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well, i finally got to see a match. it’s not a premier league match, but an f.a. cup match between 2 premier league teams. bolton is currently 7th and west ham is a surprising 9th. even though it wasn’t sold out (wed night, freezing cold, hard to figure out why?) there was still an incredible atmosphere in the stadium. i was able to just pay at the gate and get a ticket. nice. i believe they said the attendance was something like 26,000. the stadium supposedly holds 35,647.

the game itself was fairly exciting, though not pretty. neither side played particularly well, and west ham ended up winning inspite of itself through an own goal and a mele in front of the goal that resulted in the ball in the back of the net. bolton’s lone goal was better, a solid strike from the top of the box. the match was tied at full time and went into 2 15 minute overtime periods. west-ham scored their second about 6 minutes into the first period. overall, an excellent experience. i think the thing that separates these fans from the american sport fans is the singing in unison. there’s no organization just random yelling. not that there was formal organization here, it just happens, probably through history.

hopefully i’ll have good luck this weekend and get into both the arsenal match on saturday and fulham v chelsea on sunday.

and now, some pictures. i didn’t take any during the action because i was too busy watching the game.

these are some pre game pics. probably still 15 minutes until kickoff.

at half time, they actually had a dance team: the hammerettes. they must have been freezing in those outfits because it had to be somewhere close to 0c. there was extremely mild smattering of applause following the dancing. no one seemed to be paying any attention. i think that sort of thing only really goes over at nba games. everywhere else, i would think most people are too far away.

hopefully you can view these videos. while the video is some form of mpeg-4, it sucks that it’s in an avi and not the mp4 container. the audio is also something weird. why can’t companies fully use standards? who is this really benefiting? one negative about the video is that it you can’t zoom. the regular 3x optical for stills isn’t really sufficient either.

west ham pre game warmup

i can’t get the other videos to upload right now due to this bad connection. i’ll have to do it later on.

on the downside, it looks like ze germans are going to fall through. seems they’re about as reliable as a volkswagon. too bad he couldn’t have informed me of this 7 days ago so i could have been persuing other options. oh well. i do have a few leads and found a company that finds you flats. that’s definitely what i need. pay someone to solve the problem for me.

i have some more stuff to post, but need to get out and find somewhere to live, again. i need to go into a coma for a few weeks and take a vacation.

athe video should be downloadable now.

first off, it’s interesting that west ham (the hammers) have their own internet casino. it doesn’t appear they have a physical one. there are even booths in the stadium where you can bet on the match in progress. this in addition to the fact that there’s a ladbrokers or a william hill (bookies) on about every block in the city. between cheltenham (big horse races apparently), the world cup and something else the bookies are claiming there’s go to be about a billion pounds in bets changing hands. i think the majority was the world cup, but i can’t remember the article exactly off the top of my head.

within the stadium itself, it appears that the side sections are where people sit and the behind the goal sections are where people have to stand. this is apparently common at many premier league stadiums. the other thing someone might notice is that everyone is actually watching the game. there’s not this endless chatter of conversation from people not watching the game. any comments are focused on what’s happening on the field. much better.

for those who don’t know, most everyone, the theme song for west ham is “i’m forever blowing bubbles“. seems like a kind of bizarre chant. if i can ever get the video up of the team coming out at half-time you’ll be able to hear it. the stadium announcer was definitely doing a lot of prodding for the 12th man. i’m not sure if it was necessary or not.

the tube stop for upton park (west ham’s stadium) is only a 5 minute walk. however, when you got to the tube stop they had this barracaded off queue that you had to walk a long way to get into and then all the way back to get on the train. while annoying to walk, it did move fairly quickly and orderly. much better than exiting a stadium in a car. actually the people in cars seemed the most screwed since there was a mass of people blocking all the streets.

not really related to the game, but after i got out at victoria station, there was this guy in a tuxedo that was totally wasted wobblying around the sidewalk. i should have taken some video or a picture. it was somewhat amazing that he was actually staying on his feet. hopefully, he made it home ok and didn’t fall into oncoming traffic.

