If you work for MLS or an MLS club, we’d like to help you. There is a sizeable audience out there, who is already a fan of your product waiting to be marketed to. I know this because I saw thousands of them, all congregated into one medium-small park in the West Loop of Chicago… at Pitchfork.
The gallery below is all pics taken over the weekend at the indie rock three day soiree. Even that is overstating it because I missed Friday and didn’t even really start taking pictures until Sunday. And once I decided to start taking pictures I still missed about 80% of what I saw.
It’s kind of hard to get your iPhone on, unlocked, then get the camera up and ready before someone walking toward you has walked completely by you. But what surprised me wasn’t just the number of soccer shirts the kids were sporting, but the variety.
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Fifteen pictures might not seem like much given the thousands who attended the festival. But, as I said above I only took pics of a fraction of what was floating around Union Park.
In addition to the above I saw: national team kits from Cameroon, Germany, Ireland, Ingerland, Sweden, Mexico, Italy, and Russia; club shirts from Rangers, Mee-lan, Inter, Standard Liege, RBNY, Chicago Fire, LA Galaxy, Boca Juniors (a Tevez one), Chivas (the Mexican one), Pachuca, Espanyol, Bayern Munich, Manchester City, and even a Kaiser Chiefs. I’ve probably forgot another half dozen of each.
Fun note about the Manchester City kit. It’s the same guy I’ve seen at a half dozen shows since I first chatted soccer with him at the Thermals a few months back. And every time I see him out, he’s wearing his Citeh shirt. It’s pretty funny.
The best was when a 13 year old kid who looked like Andrei Arshavin walked right between my girlfriend and I, we both turned to see if he had “Arshavin” on the back of his Arsenal shirt. It might have been that same kid who threw the Arsenal jersey to the dancer in Major Lazer at the end of their set.
That’s not even to mention the fact that Bob Nanstanovich of Pavement made both a Vuvuzela crack and dropped a Diego Forlan reference during the band’s headlining set (quick sidenote: I’ve been to every Pitchfork but one and the uptick in jerseys this year over any previous year, is several orders of magnitude).
The surprising thing (beyond the number of jerseys), I saw not a single Manchester United or Chelsea jersey the two days I was there. Maybe this just confirms my suspicion that people with taste don’t choose to pull for either of those teams. Could also be that frontrunning pricks don’t like the indie rock. I’m thinking both are largely true.
At South by Southwest in Austin a few years back, Major League Baseball had brought in this interactive bus thing that was like “The MLB Experience” or something like that. It was a hands on, video something or other. It was basically marketing to people in the music industry and it was stupid.
But it wasn’t completely stupid. It was only partially stupid. After about a dozen SXSWs never had I once had a conversation with anyone there about baseball. So that thing looked completely out of place. To that end, I didn’t see many skinny-jean’d hipster lining up to take a virtual fastball or whatever you could do.
But companies pay bucks to market at SXSW. Booze, websites, energy drinks, they even try to sell people music (it’s crazy, I know). It’s the hip kids on the vanguard of crap that companies (right or wrongly) think are the tastemakers. Get the cool kids to consume your stuff and half your work is done.
And the cool kids who, in this oversimplification, pick what’s next also go to Pitchfork. By the clothes they’re wearing and wanting to show off to other hipsters, they are making it clear they already like soccer as a product.
Baseball had a good idea, they were just off the mark in thinking the people lining up to see the Kay-Settes Starting Butchers Blind also gave a crap about Carlos Zambrano’s WHIP. But not soccer. Hip kids seem all too happy to use their clothes to say, “I heart Messi.”
So consider this a friendly heads up to anyone at MLS who is spending this Monday wondering how to get more people to go to MLS games. You might not be as out of place at an indie rock fest as you might think… of course half the time we can’t make sense of what you actually do think.
I think you’re right. Hipsters love soccer because it gives them another way to be pretentious and it let’s them like sports even though liking sports is against the hipster credo. And they love obscurity, so it makes sense that they’d be wearing ‘offbeat’ sorta jerseys.
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Outside of the bar or a sporting event, I find it odd to dress up in sports attire. I think if you saw a guy at a concert or a bar wearing an NFL jersey you’d think he was ridiculous. Why do soccer jerseys seem to get a pass?
I saw Inception this weekend and in my brief walk to the theater from the car saw two Eto’o Inter kits as well as a Barcelona neon yellow kit. I see the kits all the time in Portland, this town is going to eat up all the MLS action next year.
Only unfortunate part was that the kid with the Barca neon-yellow kit saw it fit to match his sneakers with the kit. Ugh.
@LE: I think it’s because they just look like T-shirts. Wearing a football uniform looks stupid unless you fill it out, baseball uniforms kinda work–20 years ago and basketball jerseys are just tank tops.
