Most fun had by bums is at their own expense so it is nice to see homeless people having fun competing in ways that aren't deeply upsetting and degrading like, for instance, playing soccer. The Homeless World Cup gathers homeless people from around the world to, obviously, play soccer. The game is almost identical to the professional sport except whereas many professional players are known by only one name, many homeless players have only one name like Australia's Yusef (pictured). There are teams in many major US cities and around the world. The American qualifying rounds, to see who makes it to the national team, take place August 17-20 in Charlotte, SC. After that, the championships are to be held in Cape Town the 23-30th of September. In anticipation for the qualifying rounds, matches are being played throughout the country. Last year at Edinburgh, Italy took home (or not home) the World Cup trophy, proving mad skillz know no social boundaries but, as a number of African teams barred from entering the UK found out, nations do. Let's hope this year, South Africa--a country whose relationship with minorities has been dicey, to say the least--welcomes the players with open arms.
As the World Cup fades into memory we mourn the 64 people who have died World Cup related deaths. WFMU's World Cup Deathwatch, have been tracking World Cup deaths since the start of the tournament. High on the list of causes of death is heart attack followed closely by what could be called deaths of passion, as fan so caught in revelry (or agony) they ride atop Parisian subway cars lean out their car windows while driving, or hang themselves as a 60-year old Japanese man did after his country's defeat at the hands of Germany. Then there is the whole constellation of argument related deaths. In Thailand, Italy's penalty kick over Australia resulted in an argument then fatal stab wounds.
The latest casualty is a 77-year-old Italian man who fell from his roof while afixing the Italian flag before the Sunday's final. He died holding the red white and green in his arms. Talk about die-hard fan.
Gridskipper's farflung correspondents filed these reports from the field on the joy and agony of the FIFA final.
Azzurri fan Nicole Martinelli from Milan writes:
Italian blues Azzurri beat the smirk off French Les Bleus to take the World Cup. A nail-biter if there ever was one, the game came down to penalty kicks that had Italian fans hiding under their flags and mamma mia-ing in dismay. But for the first time in 24 years, the Azzurri brought home the cup. Here in Milan, traffic regulations were flouted. Articles of clothing were removed. A good time was had by all. And the entrepreneur with the bright idea of having "World Cup Champion" shirts made beforehand sold them like hotcakes, at 10 euro a pop. FORZA ITALIA!
While Melissa Phruksachart reports on the bleak scene in Paris:
Putain de merde. We were so close. The day started off on a bright note, with supporters of Zidane and Les Bleus (the French team's nickname) promenading along the Champs-Elysées all afternoon. Pit stops at St-Michel and Hôtel de Ville reinforced the sentiments: Paris Aime Les Bleus !
The bar crawl through Châtelet was tense, with no one speaking save for quick cries in moments of hope. The game was never-ending. Zidane's freakout and subsequent expulsion in the 110th minute brought shouts and tears, hands over mouths. The excruciating round of shootouts was over in several heartbeats. We had lost. People emptied out immediately and shuffled to the Métro. Others, still in shock, wandered silently through the streets. Leftover fireworks exploded in ours ears, angry and menacing. Attempts to celebrate second place, to rouse up "Allez Les Bleus ! Allez Les Bleus !" soon died.
Monday morning, things are quiet. The car horns have stopped honking. The broken beer bottles have been cleared away. While we may smoke a few more cigarettes today, life continues on as usual.
The weather is still weirdly good for London, which makes one wonder why the Trafalgar Hotel (which is, incidentally, discreetly owned by Hilton) doesn't make more of a fuss about their nifty rooftop bar. On Saturday night, there were only a handful of customers on the seventh floor on hand to observe the enjoyable spectacle of morose, flag-bedecked England fans coming to do the traditional thing of drowning their sorrows in the fountains only to find that Trafalgar Square had been taken over for a safe-sex-rather-than-soccer-minded EuroPride rally. Anyway, back to the bar. At such times a jug of Pimms is a time-honored way of critiquing England's piss-poor record against Portugal while drinking in one of London's finest views.
