Welcome everyone to my second of three blogs on this Presidential Election Day. Make sure to check out the blog on my trip to Hartford by visiting: http://doinow.com/hartford/
This blog picks up where I left off in Hartford, so make sure to check out the link above if you haven’t done so! This blog recaps the second part of my trip to New England.
After the Wolfpack lost 5-4 in OT, it was time to hit the highway and get to Boston. We figured that there would be nothing to do in Hartford after the game. I would venture to say that we made the veteran move by getting the hell out of Hartford and heading to Boston. With the WAZE app, we made it to Boston in just a shade under 90 minutes. By 11:15PM we were checked into our hotel and ready to make a night of it.
Knowing that we wanted to leave early Sunday morning and get home in time for football, a nap, then the Rangers/Jets game, we figured Friday night would be our night of debauchery. Working in our favor was that Saturday night was daylight savings time, so we would get an extra hour of sleep. What we didn’t know was that most bars in Boston shut down at 1am. Talk about a boner killer.
As with most cities that shut down their bars early, the majority of people are shitfaced drunk by 11PM. Everyone starts early. We didn’t know that, so everywhere we went, everyone was way ahead of us. I largely sobered up in the car on the trip up & didn’t get too crazy in Hartford because I felt bad that Tommy had to stay sober since he was driving. I didn’t want to just pass out when I got to Boston and wanted to see the town for myself.
The first bar we went to was some bougias place with “craft” beer. It’s fucking beer. You want “crafts”, go to a Homegoods or something. Just give me a fucking Miller Lite and put the game on. I don’t care about where you find your hops or if you’re brewing with Boston barley. Just get me a cold one so I can enjoy myself!
The only reason I bring up the first bar we went to is because it leads to a hilarious, yet disturbing story. As we were pounding back our first round at around 11:45, we were told by the bartender how the bars close at 1AM, but some bars have a 2AM permit. Since we wanted to make the most of the night, there was no chance we were going to stay in a 1AM bar.
The bartender then went on to tell us how the best way to get around in Boston is via Uber. Cabs were hard to come by and expensive. When it comes to Boston, it is like NY – very touristy and very expensive. However, also like NY, the people are nice, the views are great and there is a lot to do.
Not having Uber and because my friend Tommy is a caveman who has a Zack Morris cell phone, doesn’t do social media, doesn’t do paypal & wouldn’t know how to read this blog unless I emailed him a link to his AOL account, (Granted I still use my AOL email account too!), I decided to sign up for an Uber account. It really took me about 2 minutes to do the whole process.
For shits and kicks, we called a cab just in case. The cab never showed. As soon as we did Uber, a guy picked us up in about 45 seconds. This world is something else.
Being responsible, we don’t drink and drive, hence us using the Uber in the first place. The Uber driver gets to talking to us and asks us where we’re going exactly. Before getting the Uber, all I did was type in an address that the bartender at the first bar gave us, about a bar that closes at 2AM on the other side of town, by the Faneuil Hall district.
It comes up in conversation that this is our first Uber ride. The driver tells us how great Uber is, how he has a safe driving record and it’s the best way to travel in town. As he’s telling us this, he’s swerving all over the fucking road. Tommy and I are looking at each other with the “WTF is going on?” eyes. Not knowing where we are, we aren’t gonna jump out of this dude’s car. After all, we’re wearing our Rangers shit and don’t need any problems with the Westies!
All of a sudden, Tommy comes flying into me as our Uber driver smacks the shit out of another car while weaving in and out of two lanes. Neither one of us are hurt, so we are laughing a bit about the situation. The Uber driver is freaked out and saying how it wasn’t his fault. Tommy and I are like yea, go fuck that guy who hit you up! The guy gets out of the car and encounters a guy who looks like he could be playing D-tackle for the Pats. Eventually, the two exchange info and nothing happens.
I was shocked the cops weren’t called, as now the case is a “he said, she said” type of thing. Any cop or bystander would easily be able to tell that our driver was at fault. Without the police report, it’s a word against word thing.
Eventually we get to the bar district and we have our choice of where to belt out a few.
