Yesterday was a hell of a day for me. Things actually started the day before when I arrived at Slattery’s Midtown Pub to prepare for two days of football related madness, none of which had to do with the national anthem. I have explained this here before but I kinda feel like every time I do a Miami Dolphins related post I need to do it all over again…

My friend Michelle and I started the NYC Miami Dolphins fan club in 2008. When I moved to NYC I didn’t really have any friends who watched football and so I would watch them at random bars. Eventually I met Michelle and started watching with her and her small group of Dolphins fans. That small group organically grew until after the 2008 season when Michelle and I decided to start using our web and marketing skills to start promoting it. Dolfans NYC was born.

We started doing raffles and selling t-shirts and coming up with other reasons for people to come to the games despite the Dolphins being a mediocre football team. As we started to generate income we decided to give all the money to charity so we wouldn’t be motivated by profit or fight about money. That decision paid off because it attracted the attention of the Miami Dolphins who have given us a ton of support and opted not to sue us for blatant trademark infringement.

We raised so much money over the years that we actually had to become a not for profit corporation. We couldn’t just deal with beer buckets full of one dollar bills anymore. We needed to make it official. Last summer we filed for our 501(c)(3) status and got it and now I have a no limit AmEx card which says Dolfans NYC on it which is absolutely absurd but great for getting into airport lounges.

Anyway, back to this weekend. Sunday was our annual #MetLifeTakeover event where we bring hundreds of Dolphins fans to the Dolphins @ Jets game and throw a massive tailgate party which starts the night before at Slattery’s with our annual #MetLifeTakeover pre-party.

I got there at 5pm to set up for the 7pm party which was supposed to end at 9. I think we left around 1am after organizing and packing up eight huge bins of assorted Dolfans NYC merch. The party was a good time and we raised $500 for hurricane Maria which unfortunately makes nearly $2000 we have already donated to hurricane relief this year. On a more positive note we got to try out our Snapchat filter that my friend Ricardo at Subdrive records made for us.

After I finally got home from the party I packed up all my personal shit from the night before and tried to get a few hours of sleep before I had to be awake again. I might have managed 90 minutes… I had to be back at the bar in midtown by 6:30. The bar manager was still there from the night before.

We loaded up four chartered buses and took them to MetLife Stadium in jersey to meet up with over a thousand Dolphins fans for a party organized by Urban Tailgate. They took a huge amount of stuff off our plate and were already pretty much set up when we got there. Our own DJ Tropic showed up with them and had music blasting before the busses even pulled in. There was so much god damn food and a bar sponsored by my friends at Sailor Jerry and we set up all sorts of games that bros like to play. And of course we brought some inflatable palm trees. It was pretty great.

Around 10am the Miami Dolphins radio show “Cup of Joe” showed up to film before the game. It’s hosted by former Dolphin great Joe Rose who interviewed fellow former Dolphin and current Dolphins Vice President Nat Moore and CEO Tom Garfinkel. We also had another legend (Jim “Crash” Jensen) just show up randomly to the tailgate and party with us.

After that Solo D performed a few songs in the crowd. He is a rapper who mostly writes songs about the Dolphins and unlike most sports themed music is actually really good. I have a weird collection of Miami Dolphins vinyl records and I really want to put out a Solo D record one day.

The tailgate sort of ended with a big raffle we did for a Dolphins helmet signed by one of our best players, Cam Wake. We ended up raising $1800 for charity just with that helmet alone. When you add that to the all the merch we sold and profit we made on the $70,000 worth of tickets we are going to be able to do a lot of great things with that money starting with a pretty sizeable donation to the Miami Dolphins Foundation.

It’s really weird that the thing I have been most successful at in life is running a pro football fan club but here we are. I am actually headed to Florida in just over a week to see the Dolphins play and make that Miami Dolphins Foundation donation but I am gonna fly into Orlando or Tampa and make my way down to Miami with a nude model and shoot a bunch of weird photos and get tattooed and crash with a juggalo sideshow because my life is fucking insane.

Speaking of trips, I am headed to Detroit tomorrow to hang out with my lady friend Gia Paige. Hopefully I shall return with photos of her in abandoned urban ruins and even more photos of her tiny puppies. Gonna try and get an update ready to go before I leave so I can drop at least one more post on you before the weekend, but no promises.

Click here to see all the photos from the 2017 Dolfans NYC #MetLifeTakeover.

Ps. Yes, I know the Dolphins got embarrassed by the Jets and yes, I think it’s bullshit that the President of the United States is using is platform to tell black athletes to shut up, but don’t you think this post is long enough already?

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