Better to Reign in Hell

by Jim Miller

  I noted a guy in a Raiders tie-dye t-shirt and we stopped to interview Raider-Gloria who had legally changed her name to fit her game day character. Gloria, who was wearing silver hiking boots, black Capri tights, a number 75 Howie Long jersey, pads, eye-black, sunglasses with Raiders shields in the center of both lenses, and a silver pom-pom on her head, looked to be in her mid forties. She was born and raised in Oakland and works in customer service for a trucking company. She told us, “I’ve been dressing up now for seven years. My dad was a season ticket holder before the Coliseum was built and the Raiders played in Frank Youell Field.” As for the Raiders’ PR problems, Gloria said, “I think the PSLs [personal seat licenses] should have been lifetime. People shouldn’t have to renew.” She didn’t think the Raiders would move again, though, because “Al really loves the team and the fans.” Gloria explained to us that she had once made some silver-and-black candy canes at Christmas, sent them to Al, and had gotten a personal response thanking her. Before we moved on she told us, “We are a Raider Nation, a Raider family. It’s like your marriage vows—for better or worse—no matter what their record is.”

  A terrible band in silver-and-black leotards was playing ear-splittingly loud music on stage as we walked over for the beginning of the costume contest. Mercifully they stopped. The organizers seemed to have chosen the B team for the contest, and the fans in the audience playfully booed the whole lot. The KNBR radio announcers who were hosting the event finally awarded first prize to Augusta Raider from Fresno for an Elvira-like getup featuring a top hat. Once the time came for the players to be announced, the volume seemed to get even louder and I began to wonder if the average Raiders fan was partially deaf.

  As the various players took to the stage, I gauged the crowd’s response to see where they stood in the hearts of Raider Nation. Callahan got moderate applause as he flattered the crowd and made way for the defensive unit. Biggest cheers: Romanowski and Woodson. On special teams, place kicker Sebastian Janikowski got cheers combined with a spattering of boos in memory of missed field goals past. On offense, Gannon got the “MVP” chant going and then mentioned that there were “15,000 tickets left” to the home opener, but Tim Brown and Jerry Rice got the wildest cheers. As for the linemen, Lincoln Kennedy stirred it up when he told the crowd, “We represent well.” The whole exercise struck me as a little half-hearted on the players’ parts. My ears hurt and I was glad when the hype subsided and the Raiders had been ushered off-stage to their expensive customized cars and SUVs. I interviewed a nice woman behind me named Kim, whose Raider Doberman was named Trotter after William Monroe Trotter, a black antislavery advocate who helped start The Abolitionist with William Lloyd Garrison. Kim had been a Raiders fan for twenty years and a dog trainer for thirty.

  As we strolled toward Broadway, a fight suddenly broke out between two Raiders fans, one in a black jersey, the other wearing white. The two ceremonially stripped down to their black-and-white tank tops and began dancing artfully, sizing each other up as they bobbed their heads back and forth between raised fists. Almost instantly, the crowd formed a circle around them like an ad hoc boxing ring. Somebody behind them was getting it all on a video camera. But not everyone was happy with the show. A black guy in a Rice jersey shouted futilely, “That’s dumb, that’s dumb as shit! We’re supposed to be on the same team! This is a fucking pep rally!” The two continued to dance in a graceful, almost stylized fashion. The bigger of the two, in white, took a swing and the smaller guy skillfully ducked the punch and hit the big dude with a jab that glanced off his jaw and did little damage. They stopped, hung on each other, and broke as if it were a boxing match. The smaller one smiled while dancing and the big guy nodded as if in response. There were no security guards anywhere, so I ran over to one of the tents near where Joe had been scolded about his “access pass” and the guard said, “I don’t have a gun. I’m not going over there.”

  On the way back over to the fight, I saw a guy with two arms full of gang tattoos ushering his little girls out of harm’s way. By the time I returned to the scene of the fight, the police had arrived and had the small guy and another dude who wasn’t even involved in the fight in handcuffs. A woman in a Wheatley jersey that she’d converted into a see-through mini-dress with a halter-top was standing behind the cops taunting the dudes in handcuffs. It was time to go. The ugly scene was only made better by meeting Byron and his sweet little girl, Brandi, who was beaming as she twirled around with her Raiders flag waiting for the light to change on Broadway.

