“If we win it’s a second-line; if we lose it’s a jazz funeral.” This is always the spirit of any high-stakes Saints game in New Orleans. I have lived in a couple football cities (Boston, Pittsburgh) and while the passion Steelers fans have for their football team is maximally equivalent, it is not expressed with as much heart and loving fervor anywhere else as it is in New Orleans.
It is hard to understate how big football is in the United States. It is no longer a Sunday activity, a way to pass the time with nachos and beers in a recliner. In some ways it has even escalated beyond the Roman Coliseum’s spirit of bloody battles between titans, a mob group of men watching the physical collision of warriors and beasts in wild anticipation of a desired finish, a well-fought victory, despite the sure cost of injury and bodily loss. It has that, too. But no, it more than that now. It is tribal.
Football gives a community colors. It gives a community a united purpose that transcends socio-economic divisions. It gives a community an excusable passion in cheering for the regulated violence exacted against rivals, against the other tribe. It is dist
When the college football season wound down to its close, New Orleans became a hubbub of collegiate traffic. The Superdome was to host three important games in seven days: The Sugar Bowl, the Saints vs. Lions, and the NCAA College National Championship featuring two local southern giants, Alabama and the home-state LSU Tigers. The population of New Orleans is around 350,000, but on that weekend it felt like it had doubled downtown. The streets were flooded with young men donning their respective colors. They were young and drunk and from out of town, many of them having rolled straight out of bed from sorority and fraternity houses. They didn’t always play by the local rules of “Be Nice or Leave.” Even on my block, purple tribesmen settled in and began to drink and cry and scream at one another. Everywhere, a steady traffic of angry human flotsam in crimson or purple paraded the streets with exotic drinks, yelling and shouting, each side delusional that the other side will have be the ones to go home stung and wounded.
The night of the championship game was quiet. I biked to the Superdome just after kickoff. Nearby in the Central Business District, LSU fans had set up tribal encampments. Entire parking lots had been turned into outdoor theatres. Large tents were set up with thirty foot projector screens hid underneath. Smaller camps of families huddled around smaller televisions set up next to their RVs. I could not see the game from my bike but I could hear the commentators narrating each play as I moved from camp to camp, large television to small television to large. The Alabama tribe was nowhere to be seen. Everyone had been convivial enough in the days before, but it was dangerous to intermingle during these critical hours. The Crimson Tide camps had hid themselves away in secluded corners of downtown, or bought out entire floors of large bars so they could watch together in safety and numbers.
The French Quarter appeared empty. Nobody was on the street, but I could tell the temperature of the game by the simple outbursts that would surge through bar windows as I passed.
I arrived at a bar with friends in the second quarter of the game. The tribe was purple and local. Only a few women wearing Crimson were in the corner, closest to the television, were there. They were lesbians and they were very loud. Each time they cheered the rest of the bar was silent. I have no allegiance to either tribe. I am a pacifist. But even then I wanted to throttle them. They were audacious and out of place, but likely protected from danger because of their minority status, and because they were buff enough to beat the shit out of any man or woman who might tell them to tone it down. We left at halftime, and I wondered if even that would be enough to protect them if LSU lost in the end.
LSU did lose, badly. There were no explosions. No turning of cars. No riot police. The purple tribe had been stung, their pride wounded. There would be a few fights on Bourbon Street. I went home to my quiet neighborhood, now overtaken by fraternity boys. Across the street a young man cursed expletives, calling his own tribe’s quarterback a “faggot” because he lost the game for “us.” A friend told him it would be ok, to come back inside and have a drink and left him there. He sat on the curb and began to cry softly.
Saints fans aren’t prone to crying or fighting over a loss. When the Vancouver Canucks lost in 2011 in Game 7 of hockey’s Stanley Cup, the city was upset enough to try to burn it down. When the Steelers won Superbowls in 2006 and 2009, the city was happy enough to upturn cars and trashcans, to burn defenseless couches and break the windows of liquor stores. New Orleans has already suffered enough damage. Crime and murder and hurricanes have hurt the community enough that it is unfathomable to willingly accumulate its abuse because of a football game. It is a party city, and so the party just gets bigger, the people happier.
