A Morning With The Mile High Magpies

My friend Mark - who works at the University of Denver's Anderson Academic Commons (the library) - and I went to watch the Newcastle - Liverpool soccer match yesterday morning at the Hogshead Brewery on West 29th Street, on the border of Denver's Highlands and Sloans Lake communities.  This is the hangout of the Mile High Magpies (seen in the photograph on the right), which follow the Newcastle Magpies soccer club. The game started at 10:30 A.M. (5:30 P.M. Newcastle time).  I asked for coffee, but all they had was a coffee style beer - a morning beer?  What the hell, I thought - it was 5:30 P.M. in Newcastle, after all.  The group was a very genial collection of Americans and British ex-pats.  Hogshead advertises that it brews a collection of traditional English craft ales, and judging by the accent of the bartender, I must assume that is correct.  It was a very pleasant space, with enthusiastic people, and was an enjoyable way to spend the morning.

Newcastle lost the game to Liverpool 2 to nil, as they say.  Mark tells me that while Liverpool is in second place in the Premier League, Newcastle is in 17th place, and so the outcome was not a surprise.  However, judging by the enthusiasm of the crowd in attendance, I suspect these are the Chicago White Sox fans of the Premium League.  They are used to hopeless situations.  In any case, after the game, Mark and I drove the 2 blocks south to Sloans Lake and then headed for Chick-fil-A for lunch, where Mark told me about his plans for his upcoming trip to Leeds in less than a month.  Why Leeds you may ask?  Mark has a number of friends there, and a few more not too far away, and hopes to do a lot of visiting with them while there.  Much of his plans revolve around attending soccer matches in both Leeds and Newcastle (surprise!).  I took the photograph on the left of Mark while he was articulating his soccer plans.  Mark, as you can tell, is obsessed with soccer, but he actually did NOT attend the Colorado Rapids - Toronto Raptors game last month, which started at 8:00 P.M Denver time with a temperature at kickoff of 19 degrees Fahrenheit.  So there is still hope for him.