the time has come to say goodbye to london for the first time. i’ll be back for some amount of time following the world cup. however, the majority is over. it has definitely been a worthwhile experience. the key plus, for me at least, was obviously the football. a major part of this trip was to dispell a myths i knew to be false. somehow you just get convince yourself without seeing it in person. is the premier league much better live? absolutely. if i lived here, i would definitely have season tickets for some team. which one it would be is hard to say. i know i was only in manchester for a brief amount of time, but from first impressions, i don’t think i would want to live there. the only real potential location would be london.
so, what are the supposed myths? the main one would have to be that everyone here is rabid lunatic football fans. this is just not the case. obviously, it’s a larger percentage of the population than the u.s., but an absolute number of fans comparison would be interested. similarly, it doesn’t appear that most people actually have season tickets. obviously, this couldn’t be the case since most stadiums are only 40,000 seats or less. many top level clubs only have stadiums in the 20,000 seat range. another obvious observation is the huge gap between the top clubs that regularly participate in the champions league (manchester united, chelsea, arsenal, liverpool (i guess) and the other clubs. once you drop into the bottom of the table, the quality is not nearly as good. still good and any team might surprise you on a given day (see fulham v chelsea for example), but the consitency and depth is just not there. it would be interesting to see how some of the top m.l.s. teams would fair in the premier league. they could possibly fair decently in the lower half. a team of top m.l.s. players may do even better.
another myth, maybe only for me, was that fans are traveling to all the away matches. i always thought that this was a big downside for m.l.s. since the teams were so spread out. except for a couple of thousand hard core fans, this just isn’t the case. the major reason would have to be that the visiting teams appear to only get an allotment of tickets in the few thousand range. additionally, there’s the weird perception (obviously it’s all relative) that it’s far to travel? clearly, these people have never been to the u.s. and traveled between cities. i think the farthest trip is something like a 4 hour drive. that’s nothing. they even have a decent train system so you don’t even half to drive. sadly, catching a late night train back is not a cost effective option. i had thought that if i had scheduled in advance the midnight train back from manchester it would have been cheaper. not. it’s still the full fair of ~#100. your better option is really to take the coach (bus) back for around #20 and it’s actually quicker by an hour. the coach is no changes and the train was about 4.
i guess the good news from an m.l.s. perspective is that if you could regularly sell 20,000 tickets a match, mostly home supporters, you would be in pretty good shape. the ticket prices here aren’t that unreasonably high. at least face value isn’t. maybe #40 for the top end sideline seats. the biggest help financially for premier league teams would seem to be from selling team paraphenalia and t.v. licenses. there was an article yesterday that mentioned the licensing revenue was #1.7 billion for, i think, last season. not bad. the same article mentioned that chelsea has a #100 million per year in player wages now that they’ve signed shevchenko. for those that don’t know, the top players typically earn in the #100,000 a week range. i wish i could be a top player for just a year.
enough about football. i may return to this topic some other time.
the other major point of the trip was to experience living in another city for while, even a short time, that also has good public transportation. i have lived in birmingham, alabama for almost evey bit of my life. the part that wasn’t really doesn’t count since i can’t remember being 1 year old. while i’ve traveled to a lot of different cities (mostly in the u.s., but i had been to london previously during high school (not that that counts for too much in this context)), you just don’t get a good feeling of how it is to live somewhere when you’re only there for a few days in a hotel.
overall, i liked living in london. i know i didn’t really experience all it has to offer. there are many things i might have done and probably would have done if someone else was planning them. i just don’t care enough to put forth the effort. i’m satisfied with what i’ve seen. i’m sure a few of you may be disappointed that there weren’t more tails of lewdness and debauchery. however, if you were expecting that to really happen, you must not know me very well. it might have turned out differently if the flatmates had been more the going out type. speaking of flatmates, that was another twist added to the trip. i haven’t had a roommate since the first apartment i lived in probably 10 years ago. for the most part it was ok. better when 2 of them were in school and the other at work. its been a bit annoying for the past week or so since 2 of them are out of school and 1 has a friend staying with them. not any real problems, just the general people presence.
so, how’s the public transport. generally, it’s very good. every week there seems to be some sort of issue with the tube. signaling errors or other issues causing problems on certain lines. i was never directly affected. i haven’t driven or ridden in a car since i’ve been here. i’ve only been on a bus twice. everything else was walking or the tube. while there seems to be a lot of people who are commuting a good distance on the tube to work each day, it reinforces my general feeling that it’s important to live close to where you work. regardless of mode of transportation, it’s best not to have a lot of distance to cover. loic, the only working flatmate, had an approximately 45 minute tube ride every day. there was also an additional 15 minute walk to and from the tube station. while the layout of the stations would seem to be suboptimal (i’m sure due to growing it instead of some master plan.), they are fairly dense within the large city center area. there is also good connections to the airports and train stations from the tube. this is a huge problem for birmingham. there is zero public transportation to the airport there. i’m sure this will never be fixed. the buses seem to be heavily used as well. a bus is about half the price of a tube ride. the surprising thing to me was the number of cars. traffic seems to be pretty abysmal. way too many. also, when you get outside the older, central parts of london the streets are much wider and less general density.
while at times, the tube can be very packed. for example, when people are leaving work in the afternoon. probably the morning too, but i wasn’t ever awake at that time. after a football match is another time. the great thing though is that it quickly thins out. you just can’t compete with the large number of people that can be moved. much preferred over being stuck in traffic at a stadium parking lot, car park, whatever.
as mentioned before, if i was choosing again i think i would go for the goodge street tube station area. it’s an older area, more densely packed and seemed to have a lot of computer shops. it’s also close to some universities/colleges and soho, covet garden, etc. while angel is a decent area, there are way too many young mothers with strollers.
i’m kind of tired of writing. maybe i’ll get some more in when i’m in amsterdam while it’s still fresh. i also have to get moving to get my train.
the presence of a decent amount of computer people, linux and other groups/presentations and film companies is nice. although, similar issues of quality seem to exist. then again, i’m probably overly critical.
executive summary: overall positive, good football, not sure if i would want to live here, but probably the only real possibility in england.
Very interesting. Good job.