The Wake

Sometime last week I went and practiced with the Imperial College Medical Basketball team. Imperial’s actual team had already held tryouts, but the medical team was willing to give me a shot. The team was comprised primarily of Asians, Indians, a Swede named Ole, polish kid named Demitri, a British kid named Alvin, and a Portuguese coach. They all had British accents, except for the coach, and they all played the most unorthodox style of ball I’ve ever seen in my life. No fundamentals, but they could all score in some way or another.

The gym was old and cluttered with badminton nets and mini soccer goals, a major safety issue given the mere foot of out of bounds separating the court and the brick wall surroundings. The Portuguese coach wore his long hair back in a pony tail, and spoke very little English. He took full charge of the practice though and ran the drills with obnoxious authority. Yelling nonsensical instructions, he encouraged the flashiest of pass attempts and dribble drives with resounding whoops and yells. His out-fit dated him to somewhere in the time span of Soviet Russia. He wore the strangest pants I’d ever seen. Purple Adidas pants with the three stripes up the sides. They appeared to be made of velvet. His Nike air sweatshirt was cut off at the sleeves and at the navel, and he wore a spandex tank top underneath, neon green, navy blue, and yellow.

We ran a three man weave drill, with players coming both ways. Several noses were sacrificed in the process via errant passes and unforeseen collisions. Things would only get worse/hilarious from there. The practice culminated in a genius game of 5 on 5Ö on 5. That’s right, three teams of 5 on the court at once. Though few understood the concept, the intensity level remained on high. This of course led to two more injuries, three arguments, and innumerable run-ins with the brick walls. We’ve got our next game this Saturday! A rematch versus our bitter rival, and perennial powerhouse, the Pharmacy team. Here’s a picture of the team: http://minnesota.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=43951447&op=1&view=user&subj=13957946&id=13957946

Later that week, I went to a clothes swap at Favela Chic, a bar near the Old Street tube station. The inside was a restaurant turned dance club, decorated in a tropical fashion. There were clothes lines hung low above the dance floor. Strange articles of clothing were spaced evenly across. The diverse crowd drank and chatted casually, carousing and eyeing up strangers for their clothes. By around 11, the festivities were in full swing. We partied the night away to turn of the century classics from the Strokes, Kylie Minogue, and Gorillaz, along with old classics like The Chips’ “Rubber Biscuit” and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas “No Where to Run.” A siren would go off every five minutes signifying that it was time to request clothes off a stranger. I left the bar that night with a weathered blue and yellow Addidas t-shirt, a blue and white pin-striped dress shirt (which I now wear to work), and a fashionable straw hat.