The Super Bowl weekend promised much and — depending who you talked to — delivered, although the process continues on, locally and nationally.
Sports bar TV junkies can continue their fix in coming days with the also-much-televised Winter Olympic Games, but what’s listed in the next paragraphs is how the local Big Game experience, and overflow, was fulfilled:
— In the end, the victor was not the usual-finish Pats, or the Pates as a friend Out East, with that accent, seemed to have said after the game.
— It was very late on a Thursday, days after the Big Game, and there still were Super Bowl workers hanging around. A group of them in construction were at Pudge’s ordering Wisconsin-ish drinks.
— Did any of the servers I know see a $100 tip? I asked this after the fact. “Now that would be news,” one said, although with a wink of an eye, indicated he’d gotten near that mark.
— The chef du jour for the Super Bowl has a lookalike, although a bit younger, in North Hudson. So Andrew Zimmern had his face continued to be splashed all over the place well after the game itself ended. That was even more so than my neighbor, who is well known himself for being a former Pepper Fest king and having a man cave to die for. Chances are that one watched the other. And Zimmern would fit in well as a Minnesota name if you’d just add two more letters near the end.
— This was the best trash talk cut against the Patriots, overheard in Minneapolis and repeated at Dick’s Bar later: “You had Benjamin Franklin and have been back sliding since!”
— While local servers said the visiting patrons were well behaved, there were exceptions, emulating the testosterone-fueled rant of the Eagles’ center in Thursday’s victory parade in Philly. While at the microphone, he was definitely at the center of things. As were a group of three downtown newcomers on Saturday night, dressed like they were attempting to be preppy, but not quite able to pull it off. They like many others appeared to think that simply sporting a North Face sweatshirt would make them fit in. However, their look was more like Duke University meets St. Elmo’s Fire. After bugging me to find out my political views, and I knew well enough to keep quiet, the shortest of them called me a socialist, then picked up a bar stool as if he was going to hit me with it. That was my ticket to exit, stage left. When I dropped back in to the venue later in the week, the incident was well talked about, and I found out the guy had been kicked out just a few seconds later.
— Some venues were actually closed for the day, and Kozy Korner in North Hudson gave it a new twist, shutting down at 4 p.m. to have their company Christmas party. At least that kept them busy watching the pregame shows. Other places just stood pat with their offerings, or just served their regular snacks. It was the day before the Super Bowl and staffers at the Agave Kitchen still weren’t certain if they would be serving their standard complimentary hot dogs that have been a game day staple. It did look, however, like that dog decision would eventually be a do. The afternoon of the Super Bowl, the downtown was hopping, with lots of people in small groups entering and exiting the venues I write about.
— Near the end of the whole situation, I needed to go, late, to a bank from the nearer portions of the Enemy State to cash a check. I noticed that there was a mock $1 million bill sitting behind their counter. The clerk entered longer than usual information on my records and seemed to be referring to what was writtem on that $1 million bill! As this ended up taking longer and longer, lapsing into several minutes, I was wondering about both whether the check was good and also, if there was some karma between the fact that the bill was for one million, and that the number of people from out-of-town was one million. After all, everything was resolved, unlike the crazy celebrations in Philly.
— I signed up to rent out a room with one of those Super Bowl hosting companies, but they appeared to have bitten off more than they could chew as far as volume of potential clients, as except for initial conversations in mid-January, they for days on end they would not answer their phones, pick up on the other end, or return voice mail messages. I never did get a person on the line or my room actually listed. So in the long run this poor ink-stained wretch was out a few thousand dollars in potential revenue.
— Along with those hosting lines, we needed plenty of boxes to throw things into, then shift them around into the basement, so I enlisted the help of some bartenders I know and asked if they could throw several of these containers my way after stocking boxes of liquor. I simply said, “hey buddy, can I get a few boxes,” without elaborating. A few days later, at The Village Inn, the bartender asked me as an aside, “hey, how did your Super Bowl hosting go?” Was it that obvious that’s what they were for?
— Out-of-towners especially might not know the full implications of negotiating the monuments-to-themselves that occur when you get the Department of Transportation involved in road construction, and this enormity has been shown in particular with the massive Wisconsin side infastructure that went along with the Stillwater bridge project. Some from other states didn’t know quite what to do with the current love of the DOT, that being roundabouts. In particular, a guy who looked the part of the average farmer, with the farmer T-shirt, drove his truck, with Nebraska plates, to the front of the first roundabout you get when traveling north on Hwy. 35 toward Houlton. There were no other cars in sight, but rather than simply merging, he pulled to an almost complete stop when coming to the turn lane at the entry of the concrete circle. Then on this day of sub-zero temperatures, a bit further down the road, there were drivers coming out of the car wash with plates from Texas to North Carolina. Don’t they know that the water from the wash will quickly move to ice on their vehicle?
— At Buffalo Wild Wings locations, including that in Hudson, local control of publicity efforts was taken over by their sponsored brands for food and soda, meaning they would do no such thing themselves, a manager said. So no ad for them other than this at HudsonWiNightlife.
— Late last year I ran into someone while waiting in a lobby in Hudson who said she had a friend who was in charge of an effort to build a few more motels in The Cities just for the Super Bowl. And as far as the international airport, it had traffic totals that were easily the largest on record on Sunday night/Monday.