What follows is a reconstruction of your correspondent’s scattered memories from a boozy, brazen, bawdy, and…um, bfun 72 hours known as SLC Away, wherein the Timbers finished their season with a great point on the road, and the Timbers Army made a point of having a great time.
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photo by Sarah Alley
Thursday October 20 2011: The Timbers had just officially been eliminated from playoff contention with New York’s win over Philly, but there was one game left to play, one that many of us had been looking forward to for a long time: the Timbers first visit to the Wasatch Front since 2004, when they defeated the unfortunately named Utah Blitzz (who were led by the unfortunately criminal Fadi Afash and coached by the unfortunately wretched Chris Agnello) in the US Open Cup. I’d never been to Salt Lake City. I’d never followed the Timbers outside the pacific time zone. I’d never ridden 13 hours in a van with Matt Talley. This was gonna be a good one.
We left Portland at roughly 12:30am from Chez Talley, where we’d congregated a few hours before for dinner and drinks. 11 people in a 15-seater van, we were buzzing from all the hospi-Talley-ity (mac and cheese and whiskey, though not all in one dish), singing songs, whooping it up, lots of jeans-advertisement-style high fives. The sun came up about the time we hit Baker City.
I managed to doze for maybe an hour, and woke up when we stopped at a rest stop just across the Idaho border. The Snake River was beautiful in the morning sun, but I couldn’t stop shivering, groggy to the point of bewilderment. What the hell was I doing in Idaho?
We picked up Jay in Boise and almost immediately the watermelon-flavored malt liquor appeared as if from nowhere. Watermelon-flavored malt liquor is awful but it does something beautiful and mysterious to Jay. About noon the bottles of Purple Cow vino were opened and I felt like a hundred bucks. Sleep is for the weak.
It seemed fitting that Wu-Tang Clan serenaded us as we crossed into Utah, drinking wine straight from the bottle because we’re classy. We entered SLC to a collective, “Where’s the rest of it?” The Temple looked too small, and the Occupy SLC campsite looked too large.
We checked into the Little America Hotel and immediately went crazy, throwing lamps out of windows, defecating in the sink, tearing the tags off the mattresses (just kidding, I defecated in the mini-fridge). It was Bedlam. What really happened is I calmly poured myself a whiskey and sat down to let my body adjust to the shock of no longer being in the van. It was a brilliant sunny autumn desert day, and we were among good friends at the beginning of what had already been a fun trip. Then Jay found the Mormon MI-5 listening device.
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I was just looking for the Gideon bible!
After some more time spent relaxing in the rooms, drinking some of Utah’s finest beer (no kidding, Talley found some 9% local brew, I felt like I was smoking crack at my grandmother’s house), it was time for the party at Salt City United’s bar, The Republican (of course it’s called that). I took a wrong turn walking to the bar, and ended up going two or three blocks in the wrong direction; with the brobdingnagian size of the city blocks in SLC, that put me about half an hour out of my way. No worries, I thought; this is a big clean friendly town to wander around in. And then I was menaced by some drunken neck-tattoo douchebag wearing RSL gear who asked what my scarf was and then told me to fuck off about 50 times. Heavenly Father will not be happy with that guy when he finds out.
Anyway I made it to the pub. As I remembered from their visit here in May, the RSL supporters were a fun, friendly bunch. Songs were sung, drinks were drunk (including more good beer and actual liquor…my preconceptions! They are in ruins!). Then the lack of sleep started to catch up to me, and a few of us went back to the hotel; it was only about 8 blocks, but as I mentioned in SLC that’s roughly the same distance Moses had to walk to get to Mt. Zion (get it? Utah? Zion? Desert wandering? Haha jk?), so we stopped on the way for some cheap and delicious street tacos.
