I am proud to report that, just like the last game of last season, today’s Media Football League opener ended with a touchdown by yours truly. Please see the contact page to see where to send congratulatory flowers.
But halfway through our game, the Park Nazis paid us a visit. See, we play at Northaven Park in North Dallas, and some of the neighbors evidently don’t like it when people use their park for strange things like recreation. They got parks officials to ban soccer in much of the park earlier this year; some say it was for nasty racial reasons, since most of the soccer players were Hispanic and it’s a white neighborhood. Anyway, when 10 of us showed up at 9:30 a.m. to play football, two different neighbors called to complain! I have no idea why — we certainly weren’t being noisy or obnoxious; there was no one else in the park at that early hour; the homes are quite some distance away from where we were. So this parks official shows up and says he’s gotten these complaints, but “now that he’s seen” us, “it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.” What’s that supposed to mean, that because 7 of the 10 of us were Anglo, everything is okay? It left us all (or me, at least) quite angry: since when do our tax dollars go to harrass Dallas residents using public parks to the detriment of absolutely no one?
3 thoughts on “Football”
Comments are closed.
Same problem in very white Seattle. Soccer is extremely popular and often marginalized for a variety of non-existent reasons. (Not my sport, but I don’t not support it.) Park officers are typically property-value or property-attitude enforcement officers. One prominent citizen managed to get a blanket closure of parks from 11 pm to 5 am a few years ago because he didn’t like people swimming near his house. (Before that, parks were open for appropriate use 24 hours a day. Jerk.) Another prominent citizen openly annexed part of a nearby park until, after years went by, the city did something about it.
you see, the ironic thing is i hate soccer — probably because the soccer players were the bratty, self-absorbed “cool” kids when i was growing up. so normally, a jihad against commie, godless futbol wouldn’t rile me up — but we were just playing good ol’ american football!
Had same problem at Northaven Park. Wanted to have a party there for a mom’s group and the neighbors had gotten together and gotten the city to say you can’t reserve this park. Holy crap…for a mom’s group!