Do all the places that show World Cup get their flag streamers at the same place?

In an antipatriotism hangover from the Fourth, I’d been looking for the most anti-American bar to watch the US get righteously pummeled by Belgium, but the best I could come up with was wherever my Belgian-in-law friend and his properly Belgian wife were going to be to watch the game. They text me that their first choice, Alameda's Park Station, is inexplicably reservation only, so I drive over to Mad Oak while they figure out a plan B.

(This World Cup feels like the first one where enough Americans are watching that you can call it “game” instead of “match” and not get nerded at by Real Football Fans, who also sneer at the shortened version of “Association Football” even though was just as invented by the British, albeit in the 19th century or whatever. Parenthetically, England absolutely needs to get knocked out of the World Cup, right? Nothing is more important than that, not even the US getting humbled for its hubris and Trumpy FIFA bullshit. But also, while we’re in parentheses, it is equally important that the US get humbled for its hubris and Trumpy FIFA bullshit. “Underdog US slightly exceeds expectations” is fine, I can live with that; “Look How Much We Mangled Paraguay” and I lose it.)

At “Mad Oak Bar ’n’ Yard,” a name which I hate, I am enough minutes late that Belgium has made it matter: The first Belgian goal has been delivered about a minute before I walk in through the WE ID EVERYONE NO EXCEPTIONS entryway, and the crowd has already settled into grim deflation. I make my way to the second floor to see if the vibes are better up there and they are not; I find a spot close to the TV, but it start to feel like I am intruding on someone’s really bad private party, so I go back down, and stand next to a group of wine-drinking ladies who have clearly just left some kind of business-formal office job. Being in an inward-looking IRL groupchat is clearly a better idea than being in a kind of depressed serial mass, staring upward at whichever of the many TVs is closest to where you are at “Mad Oak Bar ’n’ Yard,” a name which I strongly dislike.

I’ve been on three different NIRL group chats intermittently for the last day or so, discussing and carefully adjusting the right level of wokeness to apply in being against America; the ending is preordained, obviously, as the Great Satan must fall, but it’s tricky being for the Belgians, what with them being the butchers of the Congo and also Europeans. You can modulate a little by noting that the US killed Lumumba, and was also very involved in the Belgian Congo (even before they helped kill Lumumba, for the uranium needed to build nuclear bombs, like the ones they dropped on Japan, in case you hadn’t heard), but you’re not helping Belgium beat the allegations. In the end, I think you just have to put all your chips on the same “It is extremely important that the US eat shit and be humiliated” that all men and women of good faith naturally apply to the English team.

One of my group chats is evenly split between Platner and the USA match (“Do you think your years of supporting the Dems is why you’re so good at cope?”) but has already apprised me that “we’re going to get murdered,” early in the going (Gloriously Defeating Paraguay is forgotten and Remember that Turkey Beat Us is our new best friend). In another, it is suggested that I “let people enjoy things” (“I enjoy this!” is my retort), but look, it does kinda feel like I’m the Babadook at the wine function at “Mad Oak Bar ’n’ Yard” (a name which I really don't like at all). These people are here to be happy about US soccer, and it’s mostly only fun to wish the team ill in the abstract. Sad people wrapped in flags are a bummer to be around. I bail.

My Belgian friends have reconvened at Speisekammer, a German bar that it disappoints me to have spelled correctly from memory. But by the time I arrive, two more goals have been scored, and the pattern is just extremely clear: Belgium is playing very well and the US is cursed, and also bad. We are the only pro-Belgians in the place, and my Belgian-in-law friend cheers without restraint, but no one has the energy for even a dirty look; they know we have the mandate of heaven. They know what they’ve done. Speisekammer is apparently not nearly as full as it would normally be, I am told. Despite having no room for us, Park Station must be stealing Alameda's World Cup crowd.

I drink what my friend is drinking; the lady sharing the table with us turns out to have accidentally ordered, for herself, just an astoundingly vast cheese plate. I accidentally overpraise Belgium’s football prowess and am corrected that, sadly, the Dutch are still better. (Did you know the Belgian coach is French? Despite being named Rudi Garcia? “An enemy in our midst!”) I become intimately familiar with the heads I have to watch the lower half of the game around, and the waiter brings me the second beer I told him I didn’t need, but we make good use of it anyway (and pay for it too).

Mostly the game sucks, and after the humiliating second-half goalie blunder, it is just clearly over. It’s still quite satisfying to simply exist in the space and half-watch the football while chatting about books, our aging dogs, and about the Alameda Fourth of July parade, which I had randomly attended, and which apparently had horses I didn't stay long enough to see; the horses are apparently what people were excited about.

The first third of the parade–which had been enough for me–had mostly been politicians:

We’re only half-watching the game, and we’re all on our phones a lot, but that’s part of it, too, being in constant contact with a variety of people around the world, all linked and oriented on the same thing, as it happens, at the same time, even if we're not really watching it. Even if one of my groupchats is telling me no spoilers, tape delay; even if my Belgian friend is receiving texts from the future, in Belgium, which is not on the twenty-second delay we are on, and so we get early warning (“goal B”) just in time to watch what’s gloriously left of Lukaku absolutely make sure that the US can’t do anything but slink away.

Victory is ours, at some point, when I am paying enough attention to notice that the game has ended. The nearby lady’s leftover cheese plate is almost completely undefeated, however, and we joke about asking the waiter to box it up for us. Several different people had predicted a 3-1 Belgian victory, and somehow 4-1 is that, exactly, only even more so. “The games will start to get a lot better now,” I am told, as I say my goodbyes and go home to the dogs, who are absolutely beside themselves, as they always are. See you at Morocco–France.