Metro Pulse/Gamut/Vol Fans in Manhattan

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When the Vols fall, the reverberations reach Manhattan

by Jesse Fox Mayshark

You see a lot of things on the streets of New York. A student film crew on the corner of 87th and Fifth runs through a scene involving a blood-splattered nun and a big knife, while pedestrians make irritated jogs to the side. Aproned pizza guys on bicycles weave pell-mell through rush-hour traffic, one hand steering and the other holding the thin-crusted cargo. A poodle in a knit sweater lifts one dainty leg to pee on a red Village Voice newspaper box. Men and women of all ages and skin pigmentation speak in tongues you can only guess at (Swedish? Greek? Farsi?). You don't have to be John Rocker to marvel at the cultural mishmash on any given subway car: Dominicans and Koreans, Haitians and hippies, model-thin boys and girls in two-tone jeans and black leather, haggard moms, and cranky babies, all crushed up against each other in a thick stew of mutual indifference.

There are, however, some things you don't see here very much: Grits on diner menus (although they can be had with a little searching). NASCAR shirts and ball caps. And in a city where even the toddlers wear black, the only place you're likely to find the color orange is a sidewalk produce stand. Unless, that is, you wander into Blondie's East on certain autumn Saturdays.

Blondie's East (named to distinguish itself from its sister establishment on West 79th Street) is a sports bar on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It's in the midst of a sort of sports-bar strip on Second Avenue, between East 92nd and East 93rd. Up the block is a place called Hooligan's, and right next door is The Big Easy, all of them outfitted with extra-large TV screens and abundant supplies of beer, wings, nachos, and burgers. Nothing in particular distinguishes Blondie's East from any other sports bar in the continental United States, apart from the predictably inflated New York prices. But if you happen to be a University of Tennessee football fan living in the NYC metro area, this is the place to come on game days.

My wife and I, recent transplants from Knoxville to New York, decide to make the trek on a brisk Saturday in late October. Our 88th Street apartment is just a 10-minute walk from Blondie's East. We marvel that our real-estate broker, in touting the merits of our relatively quiet neighborhood, neglected to mention the proximity of UT football festivities. Not that it would have made much difference—my wife, although a UT alum, is as interested in football as I am in women's shoe sales; as for me, my nine years in Knoxville made me at best a casual fan. I was more likely to be in the kitchen talking politics at football parties than actually watching the game. Still, with the New York congregation of the Church of Vol so nearby, it's hard to resist a visit.

Entering Blondie's at about 7:30, 15 minutes before Tennessee is due to kick off to Alabama, we scan the bar for signs of the faithful. They're not hard to find. Bill Shadrick and his wife, Carmen Rodriguez, are sitting on adjacent barstools picking at a plate of chicken wings.

"Hi," I say, walking up to them. "Are you here for the Tennessee game?"

Carmen turns around and arches an eyebrow. "No," she says. "We're just wearing orange." So they are— Bill's in a casual-dress button-up shirt and Carmen a seasonally sensible sweater, neither of which would stand out on Cumberland Avenue. The muted shades are demure enough that in Knoxville they might be suspected of partisanship toward Florida or Auburn or some other school with a lower wattage standard of orange. But in New York, wearing any orange at all is an act of sartorial boldness, one that had best be accompanied by a damn good reason. Hence Carmen's sardonic reply—I gather that she, a Philadelphia native who has come to appreciate the Vols through prolonged exposure to her husband's unfettered enthusiasm, can't imagine another circumstance that would justify this particular color scheme.

Bill, it turns out, graduated from UT's campus in Chattanooga, where he grew up. He has been in New York for 25 years, a move he made because "I refused to be 30 in Nashville." He and Carmen met 19 years ago at the fabled Studio 54 (the only time she ever went there, Carmen swears). They have a house in Brooklyn. Bill is the nominal president of the New York UT Alumni chapter, but he says he doesn't have much to do with organizing these game-day parties. Usually, he doesn't even come, preferring to watch the games in the comfort of his living room.

"You can hear him all over the house," Carmen says, shaking her head. "You don't know what's happened, but you know something's happened."

Just then, we're joined by Dana McCullough and her boyfriend Tom. Dana, a 1995 UT grad, is the majordomo of New York game days. Her warm and energetic demeanor betrays both her Southern roots and her chosen profession—she's an account manager for New York advertising behemoth Young & Rubicam. Among her clients is AT&T, for whom Y&R does the 1-800-CALL-ATT commercials. (Yes, she knows Carrot Top: "He's a really nice guy.")

