Well, I'm finally feeling a bit more rested after the weekend Supporters Road Trip to LA. We had eight people fly into LAX and we met up with another Rapids fan, who brought an LAG fan (but Jose was cool, so we'll forgive him!).
We took our rental van over to Hollywood and walked around the Chinese Theater looking at all the hand prints. I was quite excited to see R2-D2, C3PO, and Darth Vadar! And then we took a double decker that had the roof chopped off, for a tour around Hollywood. I must say, I never do these kinds of tours when I venture away from Colorado, but I really enjoyed the tour and Hollywood.
Game time was approaching, so we had to jet, but not before we did another thing I thought I'd never do in my life - bought a map of the Stars Homes. Why would I do that? Well, we packed in the van in search of the home of every girls' favorite MLS player. We have a very nice picture of the group and even left a warm Colorado Rapids gift! Don't worry LAPD, nothing you need to be concerned about.
We headed to our hotel where I watched Big Brown drop a Big Brown and then headed over to Alpine Village, a sort of German Market/Inn/Restaurant near the stadium recommended by our good LA Riot friend, Shooter. We enjoyed some frothy German beverages, some potato pancakes, sauerbraten, and hasenfeffer in the good company of Shooter, our newest LA Riot friend Bill, and "the Portuguese guy".
We then headed over to the Home Depot Center where we were hooked up with more new Class VI friends, the Angel City Brigade. Now many here in Colorado feel we get a raw deal from the Rapids, so I'm going to highlight some of the things we certainly should be happy about. Number one, we're allowed to tailgate. That's not the case at HDC and it rather sucked a big one. But ACB certainly work with what they got, and we enjoyed a few beers and good conversation before heading into the game.
Which takes us to our second wonderful thing about DSG Park - no metal detectors to pass through! After Chris got his artificial knee through security, we hit the head and then went looking for our $50 face value seats (we thank Andrew of LAG for our supporters price). We now examine fact number three which we should all feel lucky about - $50 seats at HDC are corner bleachers! For you keeping track at home, if you had midfield front row seats at DSG Park - you'd be paying $35. If you had a corner seat at DSG, $12. But hey, they got Golden Balls right?
The Home Depot Center is an excellent place to see soccer. I was excited to go and honestly, it lived up to the expectations. The stadium, which does seat 9,000 more than DSG Park, feels BIG. When the stadium was only half full, meaning less than a DSG Park capacity crowd, it was louder than our fine field. So that's one thing that they certainly have on us, the acoustics are either wonderful in LA or terrible in Colorado - or maybe a little of both. But it made a big difference and explains a lot of the "cathedral" criticism DSG Park gets.
You all saw the game if you're at NoFanAlone.com, so I'll skip the torture that the first 70 minutes gave us. But the LA fans were all very respectful of us sans a few spit balls. Shooter came over and brought Dave to stand with him, Bill, and the LA Riot Squad, right down front. That's when we proceeded to score two goals. To LARS credit, they were all very good hosts of Dave, but after the Rapids buried two and looked like maybe they could tie it up, Dave had the good sense to come back to us.
The LA Supporters were great and very vocal. LARS had a nice call and response with the ACB and both groups were loud and supportive all game. Good stuff. And after the game was over, as we were leaving, ACB asked us to come over and have some beer with them. Good people I'm telling you, and I hope they come to Colorado next year so we can show them our rockin' tailgate.
The next morning, since the Reserve game got canceled, we met up with Bill and Shooter in Santa Monica at a pub who's name escapes me (Ye Ole ... that's all I can remember). The place is great! We watched more Euro 2008 and then walked over to the beach, strolling along the pier and water after a great lunch there. We then returned to the pub for some US Men's team action, but were only able to see a half since we need to get back to the airport. We grabbed In 'n' Out Burgers and then waited for our delayed flight back to Colorado.
Once again Tina and Kelsey put together an awesome road trip and we thank them mightily. We got to know German a little more and Perry a whole lot more and everyone really had a good time. And if you hear any stories about any close calls with me and the rental van - they are all lies!
Posted by mark at June 10, 2008 08:04 AM