Category: sports culture (Page 3 of 4)

Uneasy Moments in Dunkin’ Donuts

20 September, 2009 / Kat

Not an iced coffee, but an example of how much both my cat and I run on Dunkin'. And why it's weird to go in their as a Bills fan.

Not an iced coffee, but an example of how much both my cat and I run on Dunkin'. And why it's weird to go in there as a Bills fan.

Sunday morning, I woke up earlier than usual, and decided to take advantage of this extra time and do laundry. I got ready, threw on my Buffalo Bills sweatshirt, Bills earrings and jeans, and beat the crowd to my local Allston laundromat by all of five minutes. I snapped up my three washers, started my laundry, and headed over to the Dunkin’ Donuts across the street. This is the DD’s where one of the employee’s routinely refers to me as “Ms. Cinna-mina-mon”, after the morning I was more dead to the world than usual and couldn’t say cinnamon to save my life. (Because I live on a small cinnamon iced coffee with cream and sugar. If this is not drank in the morning, than my day will be largely unsuccessful.)

Being 8am on a Sunday morning in Allston, Massachusetts (aka college party central of America), my usual swamped Dunkin’ Donuts was dead. One person in front of me getting a Coolata, one person at the doggie window getting something equally as complicated, so my Bills clad self waiting patiently in line, ready to order my iced cinnamon when it was my turn.

Someone else entered the Dunkin’ Donuts and got in line next to me. He cleared his throat and then stifled a laugh. I snuck a glance. This young man was wearing a new but fashionably antique-y looking Pat-the-Patriot-sporting New England Patriots sweatshirt.

Dear The Sports Hub: Please, Just Hire a Woman.

14 July, 2009 / Kat

Dear 98.5 The Sports Hub,

You were quite the topic of conversation on Tuesday, appearing literally out of nowhere with the sudden morning announcement of the demise of WBCN. With your August 13th arrival, Boston will be home to four sports radio stations – fitting really, given that Boston is the capital of obsessive sport fandom.

Before you go around stealing talent from the existing three stations (which you are already rumoured to be doing), let’s talk about one aspect of Boston Sports Radio that no one ever mentions:

Where are the women?

Yes, there is a woman, Jayme Parker, who does WEEI’s Sports Flashes on occasion. And WEEI.com recently hired a recent BU grad to host it’s morning video clip segment and do brief sound bites. Yes, many of the upper administrators calling the shots on WEEI and ESPN890, like Julie Kahn (Vice President of Entercom Radio New England) and Jessamy Tang (General Manager of 890ESPN), are some strong-willed and successful females. But besides that, Boston sports radio is all male dominated.

In 2009, when one of the most consistent and coveted football analysts/hosts of the past decade is female (Suzy Kolber), and when the Red Sox beat writer for the largest newspaper in Boston is female (the Boston Globe’s Amalie Benjamin), and when our regional sports television network host is female (NESN’s Kathryn Tappen), why are females largely absent from manning the microphones in Boston’s sports radio scene?

On the HLOG: Why All the Hockey Fan Girls Are Going to Hate Me

26 February, 2009 / Kat

I couldn’t keep my mouth shut about this Club Scarlet controversy, so I wrote a piece on the HLOG about it. A piece that will probably get me blacklisted by angry female hockey bloggers. Oh well – as someone who essentially markets events and initiatives towards 18-23 year olds for a living, I feel for people who are just trying to get their events and products out there. Someone had to defend them.

They Hate Me: Western NY’s Toxic Back and Forth Relationship with Basketball

31 October, 2008 / Kat

Pravin commented earlier this week on my treatise on New York State sports fandom with a great question on basketball in Western New York:

And where does basketball fit into all of this? Is there a particular team that people in Western New York prefer to root for? I’d imagine that the Knicks–not even factoring in their past seven seasons of futility–represent everything that upstaters hate about downstate. There is the connection between the old Buffalo Braves and L.A. Clippers, but not even the most ardent fan of the A.B.A. would retain that kind of loyalty.

Now, I have been in quite a few relationships in my day, including some of those of the on-and-off, back and forth, toxic variety. (Who hasn’t in their day? The degrees of severity vary, but everyone’s had at least one.) But none come close to the toxic back and forth relationship that professional basketball has had with my home region of Western New York. Professional basketball took Western New York and toyed with its emotions – “You want an NBA Championship? Here you go. Oh, wait – you aren’t “big enough” to support professional sports! Sorry, let’s move the team away.” – until a whole generation and their children decided enough was enough, and ceased following the NBA all together.

To Buy a Jersey, To Not Buy a Jersey

19 October, 2008 / Kat

Brief note before I begin – I may be the only person on WordPress not writing a blog post on Sarah Palin today. Logging in just now, every single post on the WordPress front page was about her Saturday Night Live appearance last night. Come on, Bloggers of the World, stop copying one another.

(And yes, I’m hoping just by slipping her name in there, I get 6-10 extra hits on my blog today.)

On to our regularly scheduled sports related blog, because while I may have been named Most Political in high school, it was because there was no “Overly Involved Wanna-Be Sportswriter” superlative, not because I actually like politics. (American politics is faker than the WWE, as far as I’m concerned.)

Two and a half weeks ago, I found myself on NFL.com pricing a Trent Edwards jersey or t-shirt (call me cheap, but I prefer the t-shirt fake jersey because of price and because I can wear it more places.) I believed Edwards had shown enough over the previous four weeks for any serious Bills fan to consider buying his jersey. It would be the first time since the Drew Bledsoe era that a Bills fan could consider buying a starting quarterback’s jersey. Sure, the cheapest option would set me back at least $29.00, but one’s weekend wardrobe can’t consist of her three Gabe Kapler and one Jason Bay shirts through the entire baseball off-season. (And that’s not a new thing for me – I wore my 49ers, Bills, Amerks, and Steve Young shirts all through high school. That was before this whole women’s sports paraphernalia thing was accepted. No wonder I didn’t have a date until college.) Continue reading