No fan, I’m but still part of the tribe

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/11/2015 (3604 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s 4:09 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, but it could easily be 10 p.m. inside the Victoria Inn & Convention Centre, which is hosting the Spirit of Edmonton hospitality room. A cover band called Spoiled Rotten is doing David Bowie’s Fame. (You have to love the comforting reliability of cover bands.)

I am dancing with a genial older Eskimos fan in reflective orange shorts. We are the only two people on the dance floor. I am a very good sport.

“You are a good Eskimos fan,” my dance partner said, before we parted ways. I never did catch his name.

No, I’m not. At best, I’m a bandwagoner. Because here’s the thing: I don’t care about the Grey Cup. I wasn’t even 100 per cent confident about who was playing until this week, and that’s because I work at a newspaper. The only time I care about football is when it’s Friday night in Dillon, Texas, Tim Riggins is playing and Coach Taylor is looking disappointed, as ever.

But I do understand, as a lifelong music lover, what it means to be a fan. And whether it’s a band or a football team, I know how who you cheer for can become a part of who you are. It’s an expression of identity. When you’re wearing a band T-shirt or a team jersey, you are essentially saying the same thing: I am a part of this culture. I am a part of this tribe.

Of course, there are always extremists, and I’m not just talking about the kind of people who riot after they’ve lost a big game — even though it was never actually their game to lose. There are also people who act as gatekeepers, who exclude casual fans — or, gasp, bandwagoners — for not being “real” fans. Writer/baseball fan Stacey May Fowles wrote a piece about just that for the Torontoist in the summer, when people were jumping on the Blue Jays bandwagon, and allow me to repeat what she wrote here: “There is absolutely nothing wrong with jumping on a sports fandom bandwagon and anyone who says otherwise hates joy.”

The slogan for the 103rd Grey Cup, and its surrounding festivities, is “You belong here.” Earlier in the day, at the Nissan Titan Street Festival — because everything at events such as this are corporate — I felt that sense of belonging. It didn’t matter I had no interest in getting decked out in team colours, or getting day drunk.

It didn’t matter that I had no interest in the Grey Cup itself. There’s something unifying — and something distinctly Prairie — about a come-as-you-are gathering of people, unpretentious in their parkas and Sorels, dancing to country songs on a November afternoon. However temporarily, I am part of the culture. I am part of this tribe.

It’s also very hard not to be charmed by the kids — and the grinning grown men acting like kids — running obstacle courses and kicking field goals at the University of Winnipeg’s RecPlex. Or the two little girls in their tiny Blue Bombers jerseys and pink leopard-print leggings, getting their photo taken in front of Grey Cup signage by their beaming dad.

And it’s hard not to be charmed by the man wearing an Eskimos-themed Hawaiian skirt — an improbable garment that actually exists in the world — or the old woman wearing an I Got Sluiced T-shirt, her face a mass of smiley wrinkles at the Spirit of Edmonton party.

I didn’t feel out of place. I maybe even had fun.

I hopped off the bandwagon Saturday night and I didn’t watch Sunday’s big game.

But I hope, to paraphrase comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates, that the competitors you prefer compiled copious points and were rewarded and meritorious — so that you felt temporarily, adjacently, victorious.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti

Jen Zoratti
Columnist

Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the weekly newsletter NEXT. A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the Free Press in 2013. Read more about Jen.

Every piece of reporting Jen produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print – part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.