Futbol fan police escort

I just saw the strangest thing about an hour ago. I coming out of the big park in palermo, and I hear police sirens coming from a long way away. As I was coming to the edge of the park, the sirens were just starting to pass by. There were a few motorcycle cops up front clearing the way, and then the main group, spread out over about a quarter mile came up. And this group seemed to be nothing but futbol fans on their way to today's game for River Plate, one of the two big local futbol teams.

There were four or five old dilapidated buses, with guys hanging out the windows and leaning out the doorwells, all yelling and hooting and what-not. My first thought was, oh, that might be fun, but then I saw that the buses were absolutely jammed inside, like worse than the worse rush-hour subway. I'm kind of guessing that the old buses didn't have any seats either, it looked like everyone was standing up, cattle-car style.

There were also about 15 or 20 cars filled with these guys, too, and some motorcycles. And these were for the most part grown men, I think, guys in their 20's it looks like, though surely there were plenty of teens and guys in their 30's and maybe even 40's.

And there were flags and banners and stuff, of course, draped across the sides of the buses, and held out the windows of the buses and cars. Because, lord knows, these guys want to make sure that we know who they support.

What's interesting here, of course, is that a bunch of knuckle-heads on their way to their team's game have to have a police escort. And it was a substantial police escort -- There must have been 10 motorcycle cops, and about 4 or 5 police cars, and they were stopping cross-traffic and everything. Clearing the way so these fans don't come to a stop. Lord knows what would happen then, I suppose.

I haven't researched this phenomenon or paid it much attention, but it seems to be a big part of life here, and elsewhere. Young men who support some sports team (pretty much always soccer, it appears) in such fervent fashion that they become dangerous. Here they refer to the rowdy fans as "the barra brava", which means the fierce, brave, or angry fans. Fierce seems to be the appropriate word here. There was a big scandal here a year or so ago, an internecine battle where the River barra brava fought amongst themselves to the point of plotting great violence against each others, maybe even murder. (I'm not that sure of the details, and don't really want to put in the effort to find out -- this stuff makes me sick.) Really, I just don't get it.

One thing that's interesting and not at all surprising, is that this is entirely a male phenomenon. I remember reading this about the UK, how twenty, thirty years ago when they were having real soccer thug problems, the fans were all male. Then after much cracking down and much cleaning up of stadiums and much general prosperity, soccer game attendance has become a family matter, and the thugs just aren't a problem anymore.

I thought of this when I came home and saw on the local news some beauty contest, swear to god, miss argentine wheat, or the wheat queen or something else suitable to the national wheat festival. It was the usual, fantastically beautiful twenty year-olds parading around in bathing suits. And I thought, girls, don't let your guys turn into soccer thugs. But they do, and I think this is a big problem in this society, and in a lot of societies.

What problem, you ask? It's this -- too much segregation of the sexes. The girls here seem to do girly things together, and the boys do boy things together. It's very group-y, this culture, it seems, much like spain. Everyone goes out in groups. But here the groups seem very sex-segregated. Mind you, there are plenty of counter-examples, but in general it seems that the girls here are happy being girly amongst themselves, and the boys are left to be boyish among themselves. And what does this produce?

Boys acting like sociopaths, that's what. Futbol fans that require a police escort.