ESC Meeting/Metros vs. Crew, Saturday April 26

Do the Metros drive you to drink?

Yes?

Good - because all this week, Nathan Hale's is running its usual $3 Boddingtons and Carlsberg specials, PLUS a couple other good promotions going on.

They include

$2 Budweisers
$3 Tetleys and Whitbread Pale Ale (in honor of St. George's Day)

In other words, Saturday afternoon at Nathan Hale's is going to be more than just the best place to watch the Metros first win of the season - it's going to be a great place to get shwillied - cheap.

That's the good news. The not-so-good news is, we don't have any idea how many of you actually intend to show up on Saturday to watch. And going by a lot of past regular season Nathan's viewing parties, it's not going to be too many. Not really enough to ask Carl to open the place and pay his hard-working staff, just to see 5-10 people staring up at the big screen, which is how it's been too often. That's not fair to him or his people, who have really done well by us for a long time.

So here's the deal: if you're SERIOUSLY thinking you're going to be at Nathan Hale's for this Saturday's game against the Crew, then say so here in this thread. Now. Get a little buzz going. Show us you actually care - amazingly, some of us are already hearing talk about a feeling of apathy in the ESC (2 games into the season!). I don't want to be the one calling Carl and telling him we'll have a good group there Saturday, and then show up and see 10 people scattered in the back of the bar.

Need more motivation? Ok, then there's this: some of you who were there (and sober enough) at the end of the ESC winter party took part in an open members discussion, in which we talked about issues affecting the ESC, our need for your input and participation, and ways in which the club can function a lot better. It was a really good meeting, and it gave birth to the ESC members Yahoo list, among other things. But it wasn't supposed to be a one-off occasion, and at this point in the season another one sounds like a good idea - that's why we're hoping to have another open Members' Meeting at 3 PM Saturday, an hour before the Metro game kicks off. We need to know what you all think is working, and not working so far, and we have a VERY important issue to discuss - bus trips. The people who have been running the bus trips the last few years have been finding it extraordinarily hard to fill 2, never mind 4 road trips per season: we now need an honest commitment from members as to how many trips you all can make this. If you're clamoring for 4 away trips, great! If you all only think 2 can be done, so be it. And if few of you are showing much interest in getting on the bus, and no one else wants to step forward and help organize things, then there just won't be any bus trips this season. It doesn't make any sense for the ESC to lose non-refundable bus deposits, or for some poor guy to go around begging members to stump up for a bus seat a week before the game.

Not to sound harsh, but it really is as simple as that.

We would like you all to think about how many bus trips you want to be on this year (don't say 4 if you think the most you can do is 1)...and we would really like to see as many of you as possible at Nathan's this Saturday for the pre-match meeting, as well as the match itself. Please respond in this thread if you think you'll be able to make it out, so we can get an idea of whether or not it's worth the time and trouble of our good friends at Nathan's. Thanks.