In Germany, the World Cup's English fans have been a big financial blessing, using their powerful pounds to slurp up the country's most precious resource, one pint at a time. In Nuremburg, for instance, 70,000 British tourists drank an average of a dozen pints a piece. As one bar keeper had to admit, "Never have I seen so many drink so much in such little time." In Nuremberg, the Brits managed to drink a head-shattering 17 pints each. Some breweries are worried that they're run out of beer before the final, on July 9th. With Britain defeated and many of its fans now out of Germany, maybe there's still some bier left. If not, there's always Riesling. . . .
Possibly the most annoying Google Maps mashup yet. Clicking around various points on the TeamScream map brings up YouTube videos of football fans yelling out the name of their World Cup team, along with some dancing or spasms or similar retardation. Very Germany-heavy, though many of the Germany popups are actually rooting for other teams. Where do you root for the referees? They're winning the most games anyway.
About halfway between Stuttgart (on the German side) and Strasbourg (in France), the wee town of Baden-Baden has gotten lots of attention as the home base for England's soccer team. Eclipsing even the footballers in both press column inches and local fascination are the WAGs -- the "wives and girlfriends." The Telegraph details how the town is daily assaulted by this Allied commando strike team:
They are uniformly tiny, their hips as slimline as their vodka tonics. They teeter along the cobbled streets in spiky heels and skin-tight jeans, their eyes masked by saucer-sized sunglasses.
Victoria Beckham, wife of King David, is the queen of the WAGs of course, shown above at right with Cheryl Tweedy, girlfriend of Ashley Cole. The ladies have won the approval of their temporary town by dropping wads of cash on the shops, spas, and other froufferies of Baden-Baden.
Continue reading "Footballer's WAGs Conquer German Hamlet"
The Days blog continues to provide yeoman bloggage of World Cuppery in New York, including the sadly civil nonbrawl between Mexico and Argentina fans after the latter's victory on Monday. Sadly, no Latin blood was spilled in Soho, or at least not on West Broadway.
Soccer or shopping? The Ultralounge area at Selfridges -- usually a rolling exhibition cum retail space highlighting all that is ephemeral and a tad pointless -- helps to blur the boundaries by temporarily turning itself over to football. Carpeted in fake green turf and furnished with deeply uncomfortable changing-room benches, it is currently proving strangely popular. So what if it's a windowless basement? Such conditions apparently provide prime sports viewing if combined with 30 or so widescreen, flatscreen TVs, a bar (sponsored by Smirnoff, in that fine modern tradition whereby not a ball can be kicked unless a multinational is involved), and a pie stall (very British this) run by the mockneyesque Square Pie company.
New York t-shirt and design concern Nossa is offering a limited-edition "Soccer Marauders" t-shirt to commemorate the World Cup festivities. The shirt (in gold or white) features the mugs of 42 top-notch players competing in this year's tournament. Not coincidentally, the shirt costs $42. You may not reduce the shirt's price to $41 by eliminating David Beckham.
OK, here's the last video of soccer-playing robots you'll ever need. Prepare yourself for several concentrated, edited minutes of RoboCup 2006 highlights. Contains some annoying music and flashing titles, but if you can ignore that, you got soccer dog-bots, soccer box-bots, soccer cone-bots, and the occasional penalty-kicking droid. Enjoy.
Predicted as far back as January, there was indeed a spot of hooligan ultraviolence during and after yesterday's German 1-0 victory over Poland at the World Cup match in Dortmund. Spotters expected a coming-out party for Polish hooligans wanting to make waves by whupping on their famously ornery German counterparts. Unfortunately for those who love a good beatdown, the police were out in force, and quickly rounded up likely and actual perpetrators. A few skulls and trashcans endured a bit of smashy-smashy, but nothing like the giant riot feared and/or hotly anticipated. Nice gallery of cops and angry fat guys over at Spiegel.
