Sunday, 04 July 2004

Horn section. I live about fifteen minutes from downtown Sydney, in a nice little suburb called Petersham. Petersham is the "Little Portugal" of the Sydney area, and we're about two blocks from the center of it: There are lots of good restaurants within walking distance (spicy chicken — mmm), they block off a street and have cultural events just down the road, and so on.

Usually I don't spend a lot of time ruminating about life in Little Portugal, and I certainly don't follow European soccer. I did notice last month a poster or two that I hadn't seen before, and glanced at them long enough to decipher that Portugal was hosting the "Euro 2004" championships this year — and then my chicken sandwich was ready, so I left and went about my business.

Weeks went by, and gradually the number of Portuguese flags and posters increased; I mean, there were a lot of them to begin with already, but all of a sudden they were everywhere. Through osmosis I gathered that Portugal was doing well in the tournament. I was happy for my neighbors.

And then we come to this weekend, when I can barely leave the house without running into a carload of screaming Portuguese-Australians, waving red and green flags out every window and honking their horns like Portugal had just won a major world war. Single-handledly.

The only thing that could make matters worse is if they were playing the championship against Greece, Petersham's second-largest ethnic community… so, naturally, they are. Carloads of screaming Greek-Australians are now driving around outside, hamming it up with the Portuguese, and creating a wall of noise that sounds like a New York traffic jam on steroids.

It's a strange, strange way to spend the Fourth of July. Luckily I made it to the American Society's Independence Day picnic yesterday, and got a healthy dose of Americana — and signed up 30-40 people to request their absentee ballots.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 10:20 am. comments.