For the third time in four weeks my wife and I hit the road to see the Gamecocks play. Unlike the past two trips, we had to fly to this one. We drove up to Charlotte on Friday and caught a direct flight to XNA, Northwest Arkansas Airport. The flight was full of optimistic Gamecocks who had similarly taken time off to make the trip.
We arrived in Northwest Arkansas, rented a car and found the airport to be about 20 minutes into the country away from Fayetteville. We set out in search of barbecue and after some poor navigating found Whole Hog Cafe on North College Street. We walked in and were surrounded by trophies won at several competitions. We were greeted by the smell of good barbecue and then by the lady working behind the counter. We order pork sandwich plates and found a table.
The pork was well done and moist. On the table, there were six choices of barbecue sauce, including one that was mustard based. I tried all of them and settled on a spicy vinegar sacue for the remainder of my meal. The sides were good as well; we tried baked beans, cole slaw and potato salad. If I find myself back in Northwest Arkansas again, I’ll be stopping back by the restaurant for more ‘que.
We headed back to the hotel to rest in the afternoon and headed out for dinner and drinks on Dickson Street after 6. We arrived in time to see the U of A homecoming parade traveling down the road. We watched for a minute, heard the hogs being called for the first time and decided we might be able to get a table while eveyone was watching the parade. Bordino’s and Does had been recommended to us, but they were both crowded with waits, so we moved on down the block. (Though I can’t confirm it, these two restaurants were recommended to us no fewer than three times each and were the first suggestions from everyone we talked to.)
We ended up at Hog Haus, which is a brewery / restaurant. There was a shorter wait, so we ordered some drinks from the bar and waited for our table. At this point someone noticed the block C on my shirt (which was partially covered by my jacket) and asked us if we were having a good time in Fayetteville. He and his friend welcomed us to Arkansas and told us how much they were looking forward to the game the next day.
We were seated later and ordered. Some of the reviews about the restaurant complained that the waits were too long and / or the waitstaff wasn’t very quick. We didn’t really have either problem, so perhaps that’s been fixed now. Our food came, and it was fine. It wasn’t amazing, but it wasn’t bad either. If we come back, we’ll try one of the other restaurants first, but if we end up back here, we won’t be disappointed.
After dinner, we decided to try to spend time at several bars to get the most accurate picture of the nightlife. We headed to Smoke and Barrel because I kinda liked the name and assumed they’d probably have a good scotch. They had a cover for what sounded like a mediocre band, so we decided to try some other places first. We made our way to 21st Amendment, a smallish bar fronting on Dickson Street. I found the scotch I was looking for, and my wife had a beer. The atmosphere is laid back, and the crowd seemed a little older than college aged. (It was only about 9:30, so it may have a younger crowd later.)
We moved on to a bar called Shotz. Shotz had a decidedly younger feel, and wasn’t as nice as 21st Amendment. That wasn’t a problem for us, so we sat down for a drink. Shotz serves shots in shot glasses made of ice. Apparently the accepted custom is to break the ‘glass’ on the floor after finishing the shot. Not to be one to break with tradition, I dutifully ordered a shot (tequila), downed it and destroyed the shot glass on the floor. It wasn’t as satisfying as you’d expect, but a little something to do nonetheless.
My wife suggested we find out what was on the other end of Dickson Street toward campus. We moved that way and ducked into Mickey Finn’s. Finn’s was a very subdued bar, even more so than 21st Amendment. We had a few beers, played pool in the back and decided to call it a night.
The next day we called a cab to take us back to Dickson Street. Since we had to rent a car and didn’t have any of our tailgating stuff, we didn’t see the need to try to improvise tailgating, so we decided to find a sports bar and watch football all afternoon.
When we asked around about sports bars on Friday night, we always were given the same advice: Farrell’s. We arrived around noon and found two places at the bar in front of three TVs. We ordered lunch and watched the place slowly fill up around us. Farrell’s Lounge Bar and Grill is a very nice place. The place has comfortable chairs and good TVs. The sightlines to TVs are pretty strong throughout the place. The food is excellent and is a big step up from traditional bar fare. If we come back, we’ll definitely eat here again, perhaps even for dinner.