First goal scored by an electric pencil sharpener at RoboCup 2006. We're still working our way through the Tiny Boxlike division, as opposed to the Multi-Tentacled Killdroid division, so stay tuned for more dramatic footage.
As part of the Ballkünstler ("ball artist") exhibit at Leipzig's Museum of Fine Arts, visitors can kick around soccer balls adorned with the likenesses of world leaders in Kendell Geers's "Masked Ball" installation. Subtle! And yet cathartic. The exhibit runs through August 13.
Overtly dedicated to supplanting humans, the creators of the RoboCup have a fiendish mission: "By the year 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team." Your tax dollars at work, folks. The 2006 RoboCup begins today in Bremen, snaring plentiful juice from the simultaneous (and, for now, human-only) World Cup. Through June 20, robots will compete in soccer divisions like small, medium, humanoid, and four-legged, the latter of which seems a little unfair to potential human foes.
The Proud Gallery at Camden in Stables Market has two innaresting ongoings. One is an exhibit called "Shoot! A History of the World Cup in Pictures," showing off World Cup photos from 1930 to 2002 (note that you can order prints of many exhibit photos online). The exhibit runs until August 6. And to take advantage of the summer weather, they've also opened At Proud, a two-story gallery-lounge cocktail terrace with deckchair seating. Expect tiny eyeglasses and expensive hair.
The photo above may look all Brokeback Mountain, but rest assured, that embrace is more about incapacitation than titillation. It's early yet in the World Cup schedule, but so far, violent fan action has been muted. That's likely due at least in part to 3,500 "known hooligans" in the UK having their passports confiscated before the World Cup matches even began, stranding them at home and forcing them to pound on their countrymen instead of foreigners. It's all part of the imaginatively named Football Disorder Act, which allows for such pre-emptive hooligan-grounding. Thugs who attempt to slip the net are arrested at the airport. The U.S. State Department's World Cup Fact Sheet advises Americans to "avoid aggressive individuals or altercations," or in other words, stay home where your phone can be more reliably tapped. In closing, I'd just like to reiterate how much I enjoy saying "hooligan."
You never knew Washington DC had such a great beach, did you? The National Geographic Museum is running a timely mini-exhibit called "Soccer: Planet at Play." On view are 52 photographs of football action from around the globe, like the above hottie cavorting in Rio; plus they got video highlights of American League games. The exhibit runs through October 29. Perhaps most interestingly, a "small viewing area" will broadcast World Cup games from noon to 5 p.m. daily. Which games? No idea. If you'd like a broader spread of games to choose from as well as booze and food options, DCist has a few choice selections on other game-viewing spots around Washington; be sure to review the comments on the DCist post for more reader recommendations. If you have World Cup-watching suggestions for cities worldwide, let us know in the comments below, and/or via email at tips@gridskipper.com, and/or consider signing up to submit reports from World Cup host cities.
Advertising difference or attitudinal disparity? On the subway systems in Toronto and Vancouver, Pepsi billboards contain little more than a headphone jack. Riders are encouraged to plug in and enjoy Pepsi-selected tunes. On the other side of the same damned coin, Coca-Cola has plastered ads all over the streets of Copenhagen Stockholm (and other European cities) related to their World Cup ads. These billboards repeat the voiceover from the commercials, followed by the universal punchline (you guessed it) "Goooaaaallll!". Which sugary bubbly beverage to choose? I just don't know, both campaigns are so subtly compelling.
We might love us some foosball here in New York, but the real fútbol grand dance begins tomorrow, and that can only mean one thing in NYC: Time to get drunk as the proverbial pharaoh. UrbanDaddy runs down one of the first lists of weekend bar action, with only Opia seeming to offer nation-specific festivities (Brazil apparently). I'm sure all the Australians will be at Eight Mile Creek and Sunburnt Cow. Where are the rest of you New York-dwelling foreigners planning to spend your national inebriation? If you're sponsoring or know of NYC bars or restaurants throwing drinkyfests catering to particular World Cup competitor countries, drop us a line in the comments below or at tips@gridskipper.com.
