Raaaaiiiiiiddddddeeeerrrrrs
Kat and I went to the Broncos/Raiders game at the NAT. Both teams needed a win for the playoffs. But Oakland was clearly a better team and won fairly handily, even though there were some tense moments in the 3rd quarter as Oakland let Denver get back in the game.
Neither of us wanted to deal with parking or driving, so we drove to the Richmond BART station and got on there. Since it's the start of the line, the train was pretty much empty, except for a few other Raider fans. Everything was nice and mellow even once we get to the stadium. We had seats that were at the top of Mt. Davis, real nose-bleed seats. The view is still pretty good, but I don't know if it's $60 good. But alas, that is the price one pays if one wants to see a NFL game these days.
Kat hadn't been to a NFL game, so this was our little adventure for the weekend. For those keeping score at home, you may recall that when Steven was in town he and I went to see the Raiders play the Patriots, and that was my first NFL game. The Raider fans, or Raider Nation as they like to call themselves are a lively bunch. In every line, anyone call yell out, "RAIDERS!" and expect to hear a chorused response in return. This happens more and more as the level of beer consumption increases.
Now, the NAT is pretty well known for fights, so if you are going to cheer for the away team, you might not want to advertise it by wearing that teams colors. I'm not saying you can't, I'm just saying you should know what you are getting into if you do. There was a medium sized group of Broncos fans about 5 rows down from where we were, and that was the second to last row. In between us and the Broncos fans were four "dudes" who were having a blast pounding Budweisers and smoking weed. Then they got the brilliant idea to start tossing peanuts at the Broncos fans. They put up with it for quite a while, even gave a few good natured blind tosses of peanuts back up towards where they thought they were coming from. Truth be told, the guys tossing peanuts were too drunk and stoned to hit anything and hit more Raiders fans than the Broncos fans they were aiming at. Alas, a few managed to hit their mark and sure enough sparks started to fly.
It started with a rather large lady standing up and basically telling them that if they didn't stop she was going to make sure they understood how she felt by using her fists and banging them against their heads and that they probably had small male members. The fellows doing the tossing took exception to this and told her to please sit back down and enjoy the game. Things calmed down until the stoned fellows decided to try tossing just one more peanut. This was not the best move they could have made.
In response to this action, the gentleman sitting next to the rather large female Bronco fan stood up and explained in a very harsh tone to the peanut tossing fellows that their behavior was complete unacceptable and he was going to make sure that it didn't happen anymore and he also implied that they lacked the basic intelligence to survive and that there mothers were, how should I put this, "ladies of the night." Well, our stoned fellows were having none of this and once again suggested that the Broncos fans should cease their shenanigans and go home. The Broncos fans were most displeased at this suggestion, since they too had paid an exorbitant amount for their tickets and were not going home under any circumstances.
The verbal exchange continued to become more and more heated until somebody decided to cool things off by tossing some nice, cold Budweiser around. Both parties decided that this was a good idea and much more cold, $6 a glass beer was distributed to both parties.
Around this time the Event Staff had noticed some commotion coming from our section and came to moderate the situation. They explained to both parties that they were being asked to leave for causing a ruckus. Both parties were very displeased to hear this news and protested vigorously until some very tall policemen came along to reiterate that both parties needed to leave.
Both parties then left and the rest of us realized that there was still a football game going on.
Raiders rock. I want to see the Chargers make the playoff so we can see a Raider-Charger matchup. It doesn't get any better than that.