Last evening we spent a few hours at a college-age watering hole called the House of Sizzle. We arrived at about 8pm, in time for the SU-St. Johns game which began at 8:25pm local time. We enjoyed a couple of Heinekens while watched the Big East quarter final game with a number of students, mostly SU fans but a few fans of other Big East teams, too. We joked that we were sent by their parents to keep an eye on things. For some reason that didn’t seem to amuse them.
We first met the owner of the House of Sizzle, Francesco, in 2003 when we were searching for a place to watch the NCAA Final Four games. He showed the championship weekend games that year on two old TVs, grainy and small, but at least we could see Hakim Warrick block that last, open three-point shot by Kansas that sealed the win and the national championship for SU.Francesco has hailed us every year since. We’ve never dropped to try his hamburgers and french fries but we have said “Hello” at least once each trip. Now he has a number of flat screen TVs in a number of spots around his place and continues to attract students and a few adults who are interested in sports at home.
The students were friendly including a lone St. Johns fan who was, of course, disappointed in the result. Francesco, who has an Italian father and an English mother and who speaks perfectly accented Italian and interestingly accented English, was a gracious host.
What will we do Friday night? And Saturday night? The Friday game will be late, at 1am local time, and the Saturday game, if SU wins Friday will begin after 3am. We can’t do both so we will probably hope for an SU win Friday and, perhaps, take in the Saturday (Sunday morning) game.
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