Maybe you don’t much care for soccer, which, for the remainder of this post, I will call football. You think it’s a slow game without enough scoring, and you don’t like how often the players feign injury. That’s fine. I mean, you are wrong and you are dumb, but that’s fine. I’m not going to try to change your mind. And I’m not going to try to get you excited about the UEFA European Football Championship, aka the Euros, the massive 24-team tournament now underway, the one that will wrap up with a final match in London on July 11. Similarly, I am not going to point you to Jonathan Thompson’s article from the July issue of D Magazine, his guide to the best footie pubs in Dallas, which went online today — or, rather, I am not going to point you to the article with the idea in mind that you’ll use it to enhance your football-watching experience.
A quick story: Friday afternoon I met Jonathan at the Dubliner to watch England play Scotland. Jonathan is a Londoner who has lived in Dallas for five years, so you know which side he was supporting. The bar was packed, mostly with Scots, it seemed to me. There were kilts. There was singing. At one point, I said to Jonathan, “You might want to go stand at that end of the bar. Looks like that’s where your Brits have congregated.” Jonathan very kindly replied, “Easy, mate. Scots are British, too.” So, as it turns out, you and I are both dumb.
Jonathan continued to stand where he stood, peeling his eyes from what turned out to be a lackluster match only long enough to secure another pint and introduce me to a lass named Karina who had moved to Dallas from London only two days prior in furtherance of a romantic relationship with a fellow named Ben whose parents once owned a vineyard in Sonoma. We all had a good chat. So far, Karina loves the heat here.
That, then, is why I’ll point you to Jonathan’s article about the best Dallas pubs in which to watch football. Even if you couldn’t give two biscuits about the game, these are wonderful places to meet new people — you know, folks with fun accents and a good grasp on the Venn diagram of countries that make up Great Britain and the United Kingdom.
We’ve got four matches today. Belgium’s Romelu Lukaku needs to find joy if my wager on his goals total is to pan out. And England face the Czech Republic tomorrow. Don’t expect any of your British friends to be available from about 2 p.m. onward (unless those Brits are from Scotland or Wales).
