Day 2:
For the first match of the day, I trekked down to Korea Town, on 32nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenue together with New York Daily News shooter and volcano buddy Daniella Zalcman. The nice thing about K-town during the World Cup is that there’s no need to look for any place in particular. You can just walk down 32nd during a game, follow the cheers, take any entrance that seems to be leading to a dodgy ground floor calling center, climb up the stairs, and you’ll find yourself in a room filled to capacity with Korean fans donning red shirts. At 7AM on a Saturday.
(By the way, the replay of USA - England is on Univision in the laundromat I’m parked at. Poor Robert Green. If you get a chance, watch some matches in Spanish. The commentary is to die for.)
Long story short, South Korea looked disciplined, attacked swiftly, and did not cut Greece any slack. Thanks in large part to a good game from Ji-Sung Park, Korean fans had plenty of reasons to cheer. And boy do they cheer a lot — louder for each replay. The only Greek moment worth mentioning during 62 full minutes of no shots on goal was when Steaua’s Pantelos Kapetanos came in for Angelos Charisteas in the 60th minute. Kapetanos somewhat revitalized the Greek game and made Dani speak wisdom: “he is the pants captain.”
At 9:30 we left happy Korean fans behind and headed over to SoHo for Argentina - Nigeria, to try out upscale Cafe Novocento on West Broadway. This place was quite strange. We did manage to detect a couple of fellows that were indeed from Buenos Aires and were equipped with flags and a thirst for loud, but the density of USA jerseys and slightly lost looks on some people’s faces made me suspect that Argentina may be a fashionable team to root for this year among New York’s hip crowd. Nevertheless, I am going back to that cafe. The empanadas looked delicious, and the wine cellar promising.
Then after a short and most welcome pit stop at Dani’s, I dropped the journalistic pretense altogether and joined a few newly made friends at cozy Bunny Chow on Orchard Street for the United States – England match. By the end, I found myself rooting for the USA. They admittedly benefited from a rare and unfortunate gift from Green, but aside from some woeful defending, I daresay they deserved a draw and could have clinched a win in the final seconds. One thing’s for sure: neither classy looking Becks nor Mr. Capello were too happy on the sidelines. Just like Argentina earlier in the day, England could have pushed itself harder.
On a final, celebratory, and totally unrelated note: this is my first time in a laundromat. Ever since childhood, I used to fantasize about random encounters in New York City laundromats. Clearly, I belong to the 90’s. Game on!