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| Alex Smith piñata beatdown |
When I woke up that morning my throat was closed up and my nose was stuffed. I had a head-ache and my eyes were red. I rested and drank enough chicken soup to feel decent enough to bike to the Marigny for the game. I arrived at the R Bar, where you can get a shot of Jameson, a high life, and a haircut for $10 on Mondays. This time the bar was packed, the pool table covered with a tarp and crockpots of chili. A saints fan stood on the barber’s chair and rang a plastic cowbell. A voodoo doll hung against the wall above the house liquors. It looked like a drooping black turd wearing a 49ers jersey. The Saints were down 17-0 and already the Voodoo doll had been stuck with several 9 inch needles. At halftime, with the deficit marginalized, a piñata of the 49ers quarterback was hung on the corner outside. Two birthday girls were given shots and the second exploded his torso, releasing a confetti of candy, whistles, and plastic mythical creature toys. The act was not done with vitriol or resentment, instead it was a fun jab against our enemy, a simple way New Orleanians celebrate; nothing is sacred and nothing is serious. We collected the plastic dinosaurs and whistles until the second half began. The fans were not serious football people. They did not comprehend or care about the nuances of the game; but they were serious Saints fans. They cheered at incredible decibels when the Saints kicked an extra point, or completed a 4 yard pass short of a first down. Everything was reason to celebrate. When they felt a flag should have been thrown, they hurled lightly weighted yellow napkins at the screen. They hurled them often. Nobody cursed. Nobody called the other quarterback a faggot, and nobody ever said a bad word about their own men, their black and gold tribe.
Toward the end of the game, the bartenders stood on the back counter and beat the voodoo doll furiously as the 49ers and Saints exchanged scores in the fourth quarter. They beat the doll with a crutch. Then a frying pan. Then a skateboard. They stabbed it with large kitchen knives, always with a smile and a laugh. Each time they taped the weapon against the doll, a visual history of its abuse, and a promise that another weapon of torment was coming. With two minutes left both bartenders completely abandoned their posts at the bar. They stood on either side of the doll, and like pistons, beat the belly of the voodoo doll with crowbars. When they were done, it was nearly severed. They taped it back together to prepare for the possibility of overtime.
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| 49'ers voodoo doll beatdown with bat and crowbar |
When the Saints scored with 1:37 left, a mosh pit ensued in the bar. My friend was accidentally punched in the face. A young man stood on the bar and free fell forward into his friends’ arms. People picked each other up and shook one another in the air. The black and gold balloons above us seemed big and airy, and we were ready for the confetti and balloons above us to fall and for the real party of the night to begin. Two minutes later the 49ers scored. The entire bar was quiet. The city itself was quiet. It was the first time I could hear the audio of the game. It remained that way for a full minute until the Saints got the ball back. There were four seconds left and 85 yards to go. The cheers of “Who Dat, Who Dat” started up again. If anyone was to be blessed with a miracle—it would be the Saints—it would be our tribe. When the game ended and no miracle had occurred, everyone stood around stunned for a minute. There was a collective sigh, knowing that any party that night would lack meaning and purpose. Then the music began. The bar played the iconic “When the Saints go Marching In,” almost in defiance of reality, and they released the balloons and confetti. Those still in the bar began to dance, stomping on the balloons, not in anger, but with the irony of defeat and the bittersweet mixture of a spirit that not even strong disappointment can keep away for long. I stomped on them too and swing-danced with a friend atop the confetti and spilt beer and whistles. Outside a couple ran in the streets until the girl was hit by a bicycle. She got up and started to run and dance again. My throat began to close up once more and I knew there would be no great party that night. That most people would eat their dinners and go to bed a little hurt, but also, there would be no violence or fires, no abuse of our own town and community. That nothing would burn out of bitter insobriety, and in the end, we danced because we all knew it was just a game. Because the passion runs deeper than football. But it’s football that helps us express it best sometimes, together. Until next season, when the tribe puts their colors back on and the voodoo dolls and balloons and piñatas restake their places on the walls of bars and homes, and everyone stands ready to break that small threshold our proud city has for another big party, another reason among many to celebrate our tribe.
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| The voodoo doll at the end. |