Dana, a native of Cleveland, Tenn., says when she moved to New York shortly after graduation there were no organized game-day parties. The UT Alumni chapter does host a dinner every year (usually held at the Tennessee Mountain Restaurant in Soho), but the high holy days of Voldom—Saturdays from September to December—went without official observance. Since Young & Rubicam boasted a number of UT grads, Dana and some friends started planning public parties.

New York City numbers among its residents alumni of pretty much every university in the world, and many of the city's sports bars have taken to catering to particular groups. The UT crowd tried a couple of spots before settling on Blondie's (which also caters to alumni of the universities of Kansas, Virginia, Oklahoma, Indiana, and Michigan State). The match has been happy—the bar reserves space for 20 to 40 or more Vol fans every week, and ensures a majority of the 30 or so TVs in the upstairs lounge are tuned to the game, with the sound up high. At halftime, Blondie's also gives Dana control of the sound system so she can play assorted versions of the anthem Carmen calls "that Rocky song." Sadly, due to a busted CD player, there will be no "Rocky Top" tonight.

We follow Dana upstairs, where clusters of tables have been pushed together and generously festooned with orange-and-white pompon shakers. The shakers are courtesy of UT's Alumni Office, which obviously likes to encourage school-related social activities among its far-flung graduates. (One of the biggest differences between watching a Vols game in New York and watching it in Neyland Stadium is that you can be confident most of the New York spectators actually went to UT.)

There are about 20 Vols fans here, most sporting at least a little orange. The crowds have shrunk since the disappointing Georgia game, Dana says—in more competitive years, the game-day parties can bring 40 to 60 enthusiasts. More than half of the 29 TVs that ring the darkened room are tuned to ESPN, including the billboard-sized screen at the front. This creates at least the illusion of being surrounded by a sea of orange, especially during close-ups of Phil Fulmer's voluminous windbreaker.

Most of the UT crowd looks young, in their 20s or early 30s. Some of them are Dana's friends and co-workers. Over against the wall, orange-clad Dawn Gunter is sitting with a date. A Kentuckian by birth, Dawn graduated from UT in 1990 and then lived in Knoxville for three years before moving to New York. She doesn't know anyone else here, but she heard about the parties after attending some monthly cocktail gatherings of SEC alumni. "I don't think there's anything better than SEC football," the Visor account exec says with conviction. But she's less sure about the 2002 vintage Vols. "I don't think they're very good," she confesses.

That impression is soon borne out by the game's first half, which features all manner of botched plays and dropped balls. When Mark Jones finally returns a kickoff for UT's first touchdown, the orange-and-white shakers get a brief workout. But the mood doesn't last. Bill Shadrick turns his attention to a TV showing Game 6 of the World Series, occasionally glancing back at the big screen with a wince. And so the experience of Vol football in New York quickly becomes like the experience of Vol football anywhere else this season—hope and expectation slowly giving way to despair.

What's most striking about the New York Vol crowd is how removed they seem from Tennessee—and not just geographically. The talk around the table (when it's not just groans and gasps and "Catch the damn ball!") is of Halloween parties across town or office gossip. There are occasional bits of UT reminiscing, along the lines of, "I took a full bottle of Absolut and a full liter of cranberry into Neyland Stadium, and I didn't even get searched!" For grads away from Knoxville, UT and even the entire state of Tennessee seem to evoke mostly nostalgia. Dana hasn't heard about the Wade Gilley-Pamela Reed scandal. Bill is only vaguely aware of downtown Chattanooga's renaissance. "I don't really have strong connections there anymore," he says.

None of this should surprise me. As a Penn State student, I was deeply involved and interested in campus life. But since graduating 11 years ago, I have paid almost no attention to my alma mater. When I get together with Penn State friends, we talk about stupid things we did at parties or who married whom or who has kids and who doesn't. As I sit here and write this, I can't tell you who the current president of Penn State is. I don't even care enough to look it up online. I have plenty of other things to worry about—as, I imagine, do the UT alumni gathered at Blondie's.

Some of them may eventually make their way back to Tennessee. But everyone I talk to is happy in New York. I get the feeling that these weekend hours at a sports bar on Second Avenue are enough to satisfy whatever Volunteer State pangs they may feel. And that may be the Vols' greatest contribution to UT and Knoxville (albeit one that's hard to appreciate up close in the midst of game day traffic). No matter how far away you go, you can probably find a TV somewhere on an autumn Saturday afternoon and spend a couple of hours with the folks back home. Until Blondie's East starts carrying Knoxville City Council meetings or Sundown in the City concerts, it's as much Knoxville as you can get in New York City.