Pearl Jubilee
By Justin Wells
Before LFCNY’s creation in 1995 there was no real community of Liverpool supporters in New York City. Supporters were diffuse and didn’t commune to watch the Reds. Keeping up with happenings at Anfield was a labor of love. The birth of LFCNY turned that labor of love into a call to action, a way to unite Liverpool supporters in the City and to form a community of those who wanted to come together and find a home, both physical and spiritual. Who knew that simply wanting to watch Steve McManaman and Robbie Fowler do the business every week could turn into a cause for celebration?
When we think of what it is we’re celebrating, it’s not just the Reds, it’s each other and this vibrant and supportive community. If this was simply about football, it wouldn’t have the legs and staying power it has had. The community is what sustains this; many of us have made life-long friendships. Many of us have found our people at this club.
Over the course of this season, we will be celebrating how the Liverpool supporters community in New York has grown and created a tapestry that is equal parts Scouse and New Yorker. We are very proud of what many of us, scratch that, all of us have built and we want to sing its praises.
Throughout the season, we will be sending out stories and content highlighting the 30 years of this community. The voices you will hear will and words you will read will come from both inside the club and out, from the people who founded the club and those who came later, from voices new and old. From those still physically present at our partner bars and those who have moved away but remain with us in spirit.
To help pave the way and show you the power of our community and how it has knit the aforementioned tapestry, we have enlisted the help our friend Neil Atkinson of The Anfield Wrap. TAW have been great and supportive friends our ours throughout the years, a relationship started when we had them over at 11th Street in March of 2013. They are kindred spirits, fellow travelers on our shared road, people who know that football without each other (and without Origi) is nothing.
“It was in the 11th Street Bar of the Liverpool Supporters Club of New York that I realised for the first time the extent to which Liverpool's culture permeated across the globe. I remember looking around the place, looking at the sheer weight of history both on and baked into the walls and being struck by a sudden feeling of pride and sudden feeling of being dwarfed. All of it seemed almost too much at the same time as feeling right. This was a place which cherished Liverpool but had its own Liverpool too and that is exactly as it should be. Liverpool shouldn't colonise these places but should be part of a subtle collaboration, an intertwining of hands, ideas and values.
Not mine, not yours, but ours.
That day Stewart Downing scored a sixty-sixth minute equaliser and ever since New York has felt the most welcoming place to return if not home to then maybe not even the next best thing but instead the best example of the best way to be.”
