Nostalgia...
Reading Bill Simmons' running diary today really made me yearn for those halcyon days during grad school when we'd take the first day of the NCAA tournament off as a religious observance. We'd start off the day at Kincaid's, semi-sports bar up in Lincoln Park. It was the de facto KU bar in Chicago (many KU grads having the distinct urge to get the hell outta Kansas after graduation, but not quite enough gumption to go to NYC). It wasn't the full-on sports bar environment, but they'd have all four games playing at once, so you could get the full tournament experience. Plus, they had better than average bar food, which is a non-trivial issue when you're gonna be spending the next 6 hours in the same place.
After the first two sets of games, we'd decamp to Joe's a couple blocks away. Joe's was the real deal: four big screens arrayed at the front of the massive main room and a dozen smaller TVs filling in nooks and crannies around the rest of the place. It was also an Indiana bar, so whenever the Hoosiers would come on, you'd get the Indiana fight song and clips from the movie played over the sound system. Mainly, though, we needed to go to Joe's because after the aforementioned 6 hours of drinking, eating and watching TV at Kincaid's, increasing the level of stimulation was the only way to make it through the evening slate of games. Not that there weren't exciting moments from the games themselves; our time at Joe's witnessed the historic upset of a loaded Iowa State team by Hampton (nailed by Eugene's psychic coin flipping technique) and tighter than they should have been first round KU games against Holy Cross.
Some 12 hours after it all began, we'd stumble out of Joe's, exhausted and queasy from the inhuman volume of beer and cooking grease ingested during the ordeal (Simmons' sub-literate last entry today is an excellent barometer of how draining the whole thing can be). Being broke-ass grad students, doing that again for the Friday games wasn't a financially viable option, which was for the best, really. Just dragging my ass into the office the next day was a damned near heroic effort; heading back to the bar for another full round would have required a superhuman level of devotion.
Yes, those were the days...
After the first two sets of games, we'd decamp to Joe's a couple blocks away. Joe's was the real deal: four big screens arrayed at the front of the massive main room and a dozen smaller TVs filling in nooks and crannies around the rest of the place. It was also an Indiana bar, so whenever the Hoosiers would come on, you'd get the Indiana fight song and clips from the movie played over the sound system. Mainly, though, we needed to go to Joe's because after the aforementioned 6 hours of drinking, eating and watching TV at Kincaid's, increasing the level of stimulation was the only way to make it through the evening slate of games. Not that there weren't exciting moments from the games themselves; our time at Joe's witnessed the historic upset of a loaded Iowa State team by Hampton (nailed by Eugene's psychic coin flipping technique) and tighter than they should have been first round KU games against Holy Cross.
Some 12 hours after it all began, we'd stumble out of Joe's, exhausted and queasy from the inhuman volume of beer and cooking grease ingested during the ordeal (Simmons' sub-literate last entry today is an excellent barometer of how draining the whole thing can be). Being broke-ass grad students, doing that again for the Friday games wasn't a financially viable option, which was for the best, really. Just dragging my ass into the office the next day was a damned near heroic effort; heading back to the bar for another full round would have required a superhuman level of devotion.
Yes, those were the days...