I would imagine Pitchfork hipsters would prefer to wear USL jerseys. Because you’re cool if you’ve got a shirt that’s practically impossible to buy anywhere. I’ve got an Orlando Sharks (one season in MISL, lots of failure) t-shirt that I enjoy wearing because it’s so unusual.
Haha points for the fat guy in the Charlie Villanueva Pistons shirt (wrong sport, I know). I’m always happy when I see young kids, usually pre-teens, in footy shirts around Brooklyn.
LE: Yeah, I think it fits in with the “I like it because it’s not popular” ethos endemic to hipsters. Don’t know if that means they go away once it grows beyond a certain size, but the increase in jerseys this year was so noticeable that I couldn’t help but think there’s something going on.
I think three years ago, over all three days, I saw one lone Henry FFF jersey. And that was it. I only remember because I struck up a conversation with the guy.
I wanna see that s**t in 3D like PicLens says.
Installing, configuring and figuring out one image gallery widget over lunch is about my limit, TFA.
No worries.
I see one guy in a Barcelona shirt from time to time in my hometown. I did see (and talk to) a retired fella in a CSKA Moscow shirt last month, but he had no idea what it was.
Pitchfork gave a Flaming Lips album a 0.0 once. F**k them.
Also would fat people please stop wearing jerseys other than hockey jerseys? You’re giving me a bad name here.
Yep, they gave Zaireeka a Blutarski. That’s what made it so funny that the Lips headlined last year, and that Wayne Coyne fellated Pitchfork 3 or 4 times in their set. They were good though. Got “Bad Days” which I didn’t think I’d ever get to hear live.
I share Georger’s sentiments: f**k Pitchfork. (Reads Pitchfork reviews every day.)
I get the Arsenal training jerseys to wear when exercise, and I do own a bunch of shirts, but I wear seldom wear them. Although, I do have a pink Barca Henry shirt that I love to wear when I want to pretentious. Or gay.
Well to be fair, Zaireeka was pretty stupid.* Give ‘em credit for trying though, it was a cool idea.
*Disclaimer: I have never listened to it as it was intended. Who has 4 CD players? Or 3 friends?
It was pretty stupid but if it were some s**tty British underground rapper that did it they would have loved it.
Compiled into one album it’s fine though. Certainly not worth of the 0.0.
LE: If you are on any decent bittorrent tracker, you can find a copy of the 4-CD simultaneous mix.
Is it worth it?
Worth what? The time? The bandwidth? The hit to your share ratio? The risk of the RIAA coming after you?
I’m a Lips fan and have probably 90% of everything they’ve ever done, so to me, it’s worth having. I even enjoy parts of it.
I think that’s the one I have, some absurdly big FLAC file.
Ha. I mean is it worth listening to. I’m a casual Lips fan at best. I enjoy their music and they put on a helluva show, but I’m not the guy with a collection of rare bootlegs. I guess the “I even enjoy parts of it” gives me my answer though.
glad to see the Guadalajara support represented where ever; surprised that a Pachuca supporter exists anywhere outside of Mexico; Club America, with no reported jersey, can – as always – suck it.
more apropos to the central theme here, the MLS kinda did something along the lines of reaching out to the denizens of hipsterdom a few years back:
“MLS Represent – Rock the Pitch”
http://www.iodapromonet.com/landing_page.php?promo_id=32592
you can read the description of what it is.
i’ll just add this first: The Rapture wrote an ‘anthem’ for RBNY.
http://fairtilizer.com/tracks/3589
it’s basically a re-worked version of the song appearing on “Pieces of the People We Love”.
and it f**king sucks.
… too bad that The Rapture is so 2003/2004. anything after they left the DFA is blegh.
(totally not hipstering out)
Yeah, if you’re casual, you can skip it. Probably no need to go back farther than “Transmissions From the Satellite Heart” either.
Not long after I left my comment above, I was driving my wife’s car-the one with the Arsenal tag on the front-and I had some random thirtysomething giving me a thumbs up at a stoplight. She has had it for about 5 years and has never had a reaction before. Odd timing.
For me, hockey sweaters and soccer jerseys are totally fine to wear in everyday life. Wearing baseball ones out and about kind of looks weird to me, same as basketball ones. I
What are these Lips and Pitchforks that you speak of? Why, back in my day, it was Meat Puppets and Blender…have also noticed an uptick in random jerseys and no Big 4 lately; met a kid the other day that was sporting a S Korean club team
I both attended P4K and count myself amongst the Manchester United fanbase, which, I believe, makes me both a pretentious douchebag and a frontrunning prick. Huzzah!
Also, FLips blow.
Hmmm.
http://deadspin.com/5591985/hipsters-are-buying-your-old-nba-jerseys