The corner lot featured a bar - serving beer for a third of the price it would cost on South Street - and a "raw meat" bar, where you purchased, well, a slab of raw meat of your choosing and then carried it out to a cement-enclosed grill.
The grill-it-yourself arrangement appeared to raise skepticism at first, but soon the grill was jammed with red meat and chicken.
ESPN's Insider soccer blog proclaimed at 8:52 Eastern Time that "The U.S. ain't losing today." Folks at the Worldwide Leader must have been glad when England goalie Robert Green became his country's Bill Buckner, because there was zero chance the U.S. team wasn't losing.
In the first minutes of Saturday's match, U.S. defender Carlos Bocanegra's kick went off an England defender's back and soared well out of bounds. Bocanegra stood on the sidelines facing away from the field, looking for the next ball to throw in. He kept waiting, looking up and down the sideline. There was no extra ball to give him. You could almost feel the racing heartbeat of the FIFA official sitting pitch-side who eventually stood up and threw up his hands.
The ball eventually arrived; they arrived promptly for the rest of the match.
FIFA announced Saturday that it would work on correcting a "minor glitch" experienced Friday, the World Cup's first day of competition. The issue was transportation: getting into and out of Soccer City stadium. On Friday, it would have been easier to get a one-on-one interview with David Beckham than to drive through the traffic that paralyzed the roads surrounding Soccer City.
Rich Mkhondo, chief communications officer for the Local Organizing Committee (LOC), felt the problem came from the public's lack of trust in South Africa's public transport system.
Ya think?
