Despite not being in the middle of the action happening just 12 miles away at SoFi Stadium, football fans at The Parlor Sports Bar in Los Angeles, Ca, made the most out of the occasion.
The Los Angeles Rams won the 2022 Super Bowl LVI, the first time in the club’s history– technically. They beat the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 in a hard-fought matchup that saw action to the last minute of the game.
As a franchise, the Rams won the Super Bowl in 2000 while the club was known as St. Louis Rams, but this is the first time they have won since moving to Los Angeles and becoming the LA Rams.
Fans started gathering early at The Parlor, a sports bar with indoor and outdoor sections, designed with an open floor concept and surrounded by a network of TV screens neatly installed on almost every available space on the wall.
It’s unclear how many TV screens are in that sports bar, but there were at least 25 screens, including 3 large ones in the main bar area alone.
The unique screens everywhere concept at The Parlor made it a perfect place to gather for an event like Super Bowl and enjoy it with like-minded strangers.
Some fans still lined up outside the sports bar before kickoff had to steel their nerves as they watched Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, hyped-up the crowd from a TV screen by the entrance. Despite knowing the game had started before getting in, they maintained their cool.
“We know a lot of people didn’t want Hip Hop on stage,” Snoop said.
“Tru dat,” Dr. Dre interjected.
“We’re here now, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” Snoop Dogg said.
Surprisingly, there was no cover charge to join the party. At the entrance, the security checked for IDs and proof of Covid vaccination.
“We’re not messing around with this thing,” the security, a powerfully built black man, said, referring to Covid-19.
He looked keenly at the IDs and matched them with vaccination cards while looking at faces to make sure everything lined-up before allowing access.
Some people appreciated that he did not do a half-ass job, as witnessed in other places where staff barely verified the information presented to them.
“They have seen what Covid did to their businesses. We don’t want another lockdown,” one patron said approvingly of the process.
In one Google review posted 5 months ago, a patron gave The Parlor a 5-star approval and took note of the security.
“Good spot for weekend. Centrally located on Melrose [Ave]. Great, that [it] has indoors and outdoors. Drinks Good. Be aware if there is a party, security is very strict. Get there early,” J Brown said.
Overall, The Parlor has a respectable 4-star rating from 564 reviews on Google.
Despite posting signs at the entrance requiring patrons to wear a mask while moving around the sports bar, it appears only the employees followed the guideline. And because it was a full house, it was practically impossible for the already overwhelmed employees to even attempt enforcing the rule, making it a matter of personal responsibility for patrons to protect themselves.
It didn’t take long before seeing action on the field. Unlike last year’s Super Bowl, where quarterback Tom Brady and Tampa Bay Buccaneers routed the youthful Patrick Mahomes (Wahome for Kenyans) and the Kansas Chiefs 31-9, Super Bowl LVI was pretty evenly matched.
CINCINNATI AGAINST THE WORLD
When Odell Beckham scored the first touchdown for the Los Angeles Rams, the room erupted, signaling a mostly Rams crowd. But Bengals took advantage of a Rams false start, giving them an opportunity to start their offensive push from the 45-yard line, for a successful touchdown to turn things around, revealing a powerful presence of Bengals fans, mostly dressed in black shirts with orange print and not their signature orange and black tiger print football jerseys.
The Bengals came in as the underdogs. They were 13-7 in the regular season, while the Rams were 15-5. It was clear most people in the crowd expected the Rams to win.
“Cincinnati against the world,” read a t-shirt by a Bengals fan at The Parlor, implicitly acknowledging their underdog status.
There was a scary moment in the 2nd quarter when Beckham Jr. injured his knee and was forced to sit out the rest of the game.
Momentum shifted after his exit, giving Bengals fans in the sports bar a moment to celebrate and flirt with the possibility that maybe, just maybe, 202 is the year the Lombardi Trophy goes to Cincinnati.
The Bengals have made it to the Super Bowl 3 times and lost. Their last trip was in 1988.
Only two players on the Bengals’ current roster were even alive at that time: long snapper Clark Harris (37) and punter Kevin Huber (36). Taylor, himself 38, was 6 years old, Sporting News website noted.
While the Super Bowl brought them there, it appears fans at The Parlor came to party and then watch the game, in that order, and soaking up the electric energy at the sports bar.
Who can blame them? The matchup was the first time the Super Bowl came to LA in a while– 29 years to be precise.
LA County last hosted the Super Bowl in 1993, at the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, in a matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and Buffalo Bills. The Cowboys creamed the Bills 52-17.
Two years later, in 1995, professional football abandoned LA, leaving the City of Angels without a team. The Rams left California altogether and landed in St. Louis, Missouri, and LA Raiders moved to Oakland.
It was not until 2016 that the Rams returned to LA and were joined there by the Chargers, who relocated their team from San Diego.
LA THROWS A PARTY
For a city that’s used to having all the attention in the world, not having a football team was very bad for LA’s street cred.
Therefore, hosting the Super Bowl and the home-team playing was redemption. A big deal for LA and the fans at The Parlor. LA was back, not just for entertainment, but for sports too.