We checked out several places, before settling at bar name withheld to protect the innocent. After talking to a few locals, we found a few hockey fans to talk puck with. They also were close with the owner, so instead of leaving at 2AM, the door was locked and we kept drinking with some of the locals til nearly 4AM! When I saw the door lock, I was hoping this wasn’t going to be a scene out of “Bronx Tale” (Now you can’t leave!”) since we were outnumbered 10 to 2, but I had nothing to worry about. Turned out these people had the same attitudes as us – these athletes don’t fight over our jobs, why fight over their jobs?
The people at the bar were cool people and we had a great time learning about Boston, the Bruins and the history of the town. There were bars all by us that were open since the days of the colonies. This is what I love about our trips. You get to learn and meet cool people.
Put it this way – the first three rows at MSG or rinkside will run you $800-$1600 face value. Granted, you can do my stubhub trick, but even then, you’re spending a couple hundred for those seats. Most of the places we travel to, we get a flight, hotel, good meal and a ticket within 5 rows for less money than the best seats at MSG. I rather explore new cities and continue to check off arenas off my bucket list than give Dolan more money.
As I type this right now, flights to Chicago are $150. We might do Rangers/Hawks in December. I was thinking of Rangers/Jackets but for some reason flights to Columbus are expensive. I have no clue why.
Anyways, after meeting some good people, we stumbled out of the bar, found a safe Uber driver, and passed out at 4:30AM.
Being a huge fan of Cheers, of course I had to hit Cheers during this trip. Since we didn’t have much time in Boston, we hit the tourist version of Cheers. We will hit the Bull & Finch next time. The tourist Cheers is located where a lot of historical stuff in Boston occurred & was closer to TD Gardens, which is another reason why we went there.
It’s funny, I’ve been to Boston many times during my wrestling days for shows. I also attended a few Red Sox games too. This time however, for the first time, I didn’t encounter many people with the Boston accent. Most people said Tommy & I had a NYish accent, which would be the Long Island accent.
We did encounter a nice couple at Cheers who had the Boston accent. I was trying to get him to say stuff where it would really come out and once he said “Bawbby Awe” I had to control myself from laughing. When he said, “did you get a piccha with Nawm?” I did crack up and he knew why. He was a good guy and we had a good conversation with him.
The best thing I took out about our conversation with him? How pro-Trump he was and how he told us that many in Mass (No Bostonian says Massachusetts, they all say Mass) are Trumpocrats. I’m not going to turn this into a political thing, but I just found it eye-opening that in such a democrat state, where anyone with the last name Kennedy can do no wrong, that people are pro-Trump.
For the record, the guy, like Tommy & myself, is a union construction worker. The unions all say vote Hillary, but if she’s going to increase the amount of immigrants in the country, it will also increase non-union work too. It really is a double-edged sword. I think the only thing everyone can agree on is that it is sad that HRC & Trump are what America has decided are our two best options for the biggest office in all the world.
After bar-hopping around the TD Gardens and let me tell you, the Boston bar scene is comparable and just as good as NY, it was time to head to the game. I gotta tell you, I would love to do this trip again. We hit maybe 1/4 of the bars around the arena and still got a pretty good buzz before going to the game! It was so lively and a great time.
The TD Gardens is a phenomenal venue for a hockey game. Unlike MSG, it was easy to get around and you weren’t bumping into each other in between periods. There were also more bathrooms in the place, so you didn’t have to wait 30 minutes and miss any of the action in between periods when taking a leak.
What also was great was that the TD Gardens sells Molson beer and let me tell you, it was one of the freshest pints of Molson I got off a tap in a long time. Stuff like that means alot. The MSG taps are horrible and stale these days. You’re stuck drinking disgusting tin beer. For the “World’s Most Famous Arena”, the beer situation is a travesty. It’s almost a bigger travesty than the ice at the Barclays!
By now, you know it was, as Tommy told everyone that talked to us after the game, a “BOSTON MASSACRE”. The Rangers beat the Bruins 5-2.
Reason 384038483843883 why I can’t Lundqvist – 99% of the games on the road I go to where he plays, the Rangers lose. Whenever the back-up goalie starts, the Rangers win. In the last three seasons alone, I’ve seen Talbot or Raanta beat Montreal, Toronto, New Jersey, Islanders, Boston and get a point in Calgary. However, this is a good time blog, so enough about Lundqvist!
