Infants and Football

This afternoon, Sarah and I went to the Glory Days Grill to watch football*, because the Giants game wasn't being shown on the networks in the DC area.**It's one of those places that gets all the games, has tons of TVs, and is generally full of football fans watching out of town games. And it's only a mile from our house. The kicker is that the restaurant/bar itself is pretty darn nice; since it's a regional chain, it was completely non-smoking, very clean, and had a pretty good, if standard, menu. It kinda felt like we were at Red Robin, but with all football fans.

What was out of the ordinary was the number of families that were there, and in particular the number of infants. At several booths in our general area, there were baby carriers sitting alongside the table. And there were tons of little kids running around in football jerseys, and cheering along with their parents. None of this was consistent with anything I had really ever seen before at a NFL sports bar.***

This was a pleasant surprise to SJC and I. Popular culture tends to build a huge divide between families that have children and, well, everyone else. By the pop culture standard, families with little kids don't go to sports bars to watch football games. But apparently that's not really true. And it wasn't like we were appalled by our observations - I can definitely imagine situations in which other parents might bring their kids and I might react with a jaw-dropping are you kidding me?, but this wasn't it. It was a friendly, middle-class suburban family crowd. We both figured we'd bring the baby there next season when the Giants weren't available in our living room.

Who knew?

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*You will all be shocked how much of a football fan SJC has become. She has always had a passing interest in the Giants, but this year it really has become a full-blown obsession. Part of this is that she hasn't been feeling well during the 1st trimester, so she spends most of Sunday afternoon on the couch. And part of it is that she is killing everyone in our football pool this season. But she's also fallen prey to Giants disease, which has been good in that she's really into the game and knows all the players, and bad because she now is experiencing a mild version of the during-the-week depression/exhilaration that her husband, brothers, and father live with.

**This was actually the first game of the season that we couldn't get at our house - in addition to two night games and a game against the Redskins, the Giants somehow had the national game in week 2 vs. the Packers. Looking at the schedule and making some educated guesses, between network coverage and our holiday travel schedule to the Giants TV market, it looks like we're only going to have to go out for about 5 or 6 games, which is pretty remarkable.

***This isn't meant to imply the situation was perfectly kid-friendly. As far as the adult things you might worry about, it actually was perfect: nobody was drunk or shouting profanity or anything like that. However, some of the decisions made by the parents there were a bit odd. For instance, the Mom/Dad/7 and 5 year old group at the both across from us ordered two 22 ounce beers and 2 22 ounce root beers, toasted with them when they arrived, and proceeding to have something like a chugging contest while drinking the first 1/3 of the drinks. That's ridiculous, i.e. don't bother trying that with my 5 year old.