“This is a performance art. It’s art for art’s sake,” says Mark, a 24-year-old student at UCLA who - judging by the amount of crushed beer cans at his feet - doesn’t have any plans for tomorrow morning. “Actually, it’s more of an avant garde situation now that I think about it.”

Mark’s friends don’t understand what he’s talking about, but after spending the last few hours talking to dehydrated, sunburnt men and women just like him, I finally do.¹

Mark - like ten thousand others in the Los Angeles area - drove here with his family and friends to have a good time. On any other day the golf course we stood on would be empty save for a few CEOs in plaid pants. But not today: today is the biggest day of the year for Mark and those alike. Today is the big game.

Sports Illustrated recently ranked the UCLA/USC rivalry higher than the Ancient Greek/Trojan rivalry, followed by Army/Navy in a close third. For everyone who came out today, this is the only chance of the year that they will have to show their muscle, prove their worth, and throw the biggest tailgate party in history.

A guy like me needs football like he needs an anus in his ear.

So, being so naive about the actual nationwide legitimacy of the sport, I didn’t even realize how many real and crazy people might actually attend this game. Mapquest had me believing my drive would take only 39 minutes, but the commute to the Rose Bowl Stadium was really a frustrating 90 minutes.³ If it hadn’t been for  the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson committing his album “Pet Sounds “ to CD for me to listen to in the car, I might have lost my shit on the way there.

Once parked in a residential area, we scaled down a steep hill with hundreds of other fans towards where the partying was. One fan proved his worth by actually crawling down this steep slope in crutches. I can only imagine the fun it would have been to see fans attempt to climb back up the hill after a full day and night of drinking... but alas, we left after halftime.

Other fans showed their devotion in more conventional ways. Helmets, flags, pom-poms and giant foam fingers surrounded us as we traveled the golf course to chat with our fellow tailgaters. Oddly, it wasn’t after more than a few minutes that I already felt welcome. I was a virgin in a world of football fornicators, and nobody noticed.

Virtually everybody I talked to had either family and friends with them. After the first few interviews, I found that most American university tailgaters were not university students, as I once predicted. In fact, a good portion of these folks didn’t even go to a college, much less UCLA or USC. It’s family tradition that brings them here every year, sometimes twice a year, as early as 6:00am to grab their spot before someone rooting for the other team does.

When my fellow-tailgating newbie partner, Lauren Hobar, and I arrived on the scene, the game had already started, so many of the tailgaters we talked were well on their ways to being wasted. Many had been inside the Rose Bowl Stadium for the big game in the past but said they found it boring and tiresome. (Alcohol is also not permitted on the premises nor is it sold, I’m told.) Since then, these brave ones have stuck to their campers and brought their friends along with them, some for as many as 25 years. Some seemed reluctant to realize that half of their friends had left for the real game happening inside, but those few who stayed were proud that they stayed. Some with their Direct TV satellites and televisions had everything that being in the stadium could give to them - without paying $9 per hot dogs and without a line to pee (we were, after all, on a wooded golf course). The perk, one oddly-goateed man with a television said, was that they had the privilege of witnessing the instant replays.

There were different interests in being outside from the others I talked to, though. For many, it was solely the beer. This is why they prefer to be outdoors. For the less-honest ones, it was the camaraderie. And for some, it was all about the glory of throwing a beast of a tailgate party.

Also, the gambling. Gambling appears to be a common interest out here on the golf course, and it makes me wonder if this type of beer/TV/gambling happens when Tiger Woods comes to play in Southern California. Some simply just brought cards to play rounds of Texas Hold-em with and some actually had the audacity to bring their own poker tables. Others keen on gambling had bet real money online on their favorite teams. One USC fan had placed $100 on rival UCLA to win through the website Sportsbook.com. He claimed that in the past, the teams he wanted to win always lose, so he thought he’d bet on UCLA to win so that if his favorite team does lose, he’ll at least have more money.⁴

So what is the secret essence of tailgating that I have been sent out here to discover? Is it the beers, the gambling, or - dare I say - the actual game itself? As I kept searching for new and exciting people to meet, taking offers for free beers (but never food, like I require), I kept finding out more and more about my limits with the sun and hunger and alcohol, and I asked if I was alone in that feeling.