I would say 40% of the building were Ranger fans. It seems a lot of Ranger fans came out. This was a perfect game to go to, since it was a Saturday night and you got the extra hour of sleep with DST. There were also people from Boston rooting for the Rangers because they knew or saw Kreider, Vesey and/or Hayes play when they were first starting. One person told us that they went to college with Vesey, but he was really drunk, so who knows if that was true.
Another great story was running into people who read this blog! I have an eclectic group of asshole friends that I go to games with, so it’s even better when a blog reader meets me when I’m with them. If you do see me at a game, feel free to say hi and if the mood should strike, feel free to get me a beer too! I will even reimburse you for a beer if you dump it on my friend Brian. However, don’t be that creep that takes pictures of me on an escalator like a stalker. You know who you are!
I’m not going to analyze the game at hand and will save that for the next blog. This blog is more about the trip than the game anyway. However, sitting so close (our tickets were $118, four rows off the ice), you get to see the game in a different way. We got to see quite the historic night, as Buchnevich got his first, Stepan got his first of the season, we saw two short-handed goals and we saw Raanta play like a beast.
It was also cool seeing Chara up close. However, it may be time to call it a career, as he was slow and sucking wind.
There was also one point in the game, during a Boston PP, where the Rangers D couldn’t get off the ice. You could hear Klein and Holden sucking wind hard. Sometimes on TV you can tell when guys are winded, but to actually hear it, it just shows you why this game is the best game live out of the four major sports.There is so much you miss on TV with a hockey broadcast, as opposed to being there live.
The people of Boston, in and out of TD Gardens, were great fans. Sure, we had some good-natured ribbing at our expense, but for the most part, everyone was cool to talk with. Talk about a town that was the anti-Philadelphia! However, I did hear that if you wear a Habs jersey, you’re pretty much Isis in Boston!
As someone who doesn’t talk shit at the games and just wants to enjoy the experience, it was good to see all the extra security around the place. I’ve talked about the 19 vs 2 fight after a Flyers game in Philly. I’m not looking for that. In the past personally, I’ve had Devil fans try to fight my father, my brother-in-law and myself after the Rangers beat the Devils in Newark. Tommy and myself also ran into 6 drunk Samoans looking to brawl with us in Montreal. It’s not that I’m worried about handling myself, I just don’t want the bullshit. I’m 34 years old with a job. At this age, punching someone hurts your hand! I’m not a teenager anymore! There are plenty of people I wouldn’t mind punching in the mouth, but no one is worth a ride with the police & going to court over! These players don’t fight over my job, there is no reason for an adult to fight over sports.
I really do feel sad for fans, especially at my age or older, who try to fist-fight with opposing fans after games. After all, we are older than 99% of the players on the ice. Would two high school kids brawl over the result of a little league game?
It’s not tough to get drunk, round up a crowd and jump two people. I never felt nervous supporting my team in Boston. Then again, I wasn’t the asshole jumping up and down after every Rangers goal. Act like you’ve been there before they say! I did see one guy eye my buddy Tommy after the Rangers 5th goal, as he jumped up and screamed “BOSTON WEAK” (In Tommy’s defense, he was about 14 Tequila drinks deep and it was pretty funny) but we got out of there unscathed. Plus, as I said, there were a lot of Ranger fans in the place.
All in all, Boston has a great arena for hockey, is a beautiful city with much to do and a place I’d like to visit again. The people we met were great and made our trip more enjoyable too.
After the game, we had a few more belts before calling it a night. We got back to our room before SNL was over, so it wasn’t that late. It would’ve been cool to have more time there, but we’ll be back.
As I said, we got the benefit of the extra hour of sleep with DST. We left Boston around 9AM and I was showered & on my bed, in Long Island, watching the Fox NFL pregame show at 12:30. Another excellent road trip!
I didn’t talk much hockey these last two blogs, as these blogs were more about the experience of traveling and doing writing something different than all the other blogs out there. I still managed 3000 words here anyway!
Stay tuned for last and final blog of this Presidential Tuesday, where I talk the 5 Goals a Game NY Rangers!
Thanks for reading
Sean McCaffrey
BULLSMC@aol.com
@NYCTHEMIC on the twitter (More pictures of my trips are there too)
