to do is watch the players play? I take that back, at halftime, they played The Scissor Sisters, and You've Lost that Lovin Feeling...to which the entire stadium sang along....

3)No food or beer inside the stadium. In the concourse, people could eat, but otherwise it was pretty dry.

4) similar to 3, no one left their seats. at all. at most sporting events in the states, people are always milling around... here, not the case.

5) finally, the merchandising machine that is the US has no bearing here.... while there is admittedly a lot of random crap you could buy, most people who were wearing the Forest Red had one of three jerseys on... the white, the red, or the blue... no crappy tshirts or old world series sweatshirts, no ballcaps....just team jerseys
As far as the game went, it was incredible. The fans from Bristol were about 4,000 strong and were forced to sit on the left of center, while the Forest fans held their own (about 20,000 strong) in the Brian Clough Stands and the Trent Stands... the atmosphere was electric, not a bad seat in the house, and the cheering and yelling was constant. The best part was, you could actually hear the players yelling to each other on the pitch. We had 'crappy' seats, but could hear everything, and see it all- even the sweat spray every time a player headed the ball...

Forest won 1-0 on a penalty kick in the first 15 minutes of the game. The place went catatonic when we scored....

Afterwards was when the magic happened. If you call rioting and fighting magic. We had some inclination that action might go down as early as last week, when the Juggins told us of the importance of the game. After seeing a man get punched in the parking lot just 3 ft away as we walked in, we knew that something was going down after the game. However, we had no idea what kind of fighting we would witness...

After the game was over, we made our way to the bus stop. Along the way, we had to cross through a group of thuggish-looking older gentleman (think Green Street Hooligans, and seriously, it's all true), and I was called the 'c-word'.... Avoiding being beaten, we walked towards the main street, and heard yelling and saw some angry looking Bristol fans run past... minutes later, we heard more yelling, glass breaking, and what sounded like poles and iron rods being clanged....Turns out, they had not only found the Nottingham firm, but decided to use metal chairs from the outside cafes on the street as weapons. The video below is a pretty accurate representation of the crowd-involvment and interest in the fights, but it was still totally surrreal....

There were hundreds of people watching, taking digital pictures, and complaining about how crappy the police were. The police finally arrived, as this video shows, to the cheering of the onlooking crowd....
Pretty crazy, but definitely what i would call a 'cultural experience'. For more info, head to a local Blockbuster and rent Green Street Hooligans. I've mentioned it before, but never thought that it could possibly be even close to as graphic as the movie implies... yet, it almost exceeds it....

Tomorrow we head to Chattsworth, a Great Country Home in the Peaks District, basically a rich house in the countryside..... Followed by homework and an awesome field trip for class on monday....

kevin

posted by Kevin @ 6:55 PM