Three-plus days in Liverpool

This was the reason for the whole trip, of course, as we'd landed tickets through the local supporters' club back in January and had picked the last game of the season simply because we knew the weather would be warmer than the other options (games in February and April.) A couple weeks later, Jürgen Klopp announced that he was leaving the club. At the time, we were also leading the league, so here was an amazing opportunity: to see his last game as manager and to maybe watch us lift the most important trophy, the league title. In the end, the latter didn't happen as we went through the typical January fade in April and finished a few points back. But despite having been a Liverpool fan almost as long as I'd been a Michigan fan, I'd never managed to get to a game at Anfield, so this was my opportunity to redress that, no matter how the team finished.

I titled this "Three-plus days" because although we did get there on Friday afternoon after traveling all day (Reykjavik to Luton to London to Liverpool), we were both so wiped out by the process that we didn't do a whole lot on Friday, other than search for a place to eat. We managed to get to a place called The Black Horse, which is your traditional English Pub and also happened to be an Everton bar (which I probably should have expected, given that we were in their section of town.) I only noticed this after we'd ordered (bangers and mash and steak pie) and turned to see the large Everton badge on the wall, surrounded by black-and-white pictures of heroes of yesteryear, like Dixie Dean. We were both wearing LFC gear, but they let us order three minutes before the kitchen closed, so no trouble. Money is money, after all.

And that latter point is blatantly obvious in much of Liverpool. It's a large city, but not a widely wealthy one and the difference between the US standard of living and the UK one- even with the UK remaining one of the wealthiest nations in the world -is often stark. Prices in Iceland were often absurd because it's a tourist haven (#1 industry,) In contrast, some things seemed absurdly cheap in Liverpool, ranging from Uber to food to basic grocery items. The Tory governments, which have somehow remained in power for the post-Brexit period despite the negative effects of that change being blatantly obvious, are still operating on the Thatcherite/Reagan model that infects our society, as well. There are probably just enough racists/xenophobes in the wider society to keep them viable as a political entity that regards all change as an evil that must be resisted, which includes continuing to screw the poor at every opportunity.

We had this message driven home when we stopped into The Park on Saturday night, which is one of the more famous bars right next to Anfield (the place we were staying was two blocks from the stadium; you could see the roof of it when we stepped out the front door.) We grabbed a drink and went out back and were immediately hollered at by Janey, a woman who definitely works there and may have a piece of it, as well (I'm not sure if her referring to herself as a "part-owner" was a joke or not.) She wanted to reassure us that we could share the covered space with her as we were looking for a place to sit. Immediately, I thought: "Yeah, this is someone I want to meet."

Janey is a Scouser, through and through. She grew up in Toxteth, which is one of the rougher parts of the city (lots of projects; "council estates" to the English) and had been ripped by riots in 1981, while she was still living there. She'd spent a few decades working as part of the cleaning crews at Anfield and was a season ticket holder. She speaks Scouse which is a sharp dialect/accent of the King's English. I understand it because I've been listening to it for 45 years. Tricia did a lot of nodding and smiling to things that were said for the first couple days before looking to me to quickly translate, but she picked up a lot of it by the time we left on the morning of the 21st. Not everyone speaks it in the city and it's always been that way. You don't hear Scouse in any of the Beatles' recordings or interviews, aside from a mild bit of the accent on Maggie Mae.

Janey and her friend, Melanie, who later joined us talked a lot about the state of the club, the state of the city, and the world as a whole. Melanie had spent many years in the army as a way out of south Wales, even though her family had been one of those that owned the local coal mines and had the local town on a hook for its very existence. She wanted none of that and, at one point, asked us what we thought about the prospect of a second Trump term. I said: "It would be an absolute disaster." She sighed: "Oh, thank God!" We talked a lot more about the economy (Melanie wants to buy a house in Liverpool, live on the main floor, and rent the top "at a reasonable rate!" to a young couple trying to start their life), since England has the same housing issue we have, where big corporations own most of the housing and younger people have no place to go and are stuck living at home with their parents or other relatives. (Janey's two nieces and their boyfriends, who all live at Janey's sister's house,later showed up to punctuate that point.) 

It was a great way to spend the evening with "genuine Scousers", as it were, even if one of them was a Welsh transplant. They were a lot of fun and were agog that we'd traveled all the way from Detroit. I mentioned that Detroit had a lot of similarities to Liverpool (steep decline in the 70s and 80s, kinda recovering now) and Tricia mentioned the even closer parallel when we first stepped on to Walton Breck road where we were staying and she saw the row houses: "This is Baltimore."

We, of course, toured the stadium and spent way too much on LFC gear. We also hit all of said famous bars: The Park, The Albert (which is on the same lot as Anfield), Taggy's, and The Sandon. The latter was right across the street from where we were staying and we spent a lot of game day (Sunday) hanging out there with a horde of Reds. At other points during the weekend we took a ferry out onto the Mersey river and did the requisite Beatles tour (went to the Cavern Club, etc.) The section of town where the tour operates is the center of the city and the roads are a bit more of a medieval layout. I learned a lot that I didn't know about the band and even more about the history of the city, which was cool. On the tour with us was a couple from Singapore; a man who was taller than me (mildly uncommon) and a woman who was shorter than Tricia (incredibly rare.) They had become fans similarly to the way I had (British TV in the former colony.)

The game was kind of anti-climactic, as Nélson Semedo for Wolves got himself ejected on a straight red (studs up into Alexis Mac Allister's ankle) about 25 minutes in. Plus, it was the last game of the season and neither side had anything to play for, except us trying to send Jürgen out on a high note. But I ended up hoarse from singing with The Kop for almost three hours, before the match, and through Jürgen's extended departure after it. His song was deafening for the last few minutes of the game and there were a lot of people crying in the stands as he was saying his goodbyes. I loved the fact that someone started up "Poor Scouser Tommy" three or four times during the match, too, since I can't get anyone but Tim to sing it with me at Magee's.

Can't say a ton for the food. Much of it was stereotypically English (high fat, high carb) and not especially thrilling. But the traditional stuff we got at The Black Horse was good and we went to a nice seafood place down by the Albert Dock called Cargo. Am expecting much better in London. The weather was extraordinarily warm for the area for this time of year, sitting in the low 70s for most of the time we were there. That meant we had to buy a couple extra T-shirts at the club store, as you do,

It had been a lifelong dream to sit in The Kop and watch a match and now I've done it. I'm still not quite sure how I feel about that because of the down note which was Jürgen leaving at the end. I definitely feel like I'll be back to do it again a lot sooner than the first time.