Tag: Soccer & Lifestyle

Watching Haaland in Soccer and Lifestyle

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The World Cup continues. Still during that first round of group games, I went to the local football shirt shop, Soccer and Lifestyle, to watch the second half of Norway vs Iraq. I sketched the store; the last time I had sketched inside was in the previous location was also during a World Cup, but back in 2014, twelve years ago. That is a long time ago. I drew this all while the game was going on, but coloured it in at home. There was a woman in there wearing a yellow and green Mali shirt, with ‘F Kanoute’ on the back, which I though was incredible. I really liked Freddie Kanouté, who played for Spurs for a brief period in the mid 2000s, and I told them I actually saw him play and even score, at White Hart Lane in 2004. There are a lot of good shirts in that shop. I bought my shirt for the tournament there, the Japan away kit, a couple of weeks ago. That one is white with a black collar but has really nice colourful pinstripes. They were out of the USA shirts already, they had sold out before the first USA game. There is a ‘Soccer Fest’ on G St before every US game, and a big screen is set up to watch them. We saw the second game there (I’ll post the sketches later). The USA home shirt this year is a zany affair, red and white made to look a bit like the flag waving, and be reminiscent of the amazing 1994 kit. I don’t like the 2026 one much, but if they do well, it’ll probably end up iconic. The game that I saw in the shop was a bit one-sided, with Norway being the one side, not surprising since Haaland is on the team.

So, flashback to twelve years ago, watching France vs Switzerland…

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Hop you are enjoying the World Cup. It’s big and bloated and there are too many games, and I hate the ‘hydration breaks’ which are just blatantly obviously advert breaks (well done America, you broke soccer), but there have been some good moments already. Messi closed out the group stage with goal #6 for him, and DR Congo won their first World Cup game (against Uzbekistan admittedly) to qualify for the knockouts. The ‘Round of 32’ started today, and Canada beat South Africa with a late winner. There are a lot of games still to come, a lot of ‘hydration breaks’, a lot of Beckham and Messi adverts…

a block of second street

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After Spring Break, the Spring Quarter began, another busy time but at least it wasn’t Winter Quarter. In my Quest To Draw Every Inch of Davis (not a real quest) I decided to go down to 2nd Street to sketch Logos Books, the little second-hand bookshop on the corner of the row, and Soccer and Lifestyle next door, the soccer themed shop that I first went into back in 2005 when we drove over to Davis for the day, and I wandered downtown while my wife interviewed at this university called UC Davis that I had never heard of until a few days before. I’m football shirt crazy, and I love a good book, so I’ve spent a bit of time in here over the years (admittedly quite a lot more time in Soccer and Lifestyle, I am really really obsessed with football shirts, I mean ‘soccer jerseys’), so a sketch of this block is long overdue. I came back a couple of days alter to draw the rest of the block, the part where Philz Coffee is located. I’ve never been in there, I don’t drink coffee (it’s not my cup of tea, literally) but I should pop in sometimes. Ach, I’ve really spent a lot of my time in this town. This used to be where De Luna jewellers was (that is what it was called isn’t it? The memory is going as the years get further away). I drew that once on a rainy day in about 2008, if memory serves (I usually remember drawings well enough). I stood outside the now-empty closed-since-covid Uncle Vito’s to draw this.

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soccer, lifestyle and everything

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Soccer and Lifestyle June2014 smSoccer and Lifestyle, 2nd Street Davis. Click on the image for a larger view. You’ll want a larger view, to get a look at all those lovely football kits – or soccer jerseys, uniforms, shirts or whatever your preferred vocabulary choice is. This is one of my favourite shops in Davis (actually it is my favourite shop), and was the first shop I ever came into when I first visited Davis. I remember chatting that day to the owner, Rami, about Spurs and also Charlton Athletic for some reason. I was just so impressed there was a shop here devoted to my favourite things – football shirts – that I told my wife “we have to move here!” and since I’ve been here ever since that is fairly big. Anyhow, I’ve sketched the window before (in 2010) but never sketched the store itself, so with it being the height of the 2014 Brazil World Cup I figured that now was the right time. I went down there one lunchtime, wearing my recently purchased dark blue France shirt (it is in my opinion the best kit at the tournament) and sketched while watching the first half of France vs Switzerland, a demolition of a match for France out tore the usually pretty strong Swiss up. The owner, Rami, is a friendly guy who knows his stuff (actually they all are, those who work there, always welcoming for some footy chat). I love standing among all the colours of the World Cup shirts; I bought my son the new green Mexico shirt, which he loves because of the little lightning flashes on it. With all the crazy colourful boots (cleats) and all the footballs (soccer-balls) from various World Cups, as a kit-nerd and a footy-fanatic, this is very much my kind of store.

And what a World Cup it has been! The most entertaining yet probably. Certainly the most random-statistic-filled yet. All of which means the knockout stages will be dull tired affairs, but then I said the whole tournament would be so, and I was wrong. England were poor, predictably so, but my adopted team USA has been heroic and will face Belgium in the Round of 16. Then you have the Suarez biting story, which is such a bizarre pantomime villain tale it is almost as if it was all pre-fabricated to give this amazing World Cup a proper bad-guy, to add drama to the plot as we enter the middle act. Who knows. Anyway, of the flags hung up on the wall, the following sixteen are left…

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So it’s “Get on the Plane, Spain”, “Get your Coats, Croats”, “You’re a Gonner, Ghana” (works better with an American accent that one), “Cote D’Au-Revoir” (come on, that’s pretty good), “Here’s the Door, Ecuador”, “Herze Today, Govina Tomorrow Bosnia” (I think I heard that one on the Guardian podcast so don’t blame me for that one, my original pun were “Everybody Herz” or “Who’s the Bos” but I wasn’t sure about either), “Iran Away”, “Export-ugal” (yes I know), and “Russian Home to Beat the Traffic”. Phew. (I actually couldn’t think of a good one for England) That is a very small sampling of what it is like living in the Scully household during the World Cup, or any cup for that, and I can’t apologize for that. There are so many punning opportunities I can’t help it. If you like hearing the very worst scrape-the-barrel World Cup punning perhaps you would be interested in following me on twitter, @petescully. Converseley if you absolutely cannot stand it and it makes your head want to explode, maybe unfollow me until after July 13 when my tweets will be all about sketches of little houses I promise you.

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And football shirts…I have been meaning to do a run-down of the kits at the world cup, and wanted to give illustrations while talking about (complaining about) each one. But that was too time-consuming, so you have to wait a bit longer. In short, I hate them all except France, Mexico and the USA (only kidding, there are some others I quite like). I think I will do that in a separate post. Tomorrow is Brazil vs Chile, and you’d better get your kit on, it’s going to be a great game. It’ll be followed by Colombia v Uruguay, and Colombia are the better team, but I reckon Uruguay will clinch it by the skin of their teeth*.

(*I actually don’t, I think Colombia will hammer them but the time period for using that admittedly feeble joke is running out and I don’t like wasting opportunities like that)