I'm not really a sports fan. The only time I'll happily go into a sports bar is during the Olympics. However, the Superbowl is a horse of a different color. Yes, it's a football game, but it's also become the newest and greatest American holiday.
Here in Florence, with its huge population of American students, you could even feel the Superbowl approaching. Over the last couple of weeks, people have been standing in front of the Duomo, in Piazza della Repubblica, and over near the Mercato San Lorenzo passing out postcards emblazoned with skimpily-dressed cheerleaders, inviting expats to Superbowl parties taking place at clubs and discos all over town.
We can't watch the Superbowl at our house, lacking satellite TV. So, we ended up at Finnegan's at 11:15 on Sunday night. It's an Irish bar run by a Glaswegian, and one of our friends tends bar there.
There is definitely some strangeness to watching the Superbowl here. One, we were watching on the UK's Sky Sport network... so no commercials! Two, kickoff was at 12:15 in the morning. Since bars here can't legally stay open all night long, this meant that Finnegan's actually put down their big metal shutters just after kickoff and posted a list of possible exit times, every half hour. Three, though just about everyone in the place was American, there were some Italians who wanted to know just what the hell was going on. One asked me "It's your championship tonight. The Supercup, yes?"
Four, and perhaps best, is the fact that one of the commentators on Sky Sport was Don Johnson. You know, because the Superbowl was in Miami and he was on Miami Vice! Makes perfect sense.
This was the scene a little after kickoff - perhaps between the fifth and the sixth fumbles of the quarter?
Most of the people there were students at one or the other of the nearby universities. There was a little clot of girls wearing homemade Bears jerseys who got in a bit of a spat with a group of Asians who were rooting for the Colts. (I heard one of the girls drunkenly telling another kid that Indiana is a stupid state that doesn't even deserve to be a state because it's so stupid. With an airtight argument like that, the other party unsurprisingly backed down.)
Watching a game with other people who are so invested was a lot of fun. Each fumble or interception or dropped snap or sack led to yelling and cheers. We put a couple of euro into a betting pool, but got awful numbers and didn't win.
At around 2:30 or so, some of the kids couldn't stand not being let outside to smoke and just went ahead and lit up inside. The law here, where it's illegal to smoke in bars and restaurants, is that the smoker is fined, not the bar. So, that was fun.
Unbelievably, we waited out the whole game and left the bar a little after 4 AM. The only other people out on the streets were Americans, including one very drunk kid who stumbled up to us and said "Waitaminnut, waitaminnut. Colts won, right?" Husbear asked him if he wanted to put any money on the outcome.
The thing about staying up until almost 5 in the morning on a Sunday is that it throws your schedule off for the whole week. So, oops.
girlie