UPDATE 1: Ask and ye shall receive: Thrillist is all over it, suggesting a NYC bar for most every nationality. Some compromises -- fans of the five African comptetitors all get the same bar -- but a good beginning. Of course, we still want more suggestions.
UPDATE 2: And yet more Slav-specific venue advice from Slavs of New York.
UPDATE 3: And yet another nationality-based list, this one from AOL CityGuide, highlighting a few non-Manhattan options.
If you happen to be swanning through Paris's Colette en route to bash in the heads of opposing football hooligans in Germany, consider checking out Bora Herke's 32 Soccer Balls installation at the boutique. After the smells and the pizza, you can probably guess the rest -- yep, a soccer ball decorated to represent each nation participating in the World Cup. Above, that's the good ol' denim-clad USA on the left, anime-crazed Japan on the right. Where are the 32 nationally styled World Cup prophylactics?
In honor of incipient World Cuppage, OnNYTurf presents an elegant Google Map of the Berlin Metro. No frills, but it's bilingual, and further enhancements are in the works.
The fine folks at BootsnAll have resurrected their World Cup Blog from 2002 and amped it up considerably. The jazzy new site is the central hub for 32 bloggers -- one for each competing nation. Other BootsnAll personnel will be infiltrating Deutschland itself for more bloggy soccer action.
A reader writes in asking for assistance with the basic human needs for World Cup: shelter and poontang.
Help in scoring free digs, scoring with women, and then more scoring with more international women. (I was reading about some poncie blogger loft being offered to winners of their contest -- that would be pretty cool to crash for free accommodations). Any other advice would be helpful -- I'm going to book my flight by next week I think.
Few words can chill the soul like "blogger loft." Anyone heard of this contest? If so, or if you have advice for our intrepid score-seeker, drop us a line at tips@gridskipper.com or in the comments below. And remember that we're still looking for World Cup correspondents.
In the same genre as World Cup national aromas, I present to you the World Cup national competitors in pizza form. Flip Flop Flying was kind enough to provide the full menu and translation from German pie purveyor Call a Pizza. I like how many if not most of the pizzas have little or nothing to do with the country in question, representing merely an attempt to vaguely approximate the colors in the country's flag with similarly hued toppings.
Our esteemed jock brethren at Deadpsin will be all over the upcoming World Cup like a steaming pile of spaetzle; be sure to check in there to read and contribute game reports and all manner of related shenanigans. For our part, we want to hear reports of extra-game action. Where are you drinking? Where are you sleeping? Who are you sleeping with? Where, what, and on whom are you regurgitating? What color t-shirts adorned the gang of hooligans who kicked your ass outside the stadium? We want reports of what's going on in the World Cup cities once the games begin, and we desire tips, guest posts, photos, video, and any combination thereof. But let's not limit the action just to Germany, since millions will congregate in bars worldwide to drink abusively and distribute abuse on adjacent opposing fans. Reports of World Cup action from anywhere are just as welcome. And just to keep it interesting, we'll make it into a competition -- with fo' real prizes for the best tips, photos, and video submitted over the course of the World Cup. Details to follow, but if you're interested, drop us a line and submit your tips, links, pics, vids, or thoughtful personal commentary to tips@gridskipper.com. And be sure to track the thrilling product of this endeavor in our ongoing World Cup coverage.
About an hour south of Hanover is the town of Holzminden, "home to one of the world's leading industrial producers of smells since 1874." To celebrate this fact, locals have produced a signature smell for every country competing in the World Cup. (In case you're wondering, the smell of America is the smell of Coca-Cola.) Together, this bouquet of aromas represents ... what? Well, consider the alternative:
[Creator Ernst-Adolf] Hinrichs also experimented with the smell of a football stadium - a mix of beer, Coke, chips, sausage, mustard, pizza, lemonade, tobacco, grass, muscle creams and sweat.