“Tailgating always teaches you about yourself,” said Mark, as he downed another beer. “How much you can drink, how much you can eat, and who your friends are.”

I was mostly just trying to get Mark to throw as little as a few ketchup packets my way (I hadn’t eaten since the night before, which was filled with lots of drinking and vomiting, as stated earlier), but I was also starting to understand a little bit about what the essence of tailgating is. I reflected back upon all those years that I didn’t consider football as either a sport or a legitimate pastime at all. I should have, because the answer is clear. If the essence behind tailgating could be reduced to a math equation (and it can), it would read “Friends + Food divided by Football = Tailgating.”

“The game would still happen without tailgating, but tailgating would not happen without the game,” Mark told me. It was actually starting to ‘get it’ after this statement, even if Mark wouldn’t remember saying it the next day.

The most important event to happen to me for the day was still upon me, and it happened when we met a small Mexican family on the course. This is exactly what I needed to help me figure this all out. I had gone from camp to camp and truck to truck asking questions and begging for food, yet no one had offered anything but beer. (And it wasn’t helping.)

That all changed when we met the small Mexican family. The whole atmosphere of the game changed for me. No longer did I feel like a journalist at a tailgate party; after this brief encounter, I felt like family.

The real family, who spoke no English, had been hired by the city to guard the putting greens of the golf course from drunkards stumbling/driving their cars across it. These three men had nothing but each other for the day - they had no television, no radio, and only one piece of meat.

When I approached these men, they had only a small fire and a pan in front of them, with a single piece of very small steak simmering on top. After a few brief moments of conversation (en Español), the father of the group lifted the pan, and put the steak right under my nose. I had to ask what he was doing, because it seemed so odd that anyone would offer us food at this point, and he said ‘take a bite.’ Not one privileged USC or UCLA student had offered us anything but beer, and this poor family was offering Lauren and I a bite of the only food they had.

And that is how I learned the art of tailgating. Feeling reluctant (but also fearing unintentionally disrespecting these people by turning down their offer for a hand-cooked meal), we picked off a small piece of meat and split it, then left their camp feeling like something special had just happened. Now that the feeling has passed, I can’t explain what it felt like. I’m sure this is what meeting God when disguised as Ann Heche’s crazy alter-ego Celestia feels like.⁵ I was shocked, I was excited, but most importantly, I had just been part of something extraordinary.

We are all brothers and sisters under Ann Heche/Celestia’s great skies, and I believe that in that sense of fellowship lies the true essence of tailgating.

After collecting my things, collecting my thoughts, and collecting my ketchup packets for the long drive home, I  realize I won’t ever find out who won the game unless I look it up somewhere. No one will come telling me ‘USC pulled through in the final quarter’ or that ‘UCLA wrecked USC from the first punt on,’ because no one knows that I now (secretly) love football. Or at least the tailgating part, or something. It doesn’t matter to me anymore, and it didn’t matter to a lot of people out there today, either, which is - in essence - the essence of tailgating: to not give a shit and have yourself a good time.

1. 1.This was one of the rare circumstances where I covered a story without any prior background knowledge or care for what I was covering. Tailgating was not something I ever saw in my future. Having thrown a huge surprise party the night before at my place which metaphorically turned into an ipecac extravaganza for seven guests, I had only slept two hours before taking the 90 minute drive down to Pasadena to cover this story at the Rose Bowl.
   

2. 2.See, I told you so.
   

3. 3.This is why I was so bewildered when AOL purchased Mapquest for $1.1 billion in 1999. If, by 2004, they still couldn't get their hands on traffic-prediction software like Google and GPS units are known to have done, then what use was it paying $1.1 billion for the company in the first place? This is just like when Time Warner bought AOL. Bad mergers have a tendency to promote just that - more bad mergers. Do you hear that, Friendster? Mapquest’s acquisitions department is calling you.
   

4. 4.It worked, and I wonder if I should have taken down his contact information, in case I should ever need him to bet $100 on red.
   

5. 5.I realize her publicists in the media have done an excellent job of hiding this fact from the everyday movie-goer, but you can find more information on her alter-ego here.
   

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michael alahouzos

2004

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