This weekend had to be one of those fantastical summer weekends that Portlanders dream about all winter, including possibly the two greatest summer pastimes: beaches and baseball. The beauty of Portland is that temperatures hardly rise above 80, there's an ocean breeze, very few insects, and in addition to the nightlife, entertainment and dining in downtown, and there are half a dozen beaches twenty minutes from the city limits. Heck, the ocean is three blocks and a grassy knoll from my apartment! The water might be cold, but we're Mainers, we're used to being almost completely frozen. A good beach, in my opinion, has a bathroom, a snack shack and a lot of Canadian tourists who are just as pale and as unprepared for bathing suit season as I am.
For reasons I'm not quite sure I understand, as a young adult, summer fun is generally equated with the consumption of lots of alcohol, mainly fancy, fruity-tutti drinks. The kind with little umbrellas that taste just like Kool-Aid until you stand up. My boyfriend suggested we take a bottle of champagne to the beach, but reasoned that making mimosas would be a more logical choice: the vitamins in the orange juice would counteract the dehydrating properties of the booze. They were delicious, but we still became dehydrated and sleepy over the course of the afternoon. We were also doing some serious rule-breaking, there is absolutely no alcohol allowed on the beach! Not to mention the seagulls. There was this one seagull who stared me down like he was a junior high big kid trying to wordlessly threaten me to give him my PSP. I didn't want to give it to him, but I knew there would be consequences if I didn't. I continued eating watermelon and sipping mimosa, and eventually he and his cronies left. It was almost five dollars for each of us to get into the state park, but I see it as an investment in the beautification of my state, or at least conservation of.
Saturday, after filling our stomachs with homemade savory crepes, my boyfriend and I were off to Fenway Park in Boston. Anyone who has ever been to a professional sporting event knows that sports fans are insane about their teams. The Boston Red Sox fans can be described as particularly fanatical... "Regular Rob", who is running for President of Red Sox Nation, explains it best in his blog: "They experience unparalleled euphoria when things are going well, but are vulnerable to deep depression when the team disappoints." In 2004, when the Red Sox broke an 86-year losing streak and won the World Series, people actually died in celebration riots. Kid of like Brazilian soccer fans. Since Boston is one of the most popular baseball teams ever, tickets are hard to come by. Josh and I found our opportunity to see the ballpark from the inside without paying hundreds of dollars to get in: the Portland Seadogs, our double-a Red Sox affiliate team, were playing the Harrisburg Senators in a special double header at Fenway. It was also clear to me now why the Boston Red Sox are like the Vatican of baseball franchises, and can pay the Japanese like fifty million dollars for exclusive negotiation rights, let alone the millions of dollars for the contract itself: seven dollar bud lights. I never would have guessed the most expensive beer I'd drink in my life would be bud light.
Like most people who grew up in northern New England, Boston is sort of my city. It's where I took public transportation for the first time, where the best bands play, and usually the major sports hub of the region. People from Indiana have Chicago, people from Maine have Boston. This being my case, I've always considered myself a Red Sox fan, but just a fair-weather fan. It's almost part of my genetic make-up. But since I started dating a serious baseball fan, it was in my own best interest to keep tabs on what's what from April to October. I knew I caught baseball fever when the five Harrisburg fans sitting in the section next to us started yelling "Portland Sucks" in our general direction. Portland, the team and my town, however, does not suck. Before I knew it, I yelled at the top of my lungs, "YOU SUCK!" I was as shocked as everyone around me that such a thing would come out of my mouth... it was almost an epiphany, sort of like, "I am one with baseball, I am a fan."
For reasons I'm not quite sure I understand, as a young adult, summer fun is generally equated with the consumption of lots of alcohol, mainly fancy, fruity-tutti drinks. The kind with little umbrellas that taste just like Kool-Aid until you stand up. My boyfriend suggested we take a bottle of champagne to the beach, but reasoned that making mimosas would be a more logical choice: the vitamins in the orange juice would counteract the dehydrating properties of the booze. They were delicious, but we still became dehydrated and sleepy over the course of the afternoon. We were also doing some serious rule-breaking, there is absolutely no alcohol allowed on the beach! Not to mention the seagulls. There was this one seagull who stared me down like he was a junior high big kid trying to wordlessly threaten me to give him my PSP. I didn't want to give it to him, but I knew there would be consequences if I didn't. I continued eating watermelon and sipping mimosa, and eventually he and his cronies left. It was almost five dollars for each of us to get into the state park, but I see it as an investment in the beautification of my state, or at least conservation of.
Saturday, after filling our stomachs with homemade savory crepes, my boyfriend and I were off to Fenway Park in Boston. Anyone who has ever been to a professional sporting event knows that sports fans are insane about their teams. The Boston Red Sox fans can be described as particularly fanatical... "Regular Rob", who is running for President of Red Sox Nation, explains it best in his blog: "They experience unparalleled euphoria when things are going well, but are vulnerable to deep depression when the team disappoints." In 2004, when the Red Sox broke an 86-year losing streak and won the World Series, people actually died in celebration riots. Kid of like Brazilian soccer fans. Since Boston is one of the most popular baseball teams ever, tickets are hard to come by. Josh and I found our opportunity to see the ballpark from the inside without paying hundreds of dollars to get in: the Portland Seadogs, our double-a Red Sox affiliate team, were playing the Harrisburg Senators in a special double header at Fenway. It was also clear to me now why the Boston Red Sox are like the Vatican of baseball franchises, and can pay the Japanese like fifty million dollars for exclusive negotiation rights, let alone the millions of dollars for the contract itself: seven dollar bud lights. I never would have guessed the most expensive beer I'd drink in my life would be bud light.
Like most people who grew up in northern New England, Boston is sort of my city. It's where I took public transportation for the first time, where the best bands play, and usually the major sports hub of the region. People from Indiana have Chicago, people from Maine have Boston. This being my case, I've always considered myself a Red Sox fan, but just a fair-weather fan. It's almost part of my genetic make-up. But since I started dating a serious baseball fan, it was in my own best interest to keep tabs on what's what from April to October. I knew I caught baseball fever when the five Harrisburg fans sitting in the section next to us started yelling "Portland Sucks" in our general direction. Portland, the team and my town, however, does not suck. Before I knew it, I yelled at the top of my lungs, "YOU SUCK!" I was as shocked as everyone around me that such a thing would come out of my mouth... it was almost an epiphany, sort of like, "I am one with baseball, I am a fan."
