Thursday, June 17, 2010

Lakers Win but I pay the price!


Thursday was game 7 and a good friend, Nick tells me that I need to get together with him because of "Laker Karma". It so happens that I have been with my friend Nick at pivotal moments in play off history and he believes that I need to be with him to not break the continuity. I should pause and tell you that I have been following the Lakers since the Magic Johnson "showtime" days. Let me also be blunt. I hate Boston and Boston fans. It's the law in Los Angeles. Back to the story. I park in downtown L.A about 5 blocks from the Staple Center. I get there 3 hours early because there was pandemonium and madness in down town. My favorite line came from some black guy commenting on a van that had 4 flags. he said, "Look at that fo' mutha ' fuckers on that bitch." I get to bar and I had to wait for over an hour in the hot sun. Inside there were crazy Laker fans. I saw guys with Lakers tattoos, white guys with braids, Laker logos on people's hair, black dudes sporting sombreros and Laker Ponchos. The game was tense and every 5 minutes there were chants of "Boston Sucks". It kept getting louder "Boston Sucks". What was cool is that the place was diverse. You had Whites, Asians, Filipinos,Blacks, Mexicans, Arabs, and everything in between. After the game, there is raucous on the street. Everyone is high fiving everyone. Then someone starts a bonfire on the street. Then, people start hopping on cars including police cars. This causes the cops to attack the crowd so we all run, myself included. I lose my friends. The cops decide to close the street and now I have to walk north about a mile to make a right on 9th street. There are cops everywhere! On every corner. There are explosions going off and people are lighting fireworks on the street and I get to 9th street and the cops tell me that the street is closed so I have to continue walking north. As I walk towards the parking spot, people are blowing horns, waving flags, dancing on the street, and just yelling in jubilation. I get to my car and I can hear cop sirens and helicopters around me. It took me over an hour to get to my car when it should have taken 15 minutes.Next time, I'll watch the game from home. Go Lakers!

3 comments:

  1. Interesting. Sports fervour American style! Well written and described. Glad I wasn't there :)

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  2. Wow,nice, one of the best read posts so far.

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  3. The media just likes to give sports fans a bad rap. It's not just crazed fans that do this. For my Moms birhtday my family went down town and started vandalizing cars and torched a warehouse. A good celebration will always end with tear gas. (please note the heavy sarcasm). Despite the stupid way of celbrating, (which is common in any large city) congrats to the Lakers.

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