I should note a peculiar thing we noticed at the bar. When we arrived the game on the main TVs wasn’t Florida-Vanderbilt; it was Texas-Texas Tech. I found this a little strange, but I could see the Florida game, so I didn’t worry about it. I tweeted how peculiar I thought it was and questioned whether it was evidence that Arkansas is more western than southern. One of my followers pointed out that the game was probably on because of the Razorbacks’ long history of pulling against Texas and that we should view it as akin to pulling against Clemson. That may have been the correct interpretation because the Florida game was moved to more prominent locations as it became apparent Texas wasn’t going to lose.
Unexpectedly some friends of ours had driven in from Oxford, Mississippi. We met them on our way to the Stadium at Mickey Finns again. (Finns is on the way from Farrell’s.) The walk from the Dickson Street bar distict to the the Stadium takes you through campus. It’s a nice walk, but like most of the area, it has more hills than you would expect. The campus looks more modern than most of the other campuses in the conference. At times it is a sleek look, and at other times it is a cold look.
At the stadium our friends quickly and easily found tickets. There were people selling tickets on the East side of the stadium. Plenty of tickets were being sold but not so many that you wondered how many people would be going to the game.
We made our way inside the Stadium and found our seats in the Gamecock section. South Carolina had part of section 111, which if you were watching on TV was on the South Carolina sideline at the open end of the stadium. USC fans didn’t buy too many tickets, obviously because of the distance, so our section was small. I don’t know if Arkansas didn’t allot us a solid block, or if Gamecocks who bought later sold to Razorbacks, but we were very much in the midst of many Arkansas fans.
These fans were the only unpleasant ones we ran into the entire weekend. Even then, it wasn’t all of the fans just several around us. We assumed that these fans probably aren’t indicative of the fanbase as a whole since they were in the visitor’s section at their own stadium and did our best to ignore them.
Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium seats over 70,000 and is laid out in a two deck horseshoe shape. The lower deck is dramatically bigger than the upper deck, and there appear to be two levels of luxury suites between the two decks all the way around the stadium. The Stadium is in very good shape and clean which gives the impression that it is fairly new, newly remodeled or very well taken care of.
The crowd is loud but not as loud as a Florida or Tennessee. The crowd has their signature cheer wherein they Call the Hogs. The cheer is done by everyone while standing. They begin to say “woo” while slowly raising their straightened arms from their sides to above their heads. After holding their hands above their heads for a second, they then say “Pig, Sooey.” When they are doing the full cheer they will do that cheer three times and at the end of the last cheer, they add “Razorbacks.” They do the cheer several times before and during the game. They do the full cheer between the third and fourth quarters and the shortened version on kickoffs. It’s as essential to Arkansas as Rocky Top is to Tennessee or cow bells are to Mississippi State.
After Connor was knocked out of the game late in the fourth quarter, we decided we had an opportunity to walk back to Dickson Street and catch a cab home before the crowd hit. As nice as everyone had been outside of our section, we decided we’d rather not discuss the game any more Saturday night. Our plan worked, and we made it home just in time to see overtime begin in the Alabama – LSU game.
On Sunday we killed some time before our 6 pm flight. We had lunch at Slim Chickens, a Arkansas-Oklahoma based chain. It was good and reminded me of Zaxby’s in that it was a chain that served chicken that was a step above traditional fast food. If we come back and tailgate, we might have to go by Slim Chickens to get some supplies. We watched a movie to kill some time (Moneyball; we enjoyed it) and headed to the airport. When we got there we found that even TSA was very outgoing and nice in Northwest Arkansas. Seriously, they asked us how we enjoyed our stay, made small talk about the game and invited us to come back soon. Later in the airport, a vendor also asked about our stay and invited us to come back during baseball season.
More than Petrino’s passing attack or the scene on Dickson Street, what we will remember about this road trip is just how welcoming and accomodating the people in Northwest Arkansas were. Several went out of their way to welcome us when they saw our Carolina logo. All (except for the bad apples in our section) were gregarious and interested in talking about the game and fun to be around. When our offense can score a few more points or when Arkansas’s can’t, we’ll make a trip back over to Arkansas to spend a weekend again. Until then, any Razorbacks headed to Columbia for a football or baseball weekend, let us at leftoverhotdog know when you’re coming and we’ll try to give you the lay of the land and make you feel as welcome as we felt.
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