  On Saturday we went out to see if the Raiders campout would still be going despite the dismal preseason, disappointing opening loss, and intense heat. Not surprisingly, by midday there were already six to eight cars parked on 66th Avenue holding down the fort. We noticed that a couple of the cars were empty, but several SUVs had the engines on to keep the air conditioning going. One of the campers was outside putting up his Jolly Roger flag, so we stopped for a moment to talk. He told us, “The party won’t get started until the early evening, but then it will keep going all night and roll on into the parking lot once the gates open at 8:00 a.m. Bloody Marys at 6:00 a.m.!” Across the street, Griz was hanging the “66th Mob” sign on the fence by the closed entrance to the parking lot. They had already pitched a tent with beach chairs, tables, snacks, and a portable TV.

  We headed over to the Coliseum entrance closer to the Arena and found two groups already set up. In the first was Jack, whom we had met before the first game, along with Pancho, Bonnie, and Robert. By the second campsite we met Dino and Jersey John, who told us that he flies out from Houston to go to games. “I party late with the guys and then go sleep in the Days Inn with my wife. By 8:00 p.m. this whole street will be packed with cars.” I looked over at the cars and semis zooming by on the freeway, turned the other way and glanced at the barren expanse of asphalt in the parking lot, glowing with rising heat. The smell of exhaust was ever present.

  Finally we drove over to check out the motor home campers. By now it was 2:15, a little less than twenty-four hours until kickoff, and there were twenty-five motor homes lined up to get into the Coliseum lot, some elaborately decorated with Raiders art and, of course, big flags and banners. The line snaked around a corner and went all the way down a side street full of industrial sites. Mike, the first guy we ran into, had driven over Friday after the rally and camped there overnight. He told us, “The Moose Lodge helps us out sometimes and lets people park in their lot when the cops decide to harass the line. They also let people use their bathrooms and sometimes they have good food.” A little farther down the line we met some retired folks sitting around under a rare shade tree outside their rig. Roberto, Joyce, Ron, and Pat were welcoming folks who reminded me of my grandparents. According to Roberto, “Sometimes with five hundred people competing for a hundred and fifty motor home spots, it can get ugly. A lot of people park their motor homes really early and then come back on Saturday night for the big party. It’s more about ‘How are you?’ and catching up on things. Then it’s about the Raiders.” When we told them that we were staying in a hotel downtown, they looked at us a bit incredulously. “Why would you do that?” Roberto asked. “They’re young, honey.” Joyce said. “They might want to go out to dinner.” By this point my pregnant wife looked as if she was going to pass out, so we thanked them, got back into the car, and drove past the assembly of the motor homes to the freeway.

  Early Sunday morning, I sipped on a Bloody Mary in the Fat Lady, a fine bar and restaurant located in an old Victorian in downtown Oakland that had been a brothel in the 1880s. Ornately decadent, the place looked like a cross between a cozy boudoir and an Old West tavern. I looked at the motto on my napkin, “Better to Live Rich Than to Die Rich,” and glanced down the bar at a row of Raiders fans eating omelets and sucking down cocktails. Last year, during the Raiders playoff run, we met a group of firefighters here at the Fat Lady, one of whom we interviewed for the book. Kevin, a firefighter from Engine Company 2548, Firefighters Union Local 5
5, was a genuine blue-collar Raiders fan. Kevin is a stocky, good-natured guy with an easy manner. When we caught up with him in the middle of the 2003 season, he made it clear that he didn’t think Raiders fans deserved their thug image:Most of the fans get a bad rap, but it’s the TV’s fault because they show all the guys that are dressed up, crazy, yelling at people, but 95 percent of the people in the stands are normal people just out there to watch a game. If you watch the clips [the media creates] after the games, they are always showing crazy guys and all that crap and the media plays that up, but it’s not nearly all that bad. Where I sit, they are all firemen and friends of firemen. All these firemen were all scattered about. So the Raiders were cool because some of the guys with PSLs approached them so they put us all together. We’ve got four rows of about eight people, about thirty-two people. Some of us went to the Super Bowl last year. We took a motor home down. But we didn’t get any tickets. We sat in a bar and had a hell of a time.

