Simon Lindberg: Subcultures

Almost everybody in New York City is from somewhere else. Since there are people from all over the world in this city—and a lot of people who can spot a good business opportunity—I can be sure that there will be a place to watch my favorite sport on TV. Before I came here, I was worried about how to be away for the three most intense months of the European football season. It turns out that there's a big football subculture in New York. Especially in the East Village, chances are you will see a lot of men (and some women) in football jerseys on weekend mornings.

The bar Nevada Smith's on Third Avenue is usually packed on a Saturday at ten in the morning. And it's a really big bar. However, for my weekly fix of football, I go to the 11th Street Bar, because that's where the New York Liverpool Supporters Club watches their games. It's a great atmosphere and lately I've enjoyed some of my best experiences as a Liverpool fan in that bar.

But still, it's a subculture. So on a weekend when the sports media in Europe is going into hyperbole about the World Cup qualifiers, all you get here is the college basketball tournament. I understand that. Because even though some East Village bars are packed with football aficionados in the early hours on weekends, football is still a subculture. College basketball is mainstream. How mainstream? Well, Obama was on TV making his predictions for the tournament. And not just the winner (he picked University of North Carolina and they're still in it) but every game in the tournament. And sure enough, the New York Times wrote about it in the political blog The Caucus.

Even though mainstream media doesn't care about football, fortunately the bar owners know it brings good business. So Saturday, there was a bar by Times Square packed with Swedes who saw the dreary game against Portugal. Saturday was very Swedish-themed all around. I have two visitors from back home and through a friend of theirs in Chicago, one of the guys was invited to play in a floor ball tournament up in Harlem. Now there's a sub-sub-subculture. Some of the people who walked in the gym expecting to see basketball or something didn't know what to make of it. I'm sure they'd never seen a bunch of Scandinavian ex-pats wielding plastic sticks and chasing an impossibly bouncing ball before.

They didn't stay long, though, so the audience was basically friends and family of the players. One American girl was married to one of the Swedes on the team from Chicago and she visited DN.se every day (they used to live in Sweden). She was originally from Kentucky so I mentioned that I heard that the coach of the Kentucky University basketball team just got fired. She was pleased and said it would please her mom, too, who had been very upset with the guy. Mainstream, indeed.