"But it had the potency to knock me out," he said. However, when he inadvertently mixed all the "team" smells the scent was "heavenly".
Points for sweat, but for a true stadium olfactory experience, you need urine, vomit, feces, and perhaps a faint tang of blood. Plus deodorant. And then urine again. And "musk." Heavenly!
Among the first outta the gate with preloaded World Cup primers is the Washingotn Postwith a great article recommending various Munich food/beer spots slightly less susceptible to touristic inundation. Of course, every square inch of the city will likely have at least one drunken hooligan weaving through at one time or another, so it's all a matter of degree. The article also contains details on a side trip to nearby Stuttgart -- but really, if you're trying to escape the World Cup, why are you even in Germany?
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Most fun had by bums is at their own expense so it is nice to see homeless people having fun competing in ways that aren't deeply upsetting and degrading like, for instance, playing soccer. The Homeless World Cup gathers homeless people from around the world to, obviously, play soccer. The game is almost identical to the professional sport except whereas many professional players are known by only one name, many homeless players have only one name like Australia's Yusef (pictured). There are teams in many major US cities and around the world. The American qualifying rounds, to see who makes it to the national team, take place August 17-20 in Charlotte, SC. After that, the championships are to be held in Cape Town the 23-30th of September. In anticipation for the qualifying rounds, matches are being played throughout the country. Last year at Edinburgh, Italy took home (or not home) the World Cup trophy, proving mad skillz know no social boundaries but, as a number of African teams barred from entering the UK found out, nations do. Let's hope this year, South Africa--a country whose relationship with minorities has been dicey, to say the least--welcomes the players with open arms.
As the 
The weather is still weirdly good for London, which makes one wonder why the 
In Germany, the World Cup's English fans have been a big financial blessing, using their powerful pounds to slurp up the country's most precious resource, one pint at a time. In Nuremburg, for instance, 70,000 British tourists drank an average of a dozen pints a piece. As one bar keeper had to admit, "Never have I seen so many drink so much in such little time." In Nuremberg, the Brits managed to drink a head-shattering 17 pints each. Some breweries are worried that they're run out of beer before the final, on July 9th. With Britain defeated and many of its fans now out of Germany, maybe there's still some bier left. If not, there's always Riesling. . . .
Possibly the most annoying Google Maps mashup yet. Clicking around various points on the 
About halfway between Stuttgart (on the German side) and Strasbourg (in France), the wee town of Baden-Baden has gotten lots of attention as the home base for England's soccer team. Eclipsing even the footballers in both press column inches and local fascination are the WAGs -- the "wives and girlfriends." The 
The 
Soccer or shopping? The 
New York t-shirt and design concern 
Predicted as far back as 
As part of the 
Overtly dedicated to supplanting humans, the creators of the 
The Proud Gallery at Camden in 
Excellent little find from 
The photo above may look all Brokeback Mountain, but rest assured, that embrace is more about incapacitation than titillation. It's early yet in the World Cup schedule, but so far, violent fan action has been muted. That's likely due at least in part to 
You never knew Washington DC had such a great beach, did you? The 
Advertising difference or attitudinal disparity? On the subway systems in Toronto and Vancouver, Pepsi billboards contain little more than a headphone jack. Riders are encouraged to 
We might love us some foosball here in New York, but the real fútbol grand dance begins tomorrow, and that can only mean one thing in NYC: Time to get drunk as the proverbial pharaoh. 
If you happen to be swanning through Paris's 
In honor of incipient World Cuppage, 
The fine folks at 
A reader writes in asking for assistance with the basic human needs for World Cup: shelter and poontang.
In the same genre as 
Our esteemed jock brethren at 
About an hour south of Hanover is the town of Holzminden, "home to one of the world's leading industrial producers of smells since 1874." To celebrate this fact, locals have produced a 
Among the first outta the gate with preloaded World Cup primers is the 