Next morning we went touristing around what I suppose I have to call “downtown” Salt Lake City. It is the center of town, and there are a few big buildings and a light rail running through it, but it felt like every intersection was the corner of SE Powell and 82nd Ave, only with fewer prostitutes. Where the hell was everybody? (We later found out where everybody was: at the Temple.) I realize it’s probably ironic for a Portlander to express amazement at the smallness and sterility of another US city, but it just felt weird.
We fortified with breakfast (good coffee too? Who knew etc.), and then made our way to the one part of SLC everyone has to see when they visit for the first time: I’m talking of course about the Greek Orthodox Cathedral.
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Slightly less grandiose than the Temple.
Of course I’m really talking about the Temple. Without getting rude about religion and faith and otherness, I’ll sum up my reaction to Temple Square by saying: WEIRD ME OUT BRO. I love being a tourist, and we encountered a number of very friendly people at the Temple who smiled, said hello and tried to make us feel welcome (some of whom even recognized our Timbers gear), but it was too close for me. There were a ton of people there for weddings, baptisms etc., and I felt a mixture of claustrophobia and the sense that I was trespassing in someone’s living room. The Temple looked like the Disney World Cinderella castle, and even though we missed 12-foot Space Jesus(!) we did see some other interesting statues, and a whole slew of brides (Audrey asked me to keep a count: we spotted no fewer than a dozen during the 45 minutes we were in the Square).
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There's no pity in Temple Square
After an appropriate amount of time spent gawking at the buildings and statuary in Temple Square (at the corner of Temple Street and Temple Street, just south of Temple Street, I wish I were making this up), we walked to the Occupy SLC camp. It was larger than I’d expected (I honestly didn’t expect to see any protest at all in Salt Lake City), and was set up in the same park as a weekend flea market; we sadly arrived too late to visit the flea market, but we did see a couple guys towing an upright piano behind a bike. So, there’s that.
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Keep Salt Lake City Weird!
The pregame pub was called, fittingly, the Green Pig, and it was indeed lousy with Timbers Green by the time we got there, with larpers hanging from the light fixtures, doing larp shots out of each others’ navels, and I even saw one guy just larp all over himself after larping a larp larp. After a couple Utah beers we larped over to the train for the ride to the stadium. I remember thinking at this moment: I wish my flask were bigger.
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Cascadia Invades the Wasatch Front
From what I saw there is an abundance of space in downtown SLC, but for some reason the stadium is located about three towns down the valley, in Sandy. Happily though, their light rail is convenient and stops just a couple blocks (i.e., about a three-day hike) from Rio Tinto Stadium.
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Outside the ground.
While we queued up outside the ground waiting for the gates to open, I was impressed by the number of fans already there. I remained impressed throughout the game by the good home crowd who filled the park, making lots of noise; there were flags and face painters all over the place, with a few of them even giving us the finger during the match (tsk). Even if their organized supporters groups are scattered and less than amazing (beyond the repetitive drums, can you hear RSL sing? I don’t hear etc. etc.), the general atmosphere was pretty good.
Image may be NSFW.
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One strange thing I noticed, apart from the fact that I was in Utah, were bunches of kids with KFC buckets on their heads. Hahaha am I right, it stands for Kenny Fucking Cooper, but really why were they wearing fried chicken buckets on their heads?
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photo by Sarah Alley
As for the game itself, well I’m no Chris Rifer (you can read his match report here), but here’s my take: FLARES! FLAGS! FLASK (shh!)! FUTTY!! I’m gonna keep on loving you, cuz it’s the only thing I know how to doooooo…. And so on. I haven’t had as much fun at an away game since…well actually I had a blast at Seattle Away this year, but SLC Away ranks with my favorite Timbers awaydays of all time.
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photo by Sarah Alley
That was pretty much the end of the trip. By the time the match ended, I was too pooped from the past 48 hours to even think about hitting the bar, so a few of us just hung out in the hotel S’ing the S. If I have to include a denouement, let’s go with: the ride home was long and ass-numbing, and Talley ate a McRib. The end.