#165: Duden, where's my bar?!
PINTJES #4 - a sneak preview
I’m writer Eoghan Walsh and this is my weekly free-to-subscribe newsletter about life in Brussels. If you like it and you’re not already subscribed, you can sign up here!
Here’s a hotly-anticipated, PINTJES VOL.4 preview ahead of the launch on Sunday 24 May!
Belgium’s football season is reaching its apotheosis this month. Royale Union Saint-Gilloise confirmed their status as Brussels’ number one team yesterday, with their victory over Anderlecht in the Belgian Cup final. And on Sunday 24 May, Union could be playing to win their second league title in two years, against the same opponent at the hallowed Stade Marien.
To mark this occasion, we’re inviting everyone down to Dekkera on Rue Pierre Decoster on 24 May for a few pre-match beers, an informal chat/panel discussion with a couple of special guests - and the launch of PINTJES VOL.4!
When: Sunday, 24 May, 15.00
Where: Dekkera, Rue Pierre Decoster 109, 1190 Forest
What: zine launch + prints + panel discussion + drinks
For new subscribers and those of you out of the loop, PINTJES is a limited-run zine by me and Brussels-based Irish artist Selkies celebrating the best of Brussels’ rich café culture. Past editions have focused on the city centre, on the Marollen, and the city’s best guinguettes. For number four, we’ve decamped to the streets around Parc Duden for all things Union.
If you want to reserve a copy - which can be collected on the day, and only then - do it here.
And if you don’t have tickets to the game, or don’t even like football (weird, but I’ll allow it), don’t worry - PINTJES VOL.4 has been specially designed to help guide you through this strange and sometimes daunting world.
Here’s a sneak peek to explain a little of what we mean…
Pintjes #4: Duden, where’s my bar - the “choose-your-own-adventure” edition
A good football stadium is like a coral reef; rather than being a loud and messy neighbour which upsets the rhythm of its home quartier every other weekend, a great inner-city stadium - the kind you find on a residential side street, it’s sporting bulk hidden until the very last moment by rows of terraced housing, the cantilever wrought iron scaffolding of its floodlights looming over back gardens, its facade fitting seamlessly into and alongside the buildings on either side of it, sitting there as both incongruously out of place but also exactly where it belongs - will succour a rich ecosystem of bars, restaurants, shops and the odd pop-up knock-off merchandise stand on match days.
A great inner-city stadium - not one of those out-of-town retail park identi-bowls - brings life to otherwise humdrum residential streets, gives its neighbourhood an identity, and an identity. It gives the cafés of its neighbourhood an identity, and a purpose. Brussels’ Stade Marien is a great inner-city stadium, and the bars on the streets outside Royale Union Saint-Gilloise’s home ground are proud club embassies. Compare and contrast the energies of a weeknight in one of the bars on the otherwise unremarkable and typically dour Rue des Châtaignes, the Stadionstraat or the Chaussee de Bruxelles with a pre-match Saturday afternoon. Sure, the cafés on these street corners each have their own energies distinct from the football club which so defines this corner of the city in the imaginations of Bruxellois, but when there’s nothing happening up at the Marien their energy is diminished just a little.
And how could it not? There are few experiences more rousing than a full café an hour before kick-off, everyone on their feet with plastic cups of beer in their hands and almost vibrating from the anticipation, the dusk settling below the looming stanchions of the nearby floodlights, and everything underwritten by the intensifying rumble of a swelling stadium crowd. Even if you don’t have a ticket, even if you have little interest in the beautiful game, it is an experience worth engaging in at least once in your life.
It can, I grant, be a daunting experience for the uninitiated. But here at PINTJES we are old hands, and are happy to help navigate you through a night out at the Marien. Only, we also accept that we are people of habit, and would not want to impose our routines on you, dear readers.
So instead of your standard guide to the best pre-match haunts, we invite you to choose your own path. Choose your own adventure, if you will. But make haste, because kick-off is approaching and you don’t want to miss a stool at the bar.
Turn the page to get started…