  I was born and raised right down the road in Albany and I’ve been coming here for a couple of years. My buddy owns the pub around the corner. I grew up a Raiders fan. My dad and all his brothers were Raiders fans. They went to Frank Youell Field years ago. A lot of Raiders fans are like that, they’re almost like a family. They’re nice. But they’re very committed. We used to go to the tailgate in the parking lot, but now you’ve got to get there too early in the morning. If you don’t get there by 8:00, you can’t even get in the lot. So that’s why [the firefighters] use the BART lot because you can get there at 10:00 and still park. It’s East Oakland, toward 73rd Avenue, toward the hills. Usually there are between twenty and forty guys. We usually come here and drink and go eat over there. Sometimes we eat at both places. During the playoffs it was really crazy. Last year I was in East Oakland. We covered the Coliseum (our fire truck did anyway) and on Thursday before Sunday’s game there were fans camping outside of 85th Avenue, in Baldwin. By Saturday night it was all the way around the block. For me, it’s just a day but for those guys [who camp out], it’s a weekend.

  When I asked Kevin about Oakland and the East Bay, his response was thoughtful:The East Bay itself is a very nice place to live. I think Oakland gets a bad rap. There are a few parts of town that are in bad shape like the East Oakland/West Oakland flats. You know there is a lot of crime there. The other 90 percent of Oakland is really, really nice and people don’t realize that. I mean, the one time a bad thing happens, [people say] “Oh, God,” and it gets blown out of proportion because Oakland gets a bad rap. I work for the city, so I’m biased, but I like it. There are a lot of nice places to live here, but I don’t live here because of the price and the schools. The schools are pretty mediocre. So a lot of firemen live in outlying areas because years ago you had to live within ten miles of the city, but they rescinded that because people fought it. But Oakland should be a lot better perceived by the media.

  Then he offered some comments on working as a fireman in Oakland:

  It’s active, it’s fun. In a big city like Oakland you get to do a lot more stuff, a lot more fires, a lot more rescues. In the small cities it’s all training, training, training, but when stuff happens, they don’t know what to do. They’ve never done it, so they have to call on the big cities to help them out. Oakland is weird, we get a lot of strange stuff—I mean the cops get more strange stuff. Oakland has a good name in the ranks of the fire departments in California. During the Oakland fires, I was brand new. I had about a year on. I was in East Oakland that day, and it was the farthest we could be from the fire, so we ended up there a couple of hours later. It got so bad we had to call people from home to come in. Then everybody and their mother came in. You know that fire only burned for twelve hours, from 4:00 a.m. in the morning to 6:00 p.m. when it was out, but the fires in San Diego were brutal. We only sent fifteen guys down there but we should have sent fifty. Everybody wanted to go. I volunteered, everyone volunteered. One of our units was in that strike team with the guy from Novato [who died fighting the Julian fire]. We all went to his funeral. That was very emotional.

  You know, it’s funny how much firemen like to go to fires. It’s like if there is a big fire at a house or up the hill or whatever, we live to do that. We’re like, “Let’s go!” So at one point we are very—I shouldn’t say happy, but we’re glad to be busy doing something. But then, on the other hand, you go, “This poor guy lost his house.”

  As for the disturbances after the Super Bowl:

  We saw it when we got back and went to Station 20 to park the motor home there and drop everybody off. There were lots of broken bottle bits. They were throwing that stuff at them. Since that happened, there is a new policy. If we get involved in something and it is rioting, we have the police escort us in and out. If it gets real bad, like the week before the Super Bowl, they decided that if something got burned bad, they would just let it go. After the Tennessee game we were coming back this way and it was crazy. People were lighting bonfires and stuff. They weren’t throwing anything, they were just really excited and I guess, two hours later, it went to hell. Once you start something stupid, there are a bunch of followers. They turned over [fire department] vehicles. You know, the City of Oakland paid for it. The Raiders don’t pay for it. The firemen don’t pay for it. The taxpayers pay for it.

