OK so back in April I was supposed to wrap up 2003 covering THE LONDON TOURNAMENT and Christmas Eve at Gerjay’s. Then… I don’t know I forgot. In any case, someone just recurrected this thread so I’ve taken my tournament log (when I actually wrote them in detail) and have edited it with some perspective (italics).
This one had been building up for a while so I was really looking forward to this trip. I leave around 10:30am and pick up Jason (Noodleman) who can’t find his cell phone (despite my calling him not even five minutes earlier on that phone). We print off the directions we never used and Jason’s mom says “call me when you get there.” Of course Jason never calls his mom. We’re on the way to BCC to get Steve (Original Gatsby) when I get a phone call.
Me: “Hey Steve, where you at?”
Steve: “Home”
Me: “HOME! YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE AT TIMMY’S”
Steve: “HA HA! Yeah I know, I just got up.”
*Steve may well be the WORST person to rely on when having to pick someone up. To put it in perspective, Jason and I live in the northeast corner of Brampton and Steve lives in the southwest. At this point he never had a license and we’d agree to pick him up from a Tim Hortons around Steeles & 410. The fucking guy was NEVER ON TIME! EVER! You tell him to be there and he shows at least 1/2 hour late if not way later. A lot of times I’d call and his mom would have to wake him up. But then he’d show up and he’d do the Steve laugh (people know what I’m talking about) and you can’t stay mad. Fucking guy… *
FUCK! So we pick up Byron, who had been awake since 6am because he was too dumb to turn off his alarm clock. He looks like shit but coffee will fix that (he’s left two Tim Hortons medium coffees at my house in two weeks. I swear he’s going to die from coffee). We kill off 1/2 an hour waiting for Steve to get his ass in gear and head up to Sauga for Bryan.
I got a chance to fiddle with my digital camera for the first time as Jason humiliates me over and over showing me how to use the most basic of functions I couldn’t figure out.
Me: “How the hell do you turn on this stupid light.”
Jason: “Maybe you should hit the button that says LIGHT on it.”
Fucker…
Anyway Bryan shows up and he’s already eating McDonalds (every time I see Bryan he’s eating fries). A lot of the new blood who’s met Jiggabry may not know it but he used to be MASSIVE! I’d say Bryan was in that 300lb mark at one point in time. Back then he was an eating machine as opposed to the non stop walking + pot smoking machine he is now. If you want an effective diet that may or may not kill you, Bryan’s walking weed diet will drop 100lbs+ in under a year for you. The trip was fun as Bryan gets into an arguement with the rest of the car over whether Red Apples are better than Green Apples. Then we pass an apple orchard and start going on about owners of apple orchards punking off younger owners. “What the fuck you know about apples? YOU AIN’T NOTHING BUT AN APPLE SCRUB!” Oh my God, twenty minutes of talking about apple scrubs and how you’re not OG Apples unless you’ve been growing apples for ten years.
We made London in an hour and 1/2, which is way less than I was expecting (I may go up a lot more now that I know it’s so close). Please note I’ve never set foot in London again since this post in November 2003. What’s the first thing we see? DARTH VADER vs OBI WAN FIGHTING WITH LIGHT SABERS ON THE CORNER! WHAT THE FUCK?! There were literally two guys completely decked out in Star Wars gear fighting with Light Sabres while waving to cars. I thought I was going to cry laughing. “Only in London.” Then Steve spots this guy walking down the street with this brutal yellow hat and we’re like “worst hat ever. Only in London.” Jason do you remember this at all? I read my own log and can’t for the life of me remember spotting a guy in a yellow hat. Everything else in the log came up instantly but this one incident. We scam the fuck out of the convenience store (their debit machine wasn’t working so I decided to scam 2 batteries off Bryan instead of paying $10 for them) and finally reach the arcade. Or so we thought.
First off the arcade we saw was closed down AND it was right beside a strip club. Byron was disappointed that it wasn’t open until 3:00pm but I tried to explain noon strippers are horrible. Then we hit “Ace Arcade” but that’s also the wrong arcade. However, I should say this now. WE MUST HAVE A TOURNAMENT THERE! Ace Arcade may be the most perfect location for a tournament. IT’S FUCKING MASSIVE, it has fooz ball, pool tables, a bar and tons of games. The only downside is that the controls suck. So basically they need to add CvS2, 3S and fix their sticks and it’d be the best arcade ever. Oh yeah, and there are people that sell drugs all day long so you’ll always have a weed supply.
FINALLY we hit the right arcade and Nassim is the only one there (real inspiring). We play a few casual matches (they have BCC’s CvS1, CvS2, MvC2 and that stupid four playing side scroller that no one in Brampton touched except Pete) and then go to McDonalds. BRYAN FUCKING SCAMS MY FRIES while I’m on the phone and I have to get another one. MOTHERFUCKER! Slowest McDonalds ever. They had this freak of nature black guy with blond hair wearing a LIGHT BLUE LEATHER JACKET WTIH TASSLES! OH MY GOD! “Only in London.”
Thinking back, that arcade was honestly GOD AWFUL! It was more akin to a closet that just kept going. For some reason I didn’t write down that aside from Nassim, we also met Eugene (his actual name was George but for years I’ve been calling him Eugene). You ever meet those people that are completely out of their mind but have juuuuuust enough marbles left in the sack that they’re not committed? Yeah that’d be George. The most friendly scary crazy fuck you’ll ever come across. On top of that, the bathroom in that arcade was tucked away in this odd corner. Steve and I got into a 15 minute conversation about having to defeat THE MINOTAUR that guarded the dark bathroom before being able to use it. Proper lighting is important people. It keeps nerds from making up Minotaur scenarios. As for the arcade itself, it had a lot of BCC’s old cabinets and apparently they don’t fix them in London any more than they fixed them in Brampton. I distinctly remember everyone trying to avoid the 2P side of the CvS2 cabinet because you couldn’t low block. Nowadays you’d just borrow another stick, back then you were basically fucked if you started on “the wrong side” and you pulled the double switch on a loss. UGH!
We finally wrap up around 8:00pm and Nassim takes us to this really great Pho Ben Than place and THE FOOD IS HUGE! Jason, Kin and Nass gets these bowls from I don’t know… GIANT BOWL LAND and it’s got about 20 pounds of noodles in them. HOLY FUCK! I had never seen actual Pho before as I was always getting Wendy’s or fried chicken wings when I was at Pacific Mall. I get Curry Chicken and I wonder what the big deal about not getting rice is until I have a litre of curry sauce left over and get laughed at by the Vietnamese woman for asking for rice 20 minutes after getting my meal.
The bar we hit was pretty nice but the live band FUCKING SUCKED! The waiter was useless and I just bought my drinks from the bar. I have no recollection of going to a bar in London. We managed to fit six people in my Altima (Lord knows how, good thing Bryan didn’t stay because he’s way bigger than Kin) and head back to Nassim’s place. We played SF until God knows when while I watched MvC2 Grand Finals (SOOOOOO GOOD!). Nassim’s place should be noted for THE DEATH STAIRS! We played casuals in Nassim’s room but when Team Brampton went to sleep we were on couches in the basement. Unfrotunately it was like 4:00am and we didn’t want to turn on lights so we talked down the stairs that you couldn’t tell if they ever ended. Jason and I made it OK but Steve missed the last step completely and smacked up the wall. AWESOME! We headed back home the next morning pretty happy with the day’s tournament despite the actual tournament being pretty brutal. How the fuck did Kin even get home?
“Wooooow… roll super… that’s AWWWWWESOME!” 
