Urbanities,
Vol. 4
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No 2
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November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
72
first sight. The singular character of Upper Long Street has its origin in the heterogeneous
nature of the voices, which pass along it. Different needs, desires, and possibilities, different
economic and social backgrounds all meet up and intersect here. At first I didn’t know how I
could represent the street through its complexity. A suggestion of how to do so came from a
sports competition that was played thousands of miles away and that Long Street’s regulars
had long awaited.
The Wait and the Urban Chronotope
After six in the evening on 28 May 2011 it was no longer possible to find anywhere to sit in
the bars and clubs on Long Street. A vast crowd of people from different areas of Cape Town
had invaded the street with hats, caps and scarves bearing the emblems of Barcelona and
Manchester United. The final of the Champions League was being played at Wembley
Stadium in London, one of the year’s most important sporting events, watched by millions of
people all around the world.
In Cape Town people had been eagerly looking forward to the match for many weeks.
The main English-language daily newspapers, such as the Cape Times and the Cape Argus,
had carried articles featuring a technical analysis of the teams and predictions about the final
result, taking over column inches in the opening pages normally reserved for news items and
local politics. The flags and banners of the English and Catalan teams had begun to appear in
windows and on balconies along Long Street. In the street’s bars and nightclubs the people of
Long Street had forecast the outcome of the match and the fate of those involved, and
engaged in animated debate about the merits of the two teams and their individual players.
Observing the preparations for the match’s broadcast and listening to the conversations
of its regulars and their expectations for that event, I often wondered what kind of particular
meaning Long Street’s regulars would give to the final and how they would choose which
team to support. Talking to the people on Long Street, I realised that many of them had no
particular direct relationship to Barcelona or Manchester; most of them had been born and
raised in South Africa. Many people I met were also not usually sports fans. They were not
interested in football, but had chosen to support one of the teams. When I asked them why
they chose one of the teams over the other, they often told me about episodes in their life in
which they had gotten closer to one of the two teams for some reason or other. Talking with a
coloured man who worked on Long Street as a merchandise unloader who had decided to
support Manchester United, he explained that his father had been an admirer of one of the
club’s most famous players in the past. This is why he decided to support the team that
evening.
Then I was talking to a man of Afrikaans origin who had gone to Spain on a work trip
and had the chance to see Camp Nou (Barcelona’s stadium). Though he had not managed to
find a ticket to get into the match and so had seen the stadium only from the outside, that was
enough for him to become a fan of Barcelona’s team. As I was crossing the road a few days
before the match I met a very young homeless guy called Chris who lived in Long Street. He
managed to survive by begging and through minor scams generally perpetrated against
tourists. I had met Chris a few weeks earlier in front of a bar on the street and he had quickly
