VENICE Along with baseball and hot dogs and polo and wine, football and beer have always been one of man’s favorite sport-food pairings.
One Los Angeles resident has found a new twist to the lovable pigskin and brew power coupling.
Each Sunday, approximately 80 men and women slap on their game faces for an hour of organized touch football, getting down and dirty on the fields at the Oakwood Recreation Center in Venice.
When the final whistle blows, the game faces are wiped off and adversaries become buddies, taking the short trip together to Brennan’s bar in Marina del Rey to bond over beer, fish tacos and turtle racing.
From the gridiron to the bar counter, the whole experience is the brainchild of Los Angeles resident Hazen Wilson, who in launching The Adults Sports League has found a way to unite men and women through the social aspects of sports and drinking.
“It’s the other side of sports,” Wilson said.
The Virginia native moved to the west coast more than a year ago only to find that meeting new people in Los Angeles is about as easy as finding a parking space in Los Angeles.
The life-long athlete decided to use his love for sports as a socialization tool, creating an avenue through which people could forge new friends.
It started with the co-ed touch football league in Venice, attracting about 70 men and women from the Los Angeles metropolitan area in the first season in the spring. About 200 men and women signed up for the second season of the Venice league, which
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 21, 2007. Read the original PDF.