I turn left onto Langegracht, on one side of the street is a police station and on the other side are some junkies sitting, talking. There is a safe injecting facility nearby – apparently. My bicycle moves slowly and almost in a straight line. A woman ahead of me, riding quickly, has something fall from…
*Originally published on Shoot Farken as “Modern Football and Urban Alienation Under the Golden Arches in Maastricht” An underground freeway is being built on the eastern edge of Maastricht. The current site is a broad expanse of dust. Middle of the range sedans and trucks speed along the four lane, two-way road. There are as…
Or, “The Last Day of The Season” The weather is mild: this is an evening for t-shirts and light jackets. The train leaves for Dordrecht from Leiden at 18:30 and will stop at Schiedam Centrum more or less at 1900. This allows for a twenty minute journey to Het Kasteel (The Castle), via the RET …
Uncle Tony barracks for Port. Aunty Kip barracks for Port. Uncle Tony is a joker. I’m not sure of his job. I remember he gave me a Crowded House cassette when I was seven, one Christmas in Helmsedale Avenue, Glengowrie. Aunty Kip is a nurse, who changed her name from Cheryl as a teenager. I’ve…
Gouda, Olympia v. Kocatepe, 3:1 Take the 12:52 intercity in the direction of Utrecht, get off at Alphen aan den Rijn, then take the 13:12 sprinter to Gouda. Do not get off at Boskoop or Waddinxveen Noord or Waddinxveen. As the train slows to a halt, a candidate passenger spits at the train. He has…
The Catastrophe of PSS Sleman Sofyan, an Acehnese man, living in Yogyakarta runs a small stall by the side of Lapangan Minggiran (Minggiran Field) in the southern part of the city. His regular customers are largely ex-soccer players from the local leagues. Some are doing it tough, others have regular jobs as coaches or accountants….
Tom Boere, FC Eindhoven’s No.10, scored in the 86th minute to make it 1:2 to FC Eindhoven. There was a brief gasp from the Jong Ajax fans and jubilation amongst the travelling FC Eindhoven fans. They had scored their first goal at the start of the second half, Ajax had equalised and then without many…
*This piece was originally published on Shoot Farken, here. Football is a practice of cultural production. Being a fan is intrinsic to issues of identity – nationalism, parochialism, ideology, gender. The football stadium is, most often, an overwhelmingly male space. Fans claim space within the city; filling up trains and dominating sidewalks. The traces of…
Retro Football and the formerly Footscray Bulldogs Footscray’s greatest player, Ted Whitten, is also the icon of Victorian football and the champion of interstate rivalry. And, the Western Bulldogs are one of the AFL’s least glamorous clubs. Along with Melbourne, North Melbourne, St.Kilda and Greater Western Sydney they have a low membership and low crowd-drawing…