Dec. 10, 2009
Meet "Reuben Boumtje-Boumtje"
That is a LOT of corned beef.
(I'm rather enjoying this trend on the Blog where I get to eat lots of food while following Georgetown basketball. Greatest job in the world!)
I'd like to introduce you to the "Reuben" Boumtje-Boumtje. This pound-a-half mountain of meat, sauerkraut, and Swiss I named after one of my favorite early-00s Hoyas was my pre-game lunch at Roxy Delicatessen in Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon ahead of Georgetown's game against Butler at Madison Square Garden.
It is also a gigantic, calorie-laden metaphor for why New York City is without rival as a destination for important college basketball, and why it's okay to gleefully celebrate the Hoyas' 72-65 victory in Jimmy V Classic , even if you're like me and reluctant to draw conclusions about anything before January.
Roxy's is hardly the only delicatessen in Manhattan specializing in stacking grossly oversized portions of cured meat between two slices of rye bread. And I love New York City for it. Not because I enjoyed walking back down 7th Avenue with 18 oz of sandwich in my belly.
No, I love New York City because everything about it-from the people to the buildings to t
he sandwiches-says "this is a BIG deal."
People asked me when I said I was travelling to NYC this week what I was interested in seeing.
Have I been to Times Square before? (Three times now)
Did I have time to see a Broadway show? (Unless Big East basketball counts, no.)
Was I going to see the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center? (Well, there it is.)
Truth be told, one of my favorite sites in New York City is a Red Lobster.
Let me explain.
I'm fascinated by the sheer scale of Manhattan. I walk up the staircase leaving Penn Station and I stare at the sky like an unabashed tourist. I love the crowds, I love the big lights…but most of all, I love that everything is on the grandest scale imaginable.
Countless chain restaurants have their flagship location in or near Times Square. There's a multi-story Ruby Tuesday's, an Applebees with a three-story sign, a huge Olive Garden with tinted windows…
…and a gigantic, well, Red Lobster outside of the Red Lobster.
Even the humblest of family seafood restaurants can glitter like the brightest of stage shows in New York. By the sheer magnitude of its location, a restaurant just feels important in Times Square.
And by the same token, any basketball game at Madison Square Garden feels important.
I took two days off from work in the middle of a week and drove 200 miles because this game was being played at Madison Square Garden. My two previous trips to MSG were for games whose importance wasn't in question-the 2007 and 2008 Big East Tournament Finals. But I wanted to test that premise on a Tuesday night against a non-conference opponent in the opening game of a doubleheader.
And you know what? It was a humble-sized crowd at the opening tip-The Garden's lower bowls were perhaps half full. But it might as well have been a Tournament final to me.
It was certainly a BIG win, wasn't it?
If you were looking for the Hoyas' big man to rise to the occasion…boy did Greg Monroe have a big game in the Big Apple, recording career highs in both points (24) and rebounds (15).
But in the spirit of humble things done big, were there any bigger minutes by a Hoya than the five minutes Jerrelle Benimon played in the second half, any basket bigger than Jerrelle's offensive tip-in at the height of Butler's second half surge?
From maybe the team's brightest star to the new kid in town…anyone is capable of a big day in the big city.
Arguably the most fitting sentiment about New York ever committed to song-most famously by this guy and most recently by these two -says "If I can make there, I'll make it anywhere".
Can these Hoyas, having taken Manhattan, make it anywhere in the college basketball world this season?
Well, they're certainly going to travel a fair distance to find out. By the time you read this, the Hoyas will have been in southern California for more than a day, preparing for their weekend tilt against the Washington Huskies in the John Wooden Classic-the second game of what Coach Thompson has called (of course!) a BIG East week in December.
Is it time to make another big splash on the Pacific coast? I know Hoya fans are ready.
Making my way through the crowd at the Hoop Club's post-game reception at Stout (a suitably New York-sized affair, with over 200 RSVPs and easily twice the number of attendees), I ran into a fellow Hoop Club member who readily went back on his statement that he'd have been happy splitting the Butler and Washington games. No longer.
"I'm greedy!" he told me.
Me too.
And a little hungry.
I could sure go for a sandwich.
John Hawkes (SFS '04)
Proud Member of Generation Burton