  [The police don’t have] a very good relationship with the citizens. The cops are very abrasive all the time. You can’t be a nice cop in the bad parts of town because they will run you out, but the cops are kind of pricks anyway. So we see the cops hassling the people all the time. They don’t respect the cops and the cops don’t respect them. A kid grows up seeing that, his parents are yelling at the cop, and he gets to be twelve, and he does it. It doesn’t take long. It’s a cycle.

  We finally talked about the Raiders’ relationship with the city and their fans:

  Like I said, they both hate each other and are suing each other in court. Nobody is going to win. It costs the city a lot of money. It costs the Raiders a lot of money. The city is in a financial crisis right now. We’re closing firehouses and we’re suing the Raiders and they’re suing us. The Raiders really gouged us on ticket prices and sometimes they’re not that good. If they were good all the time, they’d sell out.

  Haven in a Heartless World

  Bay Area metal trade workers have always been affected by forces beyond our control, buoyed and buffeted by precious metals bonanzas, wars, depressions, and the economic cycles of industrial capitalism. But this time is different! For the last two decades we have been suffering the local effects of a profound reconfiguration of global economic and political forces, resulting in the transformation of the United States from an industrial to a postindustrial society. This transition has already expelled the vast majority of us from our crafts and forces those of us who remain in the trades to labor under deteriorating and degraded circumstances.... Most hold in contempt the low-wage service sector jobs that we fear we might be forced to accept, but the emerging postindustrial world offers us few opportunities.

  Joe Blum, “Degradation without Deskilling”

  As we walked over the pedestrian bridge from the BART station the parking lot looked like a makeshift tent city. The Raiders opener may not have been a sellout, but the crowd in the lot was massive and far more energetic than it had been during the preseason. We met Joe at the end of the bridge and made our way around the Coliseum by row after row of boisterous tailgaters until we ran into the South Shield party at the far end of the lot where Raiderhed was playing a set. Joe took a few photographs as people drank beer, ate, and rocked out to the metal/rap fusion that Raiderhed was dishing out to the tailgate. I laughed at the customized “Higher 1” and “Stonerdude 420” jerseys on the band and detected the strong sweet smell of reefer drifting through the air.

  We chatted with a guy who showed us his Raiders tattoos and strolled on along the edge of the parking lot until we found our friends the Mahlers and stopped in for a bite to eat and an interview. Jim was our union preside
nt, and we had met his brother Jerry and his parents, Hank and Diane, at past games. They had always been gracious and generous hosts. Like many of the fans we interviewed, the Mahlers were a “Raiders family.” Having spent his work life as a card-carrying member of the legendary International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union and his leisure time as a Raiders fan since the sixties, we immediately thought of Hank as a good person to interview. Hank is a distinguished, silver-haired man who bears a striking resemblance to Raiders great Kenny Stabler. He was happy to oblige us when we asked him about his history as a fan:I’ve probably been a fan since 1967. I was aware of them from 1960 when they came into being, but they played in San Francisco for the first three years, and I was a 49ers season ticket holder so I was kind of shocked at this new team coming in to play in our backyard. But when they got the Coliseum built and they played their first game there in ’66, I was a season ticket holder, because I had gone to Frank Youell Field, which is a little stadium that holds about 15,000 people and, if you ask now, 800,000 people must have had season tickets there. Anyway, it was a great place to watch football. You’re right on the field. You could hear the players talking and I really got intrigued then. I didn’t have season tickets at Youell Field, but watched a lot of games, so when the Coliseum opened I made sure we had season tickets right off the bat. We had them from ’67 until ’82 when they went on their twelve-year road trip, and then when they came back in 1995, we were right there again. So I missed twelve years, but other than that, I’ve been a Raiders fan.