Inside The Mecca Of Packers Fandom
LBVikings
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In the shadow of Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, there sits a line of ordinary looking suburban homes. But, perhaps predictably, the homes in this proximity are anything but ordinary. It’s tailgate row on the Sunday before a heated division rivalry game, and I was lucky enough to experience the heart of it.
Thanks to a distant relation to the owner, John Mathys, My father and I were able to stay in this spectacle of fandom during our trip to watch the Vikings battle the Packers to a 29-29 draw. Arriving late on Saturday night to what John called “The Mecca,” the first thing that struck me was just how “next door” this place was. When I say “shadow of the stadium,” I’m not lying.
There are three bedrooms in the house, each themed for one of the three legendary Packers quarterbacks. We got to stay in the Aaron Rodgers room.
The view from the bedroom window, aligned deliberately to give the best view of Lambeau Field.
We sat in a living room designed to be an exact replica of Vince Lombardi’s office, exactly as you’d see it in Canton. There was a beauty to the scene of a red-blooded conservative born-and-bred Packers fan breaking bread with a bleeding-heart liberal Vikings fan from Southern California, only bridging the generation gap with the marriage of mutual relatives.
“It’s in our blood,” Mathys said of his and the other owners’ Packers fandom. “How many people get a chance to own the closest house to an NFL franchise in all of America? We live it large each and every game and we’re fortunate that we can do that.”
Living it large is one way to put it. The place comes complete with signed memorabilia adorning every hallway and empty space, as well as a tricked-out basement bar. Large, blown up pictures adorn the walls, from Aaron Rodgers surveying the field in the snow to old pics of the dusty, gritty teams of the 1960s.
The Hall of Fame Chophouse was a restaurant in Green Bay owned by Brett Favre. In May, the location closed, and sold off piles and piles of Packers memrobilia from the restaurants’ decor. John swooped in and bought each and every piece of it.
The bar included themed mugs, a decked out Packers poker table, green and yellow Christmas lights, and a life-size photo of a young Brett Favre.
Every single thing about the house was drenched in Packers, down to the poker chips.
“We just wanted to make the house have that vintage feel,” said co-owner and tailgate chef Eric Pigo. “There was custom furniture made to make it feel like you’re sitting in Vince Lombardi’s office. Something nobody else has.”
As for the tailgates, the ritual is grueling. Eric and his team shop for the groceries and begins to prepare the food. On a typical game day, they’ll arrive at 6:30 A.M. to begin the cooking, run the party, control the crowd, and by the time everyone’s left and the house is cleaned up, it’s 10 P.M. Eric will almost always take the following day off of work just to recuperate.
Not to mention the home-brewed beer for every week. Sunday’s selections.
“We’ll normally smoke some meat. Last week was the Bears game, so we had 15 pounds of bear meat.” When asked if they were able to procure human meat for the Vikings game, John quipped, “Vikings aren’t human.”
In spite of the great personal cost, all of the invited guests have but one cost of admission. “A dish to pass,” Eric said. Like many stories of football fandom, it brings people together. “I get a lot of family up here that I usually wouldn’t see all the time, just because they want to tailgate with us,” Eric shared. John shared a similar sentiment, “Family, friends, and business. We mix it all together and have a great time.”
It was truly a surreal moment in my life as a fan of their bitter rivals, but this weekend it felt much more like a brotherhood. Watching an instant classic football game with relatives both immediate and distant, it rarely felt like two divided groups of fans, but rather one group of people all coming together to enjoy a quintessentially American pastime.
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