flat update

ze germans did in fact fall through. i understand their situation since they had 2 rooms and someone they knew took 1 long term and it really wasn’t required to rent the other one for a short period. no reason to bother with issues of trust, etc. on the upside, i have an appointment tomorrow to check out a place that’s near the angel tube stop. i had actually gotten off there the other day and it had seemed the best area i had been to yet. maybe that will work out. although, i believe the place i’m looking at will only be available for april and may so i would need to find somewhere else for the rest of march. maybe i should just take that opportunity to travel to some other cities in england or maybe pop over to amsterdam or something. i was able to secure the current room i’m in until checkout tuesday.

football update

good news on this front too. early in the week, i ran across a theatre ticket booth in piccadilly circus tube station that also had a sign for football tickets. the guy had said to check back thurs. luckily, i remembered tonight and stopped by. all the arsenal v charlton tickets were a bit expensive at a couple of hundred pounds or so. that seems a little high since i think there were tickets for arsenal v liverpool at the stadium from touts for around 100. i passed on that. however, i did go ahead and pickup a ticket for fulham v chelsea on sunday. it was 130 which is about 3.5 times face value. it’s behind the goal, row k. should be a decent seat i suppose. i may have been able to get something better outside the stadium, but i didn’t want to risk it. this is the big sw6 derby and craven cottage only holds about 20,000. imagine if the ironbowl was in that size stadium. i can’t imagine what scalpers would be charging. that’s probably about equivalent in magnitude to this match. oh, and pretend tuscaloosa and auburn were about a couple of miles apart and chelsea’s home stadium is actually in fulham (different stadium). should be an excellent match. hopefully things will work out for arsenal too. that would be a huge weekend.

it’s too bad pretty much every match is at 15:00 throughout all the leagues. that means you are limited to one game a day. unlucky. luckily, there are a few scattered matches throughout the weeks. for most locals this isn’t a problem as i don’t think they much consider going to any other matches, but their own teams. it’s like when i asked this british guy at soccerblast what team he supported. his answer was west ham (when they weren’t in the premier league). i then asked what premier league team he supported and he said he supported west ham.

random observations

there’s 2 kinds of people on the tube. people who walk down the escalators and those who stand. i, of course, stand. the rushers will also see people coming out from the train area and start running to get on the train. this makes no sense seeing as how during the day the worst case is about 3 or 4 minutes before the next train. these people clearly need to get a little perspective.

the tube is definitely not for someone who’s claustrophobic, especially at 17:00. when riding home tonight, the car was completely full. no room to move. to cap it off, there was about a 3-5 minute delay where the train was completely stopped in the tunnel. it also seems like being in a crowded tube car would be unpleasant for women, especially an attractive one.

coca-cola in london comes from various different countries. i think so far i’ve had cans from germany, netherlands, france and some sort of middle eastern country. i don’t understand why this is. some of them also mention something about using vegetable extract which i don’t think is normal. i don’t know if it’s psychological, but i think i can tell a difference in the taste.

this is a good ad that i see on the tube a lot. in case you can’t tell, it says, “reducing contractors tax bills is like public speaking. it’s best left to the experts.”

i can’t figure out how to manually get the flash to stay off the camera. this is causing numerous problems. especially with outdoor night shots. i guess i might have to breakdown and actually read the manual.

i stopped off at stamford bridge today. i was near the tube stop so i figured i would give it whirl. this morning at 9:00 they were putting on general sale the last few hundred tickets for the chelsea v newcastle f.a. cup match wednesday. i woke up and tried to order some, but it was constantly busy. i guess i should have gone to the box office. however, after checking out the place i want to have even less to do with chelsea. it’s way too upity. i don’t think i ever took any good pictures of watford or west ham or even arsenal for that matter. at the matches there was always booths setup in the street selling food and sourvenirs and what not. i just don’t see it happening at stamford bridge. not a good community feel at all.

this is actually the outside of the stadium. it doesn’t even really look like a stadium. this picture is of the inner area with some nice restaurants and what looks like apartments or something. the stadium is right behind that building. it may be even attached. you can just see the roof poking out on the left.

west ham had a much more work class/everyman feel. i wonder what it’s like for someone like lampard to move from west ham to chelsea?

