All You Want To Know About The Tailgating Lifestyle

Tailgating parties is one of the long-held traditions in the United States of America and Canada that enhances the game-day experience. The parties take place in the parking lots of arenas and stadiums and occur before the starting or occasionally after the concerts and games. It grants the fans a chance to eat, energize and socialize before they head to the stadiums to watch the business they support play or after leaving the stadium (Alexander, 2016).

Tailgating lifestyle entails consuming grilling food and alcoholic beverages in the parking lots by the fans of various games. The history of the lifestyle can be traced back to the Civil war period. In 1861, civilians gathered to cheer their teams, the Union and the Confederates, for the first battle of the Bull Run in Washington DC (Acker, 2017). The event was characterized by people carrying picnic baskets that contained apple pies, minced meat, and plum puddings. It is also projected that the colonists were also consuming booze during celebrations since the age marked the beginning of wine and whiskey production. Since the initial tailgating occurred, the lifestyle became an essential aspect of the American culture.

The subsequent events that characterized the American society’s evolution ensured the tailgating parties’ development into a culture in gaming occurrences. For instance, the invention of Chuckwagons in 1866 also enhanced the tradition’s development (Acker, 2017). The Chuckwagons were a cowboy’s traveling kitchen invented to conveniently avail food for the working men on the road. They were pulled by mules or oxen and carried various types of food such as stews, biscuits, beef, catfish, and black-eyes peas.

Beer also began replacing whiskey as the favorite drink for the working men. The first college football game in 1869 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, also witnessed tailgating parties (Acker, 2017). The game was between Rutgers University and Princeton University. The fans were wearing colors that helped differentiate the teams they were supporting for the first time. There was the chuckwagons’ application whereby the fans were eating pork, chili, corn and drinking beer and whiskey. According to one theory, the name tailgating was developed by the Green Bay Packer (White, 2013).

The approach explains that the term started being employed in that period and was linked to modern-day American football. The Packers fans would pack their pick up trunks surrounding the fields and sit on the bed. The popular foods at that time were custards, hams, and potatoes. However, it is projected that some fans were consuming whiskey, rum, wine, and beer, which resulted in its prohibition the following year. Thus, tailgating lifestyle is an evolution of these real historical occurrences in America.