And LA being the home of Hollywood and many world-famous celebrities, it was sure to be a show. Almost all stars showed up, including Kanye West, who wore his black face mask, a curious fashion statement few are willing to embrace.
In a rare move that can be considered a Black History Month breakthrough, or, maybe because it was too hard to pick one performer from the celebrity-rich LA, the NFL chose 6 of the biggest names in rap and R&B legends to perform in the halftime show.
Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, and 50 Cent (Fity) shared one of the biggest performance stages in the world.
The reviews are in, and the performance was rated one of the best in history.
On YouTube, by the time of publication, the Pepsi-sponsored halftime show with the number one trending video on the platform. It had received almost 43 million views and 1.6 million likes without a single dislike, an amazing fete in our polarized country.
Despite their big names in the music industry, all but one among the star-studded performers has ever taken the stage in a Super Bowl game — Mary J. Blige, in 1991.
Snoop Dogg appreciated the NFL granting Hip Hop an opportunity on the big stage, noting it the biggest form of music globally.
“We know a lot of people didn’t want Hip Hop on stage,” Snoop said.
“Tru dat,” Dr. Dre interjected.
“We’re here now, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” Snoop said defiantly at a press availability with Entertainment Tonight.
Hip hop has strangely never featured in NFL halftime performances, an injustice that has taken more than 20 years to correct. Following the Black Lives Matter Movement actions precipitated by Colin Kaepernick’s taking a knee during the national anthem, the aftermath of NFL’s poor handling of the situation where it appears NFL team owners conspired to deny him a chance to continue playing. And the current lawsuit brought by former Miami Dolphins coach, Brian Flores, alleging racism was at the center of his firing, it seems NFL has some racial healing to do.
What better way to deal with it, at least superficially, than including high-profile Black artists such as Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre?
Never mind that there is currently only one Black head coach, Pittsburgh Steelers’ Mike Tomlin, in a league where 70 percent of players are black.
At The Parlor, the anticipation for the halftimes show was palpable. The primarily Black crowd danced at their tables and sung along at the familiar old-school lyrics that had stood the test of time during commercial breaks.
If part of enjoying the Super Bowl includes paying attention to the oft-funny Super Bowl ads, you were out of luck. At The Parlor, the DJ made an executive decision to play rap and R&B songs, and nobody seemed to mind.
Hits by Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, and Biggie blared through the powerful speakers during every commercial break.
It was clear that attitudes toward what’s considered black or ghetto music were shifting.
WHERE’S THE SOUND?
When the much-anticipated halftime show started, The Parlor choked.
Snoop Dog, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige walked into massive applause at the SoFi Stadium, just 12 miles from The Parlor, but to an excruciating silence from the sports bar TVs.
The party-primed crowd, looking forward to the much-hyped halftime show, did not take it kindly.
“Where’s the sound?!, We don’t want to hear your damn music. This is some bulls**t!” The crowd yelled at no one in particular.
The waiters were nowhere to be found. Nobody could blame them if they took the moment to go in hiding from the avalanche of demanding and angry customers.
Frustration built among the fans, stuck at the venue, with nowhere else to go, and watching the soundless TVs helplessly, dreading the show which lasted 14 minutes, would be over by the time they figured out the problem. During the no sound period, The Parlor patrons missed out on Dr. Dre and Snoop performing Tupacs hit song, California Love, and Mary J. Blige performing her hit song Family Affair.
It was not until 50 Cent showed up on stage hanging upside down that the sound, crackly at first, and then filling the room at full blast, came back on.
The Parlor erupted with jubilation marking a vital moment of the day.
The crowd cheered and joined right into singing along to In Da Club as Fity, rapped, surrounded by multiple women dancing and twerking around him. Those who have watched the song’s original video know just how much watered down the performance at the Super Bowl stage was, but that did not stop critics on social media from complaining about the family-unfriendly performance.
When Eminem came on stage, the crowd was ready; they sang along to his hit song Lose Yourself, gesturing angrily just like Eminem as if making up for the lost moments at the show’s beginning.
Sean Hubbard, the man in charge of the sound system, apologized for the mishap.
“The amps died just as the halftime show was about to start, and we had to work hard and find a way to override,” Hubbard said amid working the complicated sound system that controlled the TVs and sound systems at The Parlor.
Hubbard described the moment when he restored the sound as electric.
They sang along to the hits played, Tupac’s California Love, Eminem’s Lose Yourself, and Kendrick Lamar’s, Everything’s Gonna Be Alright. Rapper 50 Cent upside entrance attracted attention.
LA and Cincinnati battled to the last minutes, but the Rams gained an advantage after the referee ruled against the Bengals
Fans at The Parlor went wild at the last-minute rally by Copper Kupp, who caught a crucial first-down wrestling back the momentum from the Bengals.
Kupp then made a touchdown catch sealing the Bengals’ fate.
The Parlor erupted with Tupac’s wildly popular hit song, California Love, engulfing the sports bar with people dancing and singing along as the big screens beamed the celebration at SoFi stadium to the Rams fans.
California love
California knows how to party
California knows how to party
In the city of L.A
In the city of good ol’ Watts
In the city, the city of Compton
We keep it rockin’; we keep it rockin’