It’s here. Football season has officially started, and that means a whole lot of fun and a whole lot of Seahawks watching. Shirley has never been to an NFL game, so I figured opening day at Qwest Field would be a good one to watch.
First thing first, we had to acquire some flair. Shirley needed a Seahawk related garment to display her fanship in the crowd. Much to our dismay there is next to nothing that is even partly cool when it comes to womens’ clothing. Everything is pink, or has glitter and rhinestones on it. Newsflash, pink is not a team color and you look like an idiot who goes to games for attention and knows nothing about what’s going on, but don’t get me started, ESPN already did a great article on pink football gear and the author does a really good job at outlining my frustration with it here.
After a trip through Pioneer Square, looking at countless sports shops, we found a pretty basic hoodie that would suffice for the game.
With our attire in order, the next event to consider is the tailgate party. My friends Stuart, Justin and Jeff have had season tickets (3 rows back from the endzone) for about five years and have gotten rather, uh, serious about their tailgating setup. Their setup is sweet, but while at 7-11 I found a way to make it even sweeter (pun intended, yuk yuk yuk)
I present Seahawk donuts. Their sort of football shaped, and have a Seahawks logo printed on them. Printed, on the donut. These were a hit, and I had to go to two 7-11s to get an adequate supply but they are awesome. They’re also frighteningly dense. After eating one of these preposterous pastries I felt sluggish and full.
Beer was distributed and the grill was fired up. Justin and Jeff walked down to the stadium to rent a Kangaroo TV. This device is ridiculous. It’s a handheld satellite TV receiver that gets all the football games, in your hand. It’s pretty impressive and you rent the device and a subscription to the service for 80 bucks a season. I can’t say I’d go to this level, but it’s pretty awesome you can get satellite TV on a handheld device.
Stuart getting serious on the grill.
The burgers. After an outing to a bar in Ballard known as King’s Hardware, we were introduced to the idea of putting peanut butter on our burgers. This, while sounding strange, is delicious. But we had to upgrade it, bacon, burger and peanut butter wasn’t enough. So we put egg on it, and it became known as the infamous “Stu Special.”
Here is a close up of the beast.
Another shot. The pool of yellow is egg yolk, not butter but equally frightening. Shirley had not tried the Stu Special and decided to taste it. She was impressed, but not suicidal, so she didn’t finish the whole thing.
Upon entering the stadium there was the standard bag check and frisk to make sure we weren’t bringing in drugs, knives, absinthe, guns, nuclear explosives or other inappropriate devices. While looking through Shirley’s bag they looked at her camera, and played with it a little before deeming it “too nice” to bring into the stadium. I felt this was pretty ridiculous, it’s a Nikon D80 with a kit lens on it it’s not like we’ll be able to sell any images taken from the 300 level with this thing, but we were told to return it to our car.
Thing is, we don’t have a car, and who knows if Stuart’s car would be open. But instead of holding her outside, they just let her through, so we disappeared into the crowd and made our way to our seats after being only slightly inconvenienced.
This was one of the more ridiculous jerseys I’ve ever seen. But at least it’s blue.
The view from our seats, Section 306, row PP. Yeah, we were pretty far up there.
The game was slow in the first half, but picked up in the second. An obvious victory was had and I’m left without my voice. Thanks to Shirley for shooting the photos and not getting your camera taken away at the security checkpoint.
GO HAWKS!
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