The Jester’s Quart: Booze, Basketball, and Biz Markie

Columnist Greg Wyshynski is a fan who enjoys sitting in the nosebleeds at the arena. But he ventured downstairs for a recent NBA game, and found out life in the 100-level means top-shelf booze, a different kind of fan energy, and watching basketball action with rap legend Biz Markie.

I’m an upper deck guy in love with a lower bowl girl.

Now that we’ve all gotten over how hazily erotic that sentence sounded, I will elaborate.

Ever since I was knee-high to Doug Flutie, I’ve been attending basketball games in the nosebleeds. Like most fans, my traditions and addictions are derived from my father’s. He would, and continues to, buy what is commonly referred to as “the cheap seats.” NASA would refer to them as “nearly in orbit.” I’m pretty sure I had to duck under Telstar 303 a few times during a Knicks/Nets game back in ’86.

Why oh why did we sit so high? On the surface, it was because we were a blue-collar family from Central New Jersey that treated car trips to Tampa like a two-week Caribbean cruise and revered a night out at Red Lobster like it was Ruth’s Chris. But honestly, it was because my father is a notorious cheapskate. White collar guys are “frugal.” My father was “chintzy”; his license plate actually reads “Chintz,” a collegiate nickname that becomes more applicable as the years pass.

I don’t want to say he’s cheap…but for Christmas one year, I got a tie I had given him for Father’s Day six months early. I was 9-years old…

This is a man who’s eaten White Castle for the better part of four decades; not because he likes the food, but because of the unparalleled thrill of spending 69 cents for a cheeseburger. And this is a man who never met an “affordable” nosebleed seat he couldn’t drag his child to for a basketball game.

As I’ve written before, I wasn’t exactly the most athletic kid growing up, succumbing to that perfect storm of Nintendo, cable TV and my mother’s cooking. So attending a Nets game with my father usually began with me trying not to have my heart explode as I marched my chubby ass up the Meadowlands’ preposterously long staircase in the upper deck. By the time I settled into my seat, I was panting like Mo Vaughn after wind sprints.

Once you’ve sat in the upper deck — for hoops or for hockey — it’s a different world. The fans care about the game; not their clients, or their dates, or their goddamn cell service. It’s less formal, and a hell of a lot more raucous: when’s the last time you saw the lower bowl start the wave at any sporting event? When’s the last time you saw them start a chant? I can say, without compunction, that I’ve never, ever, ever seen a single fan fight amongst the suits in the 100’s.

My father who instilled in me an institutional loathing of lower level seats and the ticket-holders who sit in them.

And now I’m in love with one of them.

My girlfriend has never been a season-ticket holder. She can count the number of pro hoops games she’s attended on one hand. But even with the limited time she’s logged in the arena, the girl knows what she likes, and that’s to sit close enough to the court to be in danger of catching some sweat whipping off of Steve Nash’s hair during a baseline lay-up.

She and I scored some comp company seats for the Nets’ recent trip to Washington to face the Wizards. (The fact that I grew up in Jersey, she grew up in rural Virginia, and yet we’re both Nets fans is the kind of karmic providence the heart can’t ignore.) Middle of section 103, near where the Wizards exit for the locker room, and a full two levels down from my usual comfort zone.

(Why I Love the NBA, Reason No. 1,431: you can get to any game crazy late and feel like you didn’t miss anything. Sarah and I were stuck on the train and didn’t arrive until the Nets were down by about 12 in the middle of the first quarter. The NBA is a lot like the old “NHL ‘98” game for Sega: remember how you could set it so the computer plays until a certain day in the season, and then you can pick up the action from that date? It’s no different than seeing three quarters and four minutes of a NBA game and still feeling like you’ve seen everything you need to see.)

As I looked around in the lower bowl, I couldn’t help but notice the utter lack of energy and interest from these Wizards fans. OK, “Wizards fans” is a bit of a generalization – there are only about 7,000 “Wizards fans” in Washington, DC. There are about 15,000 “basketball fans” that will come to the Wizards games. And there are about 25,000 “people” in DC who will go to a game if it’s on their company’s or their boyfriend’s dime. Put all of those people in one arena, add in the fact that DC fans are a transient mixing bowl of federal employees and transplanted suits, and the lower level of the MCI Center has the kinetic energy of C-SPAN’s Book TV most games.

