Places in our landscape that are most of the time ignored or simply not thought about can transform into places of tremendous social importance. One of these places is the parking lot of M&T Bank Stadium, the home of the Baltimore Ravens professional football team. A parking lot almost always is not the actual destination for any trip or event, but merely a place to leave the car for what the real event is going to be. For some people the main event before the 8-10 Raven’s home games a year is the “pre-game” or tailgating that occurs. The majority of this tailgating occurs in the closest parking lots to the stadium entrances. Some of the activities that go on at this tailgating are cooking, alcoholic beverage consumption, singing, and any other bonding activity one can imagine. The community that is formed in this atmosphere allows people to mesh under the allegiance to the purple and black and allows gender and race to become total non-factors. Everyone that outwardly supports the Ravens can walk up to a group of complete strangers and by expressing their enthusiasm for the team be greeted with a “Yeah Ravens Football!!”
The festivities start as soon as the parking lots open 5 hours prior to the games, often at 7 am. Tailgating in these parking lots has been occurring since 1998 when construction was finished on the stadium. All RV’s are required to park in Lot J, and this is the site of some of the largest tailgating. When some groups get together it is similar to the formation of a family bound by passion and pride as opposed to blood. It only takes someone wearing an opposing team’s jersey to really send the faithful Ravens fans into an uproar of taunting and teasing. One of the examples of how extreme people take their fan hood and constructed tailgating experience can be seen at by this man who had a vehicle turned into a tailgating and fan hood showing machine. In a 2007 article the Baltimore Ravens fans were voted the best tailgating city in America.
This idea of family becomes especially true at certain times of the year. Last year I attended the game the Sunday after Thanksgiving, so the tailgaters embraced the past holiday and celebrated all over again with their tailgating families. The group of people that I experienced this holiday with took the Thanksgiving idea to the max. Their menu of pre-game food included 8 deep-fried turkeys, stuffing, mashed potatoes, several vegetables, shucked oysters, rolls, corn-bread, gravy, and EVERYTHING else that you would find in a traditional Thanksgiving family dinner. Imagine eating your dinner with your family on Thanksgiving and having random neighbors and people you don’t know partaking in your festivities, and eating your food. This sounds like an extremely foreign idea to all of us, however this was exactly the case as those who did not play quite as lavish a celebration frequented the line of food that was prepared.
The beauty of the tailgating crowd is that it is not subject to the bandwagon effect. Even when the Ravens are in rough shape, and mathematically out of the playoffs, when the sun comes up you know that there will be cooking, hooting and hollering, drinking, and tons of black and purple fans expressing their enthusiasm and support for the Ravens. The unity that tailgating brings to all of the faithful fans of Baltimore, transforms an asphalt covered, line striped parking lot, into a festival of appreciation and excitement about what this football teams means to the hardworking men and women of the Baltimore area.