Football's Coming Home

There is only one thing that can get me out of bed at 8.15 on a weekend morning: football. I had heard from many sources that The Globe Pub was the best place to watch the beautiful game in Chicago and today I finally paid a visit.  

I had to be up bright and early as the time difference meant that the traditional 3pm kickoffs would be commencing at 9am. However, when my alarm sounded I leapt out of bed like a man whose house was on fire, such was my excitement for a morning spent watching Premier League football in a pub. Within seconds of entering The Globe, I knew I would be at home here – a dingily lit room full of men proudly wearing Arsenal shirts nursed beers, eyes glued to the screen and mouths projecting the kind of gruff British voice that is inevitably used to utter some choice words at the referee every Saturday.

The Globe Pub consists of three rooms, each with many screens showing all the Premier League games, but with the sound of one different game in each. Having made our way through the crowded Arsenal v WBA room, my girlfriend (who had sportingly come along) and I settled in the Aston Villa v Stoke room, where I positioned myself carefully with the aim of being able to watch as many games at once as possible.

Football fans take sanctuary in The Globe Pub

The glory and Britishness of this pub was not limited to the sports on TV – the traditional full English breakfast was utterly marvelous and infinitely homely. Baked beans, scrambled eggs, black and white pudding, two slices of toast, potatoes, sausages that hadn’t been crushed into a disk and christened a ‘patty’, and bacon that wasn’t streaks of fat suffocating tiny strips of meat. It was a fantastic way to bring in the day and was followed by a satisfying Estrella Damm beer to accompany the second half of the matches.

I had planned to go on a run today, but my morning diet clearly made this impossible, so instead I took a two-hour nap. In lieu of the run, I completed a ‘lounge workout’ that consisted of lunges, push-ups, sit-ups, tricep dips on the stairs, burpees and so forth in my girlfriend’s living room. Soundtracked by some classic AC/DC, I went customarily balls-to-the-wall and felt rather lightheaded after, possibly a result of the heavy breakfast and morning beer.

It was as good a first-half of a day as I could remember. I think I may have may have found my new Saturday routine. 

The Traditional Breakfast went down rather well