i saw a good room tonight. i’m pretty certain i’m going to take it. i’m going to try not to get my hopes up considering what happened last time. i was pretty close to having decided i was just going to get out of london and go somewhere else. i’ll get to see the fulham v chelsea game sunday for sure and if i could see arsenal tomorrow i don’t think i’d have too much of a reason to be tied to london. i now refuse to go to stamford bridge. it might be better to go to manchester or newcastle instead. however, i really liked the neighborhood where this place is. there’s even an independent movie theater right down the street. it would be a pretty decent base of operations though and there’s definitely plenty i should see in london that i haven’t. a lot of shows and stuff happening all the time. how could i not try and see ricky gervais live or henry rollins? i guess i won’t be seeing the yamato drummers unless i can make it tomorrow night.

i wish i had gotten better pictures of west ham. oh well.

i had a good hamburger tonight at a place called “hamburger union” that’s near the angel tube station. it was really good. could have used a special sauce though. they made a big deal about being free range, all natural, blah, blah, blah. of course, it was about $12 for a bacon cheeseburger and a coke. i wonder why people opt for the potentially less healthy mcdonald’s?

well, well, well. some times it goes the other way too. this has pretty much been a great day. aside from doing laundry this morning. i’ve secured a place to stay beginning the 27th. the date’s a bit unfortunate since i have to checkout of the hotel on tuesday. i’m going to have to figure out what to do until then. i’m thinking about trying to maybe get out of london for a bit. maybe to the english countryside. that should be nice and romantic.

nobody really cares about that crap. the important news is that i got into highbury today for the match. i was able to get a ticket from a tout for p160. he had actually offered p150, but i didn’t have exact change and he ran off with out giving it. it’s a bit of a secretive transaction. according to the laws i found, it’s illegal to sell tickets, but not to buy them. anyway, i had already planned on going p160 anyway. the wise thing to do would have been to try for p140. like you should really just accept a tout’s first offer. the ticket was a single in the away section (charlton, who has an american player so it wasn’t that bad). i had overheard some guys saying that someone wanted around p300 for some. probably in the home section. the visitors section is that great of seats in the corner, but it was only 19 rows from the pitch. it was absolutely worth it. there’s only about 3 home games left until they tear down highbury. the funny thing is that i after hearing that p300 figure i had pretty much given up and was about to leave when i ran into the guy i got the ticket from.

this one was right before kickoff. i just like how you can see the flats through the corner.

here’s the lone american. i wish i had been playing for a premier league team a couple of weeks after my 21st birthday. i guess since you can drink at 18 here it’s not as big of a deal. i wanted to get one of him marking henry, but i couldn’t ever get the camera out fast enough. plus the zoom is insufficient for taking good field shots.

this is henry about to take a corner. man is he smooth.

this is a picture of the main street leading to the stadium. the arsenal tube station is to the left and a stadium corner is to the right. much different scene compared to chelsea. i wonder how it will be when they move to emirates stadium next season.

arsenal dominated the match. charlton never had a prayer of even scoring 1 goal. they were just sitting back and letting arsenal pass all over them. if you do that, you’re going to lose. henry didn’t score, but he had a sweet backheel that almost set up someone. it would have been a spectacular goal. surely it will make the highlights. i have a few other pictures and some videos (they aren’t that interesting).

a few other items. they play the same crappy sort of music you hear at american sporting events. the stadium announcers are equally corny. the arsenal mascot is some stupid dinosaur. i guess they always make it something like that for the kids. i can’t easily find anything about it on their website and i couldn’t understand what the announcer said its name was. for those that don’t know, they water the pitch before matches. twice. of course, spector slipped early and almost gave up a goal. he made a great recovery and tackle in the box. it seems like they might be over doing it. it also seemed even colder than the other night at west ham. hard to believe since it was sunny. i can’t imagine what it’s like for the players when they get wet. over the p.a., they also mentioned multiple times that they are auctioning off highbury seats. get your bids in now. they are tearing it down and going to put in new flats.

tomorrow, it’s fulham v chelsea. this could be the best weekend ever. well, until we get to germany and the u.s. wins the world cup. i may just have to kill myself after the world cup and get out on a high note.

i’ve got to try and figure out if there’s a good match to go to next weekend outside london. i would like to get to germany for the u.s. friendly, but they don’t really have any info on tickets. i’ve e-mailed ussoccer.com to see if they know anything. i would still have to sort out getting there and finding somewhere to stay and what not. otherwise, i’m going to have to find somewhere to try and catch the game here on t.v. which seems unlikely.