 |
Matches: Germany/Ecuador, June 25 1pm. USA/Türkiye, June 25 7pm. It was a busy day for me today, with a match down on Pier 62, a one hour gap before a movie at the Cinerama, and about 25 minutes to walk down to South Lake Union Park (in the rain, no less! An outrage!). From Westlake, I wandered through Pike Place Market to get a snack, then down through the Overlook to get in line for Pier 62. I got there around 11:40 for a projected noon opening for the 1pm match. This put me in the first set of metal holding barriers, where I was certain I could get in. I’d gotten free tickets for the Pier a while ago, and they will send you an email the day before with a number of dire warnings. Do you need a ticket/reservation? Absolutely, but you can likely get one from a QR code on the nearby signs. Will the Pier be full? Probably only for really popular days. Will they stop you from bringing in a backpack? Definitely. Don’t test them on this one. I brought a string bag, which seems the maximum size. Will they confiscate your food or drink? I doubt it, since they don’t search your bags unless maybe if you set off the metal detector, and I walked through with two sets of keys and my very dense metal flashlight/bike light, none of which set off the detector. Once inside I bought Indian food from the only food vendor (good service, meh food) and grabbed a seat at one of the picnic tables near the Coke booth. You should share these tables, which I ended up doing with a group of Ecuador fans and a group of teenagers. I learned they fit 8 skinny people and maybe 6 of us middle aged folks, and if you don’t get the one nearest the screen, you probably won’t be blocked by people standing since the screen is so high up. There are a few other sit down tables farther back, as well as many tables to stand up near and lean on. A lot of people stood or, near the front, sat on the pier. Apart from the game, there are a number of booths to get swag – Bank of America, Seattle Reign (coozies and stickers), Coke (headbands and cheap shawls), and Discount Tire (?). People lined up for this stuff. Beer choices are dire (Michelob and Stella). I stuck with the Coke. There’s also a water dispenser and numerous clean port a potties near the entrance. You can stay between matches, but if you exit there’s no guarantee they’ll let you back in. The seating wasn’t that comfortable, but the A/V setup was great and they had a hype man and a DJ for the time before and between games. They also used a feed with closed captions and no commercials, which was nice. For the Ecuador fans (I assume) they switched to Telemundo at halftime. In general, though the food/drink was below par, the atmosphere was very good. South Lake Union was my first Park watch party, and I kind of liked it. They were set up in the grass in front of MOHAI. There were a good number of plastic folding chairs, all of which people had moved under awnings during the rain (which had stopped by game time, but everyone stayed under cover anyway). One main food vendor again, but the shawarma was better than the Indian food at lunchtime. They also had two ice cream offerings I didn’t try. The extra booths were mostly King County and the Seattle Parks department, and included a monstrously large cooler with free ice water. As swag giveaways go, I much preferred the KC Metro pachinko game to anything at the Pier. I was hoping for a little plastic Boop Orca, but got a lanyard instead. A/V was okay, but they had some technical difficulties with their stream in the second half (which they blamed on Fox). submitted by /u/Worldly_General_5672 |
