Normally spending 10 hours outside in the freezing rain is not my idea of a good time, but on Monday it was a blast. I got to MetLife Stadium about five minutes before the gates open and we rushed to Lot L. We found the nearest empty section and parked under the L8 pole. 15 minutes later we had Phins fans surrounding us. About a half hour later the Jets L8 tailgate showed up… I guess L8 stands for late because they had to take their party down the block. The Takeover had already begun.
Bryan and I set up our merch table and put out a bunch of free AquaHydrate water and Sailor Jerry rum. Someone showed up with a 30 cup coffee pot and we filled it with hot apple cider. The Sailor and cider was a huge hit and we didn’t even need ice for the AquaHydrate! We had palm tree coolers and someone hung up a Jets piñata and we had people cooking food on either side. We were ready to rock!
Unfortunately the rain started to fall and everything got a little bit miserable. The grilling stopped and the palm trees got blow sideways and a lot of people spent some time locked in their cars. But the northeastern Phins fans carried on and just started drinking to keep warm. Chants of J-E-T-S Suck Suck Suck and the Dolphins theme song rang out into the semi empty parking lot. There seemed to be a lot more Dolphins fans than Jets fans… certainly in our lot.
By the time Michelle and the four charter buses arrived from Slattery’s we had amassed a huge crowd of Phins fans. The Dolphins showed up with a camera crew and got some great shots as did our in house camera guy. It was a pretty great party despite the weather.
We handed out 200 inflatable palm tress and the 600 Dolfans NYC rally towels that AquaHyrdrate sponsored and sold some of our warm DolfansNYC hats to those who forgot what NYC in December feels like and I took a bunch of pictures.
Unfortunately the rain deterred some of the Dolphins brass that was planning on attending but we had Brent Grimes’ hilarious wife Miko Grimes stop by again as did Andrew Abramson from the Palm Beach Post.
The game itself was pretty awful and the stands were freezing but I was really impressed with our crew who screamed on every third down and chanted Let’s Go Dolphins throughout the whole game. You could hear us chanting DE-FENSE on TV and the announcers mentioned the Miami crowd several times. Jarvis Landry was specifically asked about us after the game and coach Philbin mentioned us in his opening statement in his post game press conference.
Overall it was a fantastic #MetLifeTakeover and I have pictures to prove it! If you want to download a picture just double click it and it will open Flickr in a new window.
[tylr-slidr]http://www.flickr.com/photos/dolfansnyc/sets/72157649182994688/[/tylr-slidr]