Or maybe they were just bored that night, as it became apparent that the Nets had left their offense somewhere around Exit 6 on the Jersey Turnpike. I mean, you could have put Bob Ryan in front of Jason Kidd and he wouldn’t have hit him…

Suffice to say, I needed a drink.

If my girlfriend is ever going to convert me to the lower bowl, here’s a start: a giant booze kiosk, right outside of our section. They don’t have anything like that upstairs. In the nosebleeds, our choices range from Alcohol-infused Piss Water to Alcohol-infused Piss Water Lite, with the occasional $9 Heineken thrown in for good measure.

I walked over to the kiosk for a large $7 draft beer. As I stood on line, it occurred to me that for one dollar more, I could substitute a nice glass of Dewar’s 12 scotch whiskey on the rocks.

Then came the ultimate question for any guy on a date with his girl, standing on the booze line:

Do you come back to the seat with your breath smelling like a 60-year-old man in an airport bar, or with your breath smelling like a kid at a frat party?

I hope she didn’t mind kissing grandpa for the rest of the night…

The game was a complete mess; by the end of the fourth quarter, I’m pretty sure the Nets had Otis Birdsong and Sam Bowie on the court. So naturally my attention turned elsewhere, and that elsewhere was towards a large black man dressed in camouflage, sitting behind the Wizards’ bench.

It was Biz Markie.

As in Biz “You Say He’s Just a Friend” Markie.

As in Biz “Celebrity Fit Club” Markie.

He wasn’t hard to miss, and I wasn’t the only one to spot him. In the third quarter, some chick stood up during one of the many lulls in the action to scream, “Hey yo Biz! What up Biz? Hey yo!” The legendary hip-hop star flashed a smile and threw up a hand in salutation, delighting the three or four people who actually witnessed the moment.

I was more enthralled with his seating arrangements than with the man himself. Here is a gold-record rap star, sitting in an arena that isn’t exactly filled with gold-record rap stars, and he can only get a seat BEHIND the Washington bench? I’m not saying he’s Spike or Nicholson, but isn’t he at least Dyan Cannon in the DC entertainment elite?

Do you think he and Sir Mix-a-Lot are constantly battling to see who can still score the best NBA seats years after their fame faded?

BIZ: “Hey, yo, Mix? You there?”

SIR: (His cell phone plays the “Baby Got Back” ringtone you just know he has programmed on there.) “What’s up baby? Where you at?”

BIZ: “Sittin’ behind Jared Jeffries in DC. Where you at?”

SIR: “Courtside, baby. One…two…three…seven rows from courtside up in Seattle, baby. Sort of to the side of the bench.”

BIZ: “Man, brother, how’d you get dose sweet ass seats?”

SIR: “The ringtone business is booming, yo. Listen to this new one I just wrote: ‘I…like…phone…calls and a I cannot lie/you other brothers can’t deny/when you get a phone call and it’s ringing in the hall/big butts make you want to cry/I said butts/butts/bigigigigi butts…”

Near the end of the game, and my scotch, Biz decided it was time to roll. So he got up and put on his floor-length fur coat — a stunning gray pimp jacket, with matching hat; a PETA protest waiting to happen. He started to make his way up the stairs when he was stopped by some fans, who whipped out their cell phones to take a picture. (The cell phone camera having replaced the autographed cocktail napkin as the impromptu celebrity sighting evidence collection device.) This happened a few more times, but Biz finally made it out of the lower bowl and off to do whatever it is Biz Markie does after a professional basketball game. My money’s on “eat.”

The final buzzer sounded. The Nets had found new ways to suck. I had found a place in the arena to buy an $8 scotch. My girlfriend had found she still enjoys sitting in the lower bowl, and will never settle again for nosebleed seats that cost less than our train ride over to the arena.

And somewhere near the rafters of the Meadowlands, sometime soon, my father will be complaining that his binoculars aren’t strong enough to see the cheerleaders in their bicycle shorts.

-SFM-

Published on the web and www.SportsFanMagazine.com since 1997, "The Jester's Quart" is a weekly satirical look at sports, pop culture and why NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is a jackass. Columnist Greg Wyshynski is the Senior Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History” will be published in Spring 2006. Email Wyshynski at jestersquart@hotmail. com.

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