As the rest of Philadelphia
slept in the wee hours of a wet
and ominous Thursday morning,
a congregation gathered in an
empty parking lot on the corner
of Pattison and Lawrence.
Entering the lot of tractor trailers
and abandoned shipping
docks, women were dancing on
top of cars, fading chants of “EA-
G-L-E-S” could be heard and
small bonfires dotted the scene.
Sports Radio 610 WIP, the venerable
radio station in
Philadelphia, has hosted the
annual Wing Bowl for the past 16
years. The event is a cornerstone
in the calendar of every blue-collar
man who lives for tough
sports, cheap beer and scantily
clad women. This tradition has
grown from a hotel publicity
stunt into a nationally recognized
platform for the fastest
consumer of chicken wings and
the woman who does the most
with less.
Matt Schneider from
Philadelphia, a Holy Family
University student, described
Wing Bowl in one word:
“Chaos.”
This reference, however, is not
to the competitors who gorge
themselves on hot sauce and
beer at 6 a.m. Schneider is referring
to the mob scenes that
become South Philadelphia
before 1 a.m.
Within a matter of hours, the
lots become the target of every
police officer and firefighter this
side of the Delaware responding
to the frantic phone calls of innocent
bystanders viewing the tailgaters
jumping through fires and
using everything but the kitchen
sink to compete with the rival
blaze 10-feet away.
“We were the little fire that
could,” said John Peterson, an
intoxicated web designer from
the Somerton section of
Philadelphia. He was speaking
of the tiny fire he helped construct
of cardboard, textbooks
and notebooks, pallets, a wooden
door, a lawn chair and brush.
Viewing these events in real
time could only be entertaining
while intoxicated. Why else
would so many watch something
so barbaric and actually enjoy
themselves? What pleasure
could be derived from a parking
lot with more violence than a
state penitentiary?
Kevin Robinson, a Bucks student
and criminal justice major,
finds Wing Bowl highly entertaining.
Robinson sees this event
as the culmination of his winter
months, driving his friends to
and from the parking lots and
watching the ridiculous actions
of grown men acting like adolescents.
With these acts of vandalism
corrupting the streets of Philly
just before the actual day begins,
serious concerns about the future
of Wing Bowl have surfaced.
There are those who see this
event as a time to be with friends
and enjoy the pandemonium that
Wing Bowl has brought to the
Wachovia Center. But the majority
seems to side with the negatives
rather than the positives.
When asked why the Wing Bowl
fans have gotten bad raps in
recent years, Philadelphia Water
Ice factory employee Nick
Ferrara said, “Stupid people
throwing bottles at cars.”
Leave it to the Philadelphia
fans to come up with a reason so
simple, yet so stupid.