Outside the stadium, extreme tailgating offers satellite TV, colder beer and plusher seating
Wichita electrician Roger Michler is excited and ready to roll, with Thursday night’s Chiefs home opener against the Denver Broncos upon us.
What that means is, OK, sure, yes, there’s the actual football game inside Arrowhead Stadium. But what it also means is that outside — in Lot H, Section 32 — it’s time for Michler’s “Arrowhead Assault Vehicle” to ride again.
“You’ve got to come join us! Check it out,” said Michler, 53.
His AAV is a prime example of extreme tailgating, a growing trend at America’s ballparks and stadiums. With the relatively low expense and lightweight portability of devices like chilled beer-dispensing “kegerators” and satellite dishes, the sight of tricked-out trailers, delivery vans and shuttle buses is becoming almost as familiar as the traditional Smokey Joe grills and beer koozies.
Sleek in a wrap of Chiefs red on white, Michler’s assault vehicle is actually a three-part convoy.
First there’s the van, kept in storage in Overland Park and driven by Lake of the Ozarks buddy David Poort, who comes up one day before each home game in preparation for the roll-out. The van, with the word “CHIEFS” stretched diagonally across its side, was gutted and customized almost completely by Michler.
Open the back doors and out rolls a 42-inch flat-panel television. A second screen, 32 inches, attaches to the side for viewing or video games. Other features: custom-upholstered Chiefs seating, a satellite dish and three sound systems — one for each of the televisions and a third to blast music from public address speakers that rise from the rear of the van.
Hooked behind is the enclosed trailer with a 240-quart cooler, a bar surface for mixed drinks and a 700-pound smoker.
“It’s all computer controlled,” Michler said. On Thursday it will be used to prepare some 25 pounds of brisket, 10 pounds of pork butt and another 10 of German sausage to feed upward of 70 pregame party regulars.
Behind the trailer rolls “the crew hauler,” yet another van that Michler and his core group of friends, including his son, Chad, drive not just to Arrowhead but also to Chiefs games in cities including Indianapolis, Minneapolis and Nashville. They plan to take it to Green Bay later this month.
Everything, moments before a game’s start, is packed away with military efficiency.
“Everywhere we take our posse,” Michler said, “they say they have never seen anything quite like it.”
In the atmosphere of professional and college sports, where everything from physicality to finances has become more extreme, why not tailgating?
“The TVs have gotten lighter and thinner,” said Joe Cahn, the self-described “commissioner of tailgating” from Fort Worth, Texas, who travels the country tailgating and operates the promotional website tailgating.com. “It’s the same with grills. Used to be the only people with grills was somebody who knew somebody who had a pickup. Now you can fold up the grill and put it in a Mini Cooper.”
And it’s moved beyond trailers, vans and shuttle buses.
“Ambulances are very big now,” Cahn said. “Ambulances around the league are incredible.”
A quick online search of retired ambulances converted for tailgating displays dozens of images of “fanbulances” that have popped up across the country, including the REDscue Unit for the Arizona Cardinals, the Husker Rescue Rig for Nebraska, the Road Crew ambulance touting the Milwaukee Brewers, the Reel Steel tailgaters fashioned from a S.W.A.T. assault vehicle for the Houston Texans, the Cincinnati Bengals’ Party Squad and others. A number of the tailgaters have their own fan Facebook pages.
At Kansas State University, Kevin Neitzel and friends have the “Catty Wagon,” a Wildcats fanbulance. Wrapped in purple, the rear of the rig on the driver’s side is also signed in indelible ink by football coach Bill Snyder, “Thanks for being great Wildcat fans.”
“We have a flat-top grill that pulls out of the back, coffee maker, microwave — we have bar products in there and a built-in kegerator. Beer goes through and it goes down to 37 degrees before it comes out,” said Neitzel, who owns and operates The Fridge, a liquor wholesaler in Manhattan.
A 40-inch TV folds down from the ceiling inside the back hatch doors. A 20-inch set is inside near the bench seats.
Neitzel said that five years ago he and two other families went in on the retired ambulance, a 1996 Ford that they got for $3,400. Each family added $1,000 each for basic renovations. Each adds $500 a year for upgrades, like new generators, a satellite dish and HDTV.
Gates to the parking lot of Bill Snyder Family Stadium open five hours before kickoff.
“We’re waiting,” said Neitzel, 40. They regularly tailgate with 25 to 30 people. “Then, after the game, we stick around for an hour and a half after.”
Total tailgate time: 10 hours and more.
At the University of Kansas, attorney Wes Smith and his KU professor wife, Lisa Leroux-Smith, joined in 2008 with three other couples (Kitcha and Adrienne Paranjothi, Amy and David Clark, Paul and Janet Wallen) to create their Kanbulance.
Amenities: DirectTV, flat-panel TV mounted on the side, grill, stereo system.
Wes Smith, who graduated from KU’s law school but attended Oklahoma State University as an undergraduate, notes that his early alma mater gets 40 to 50 rigs at a single game. Not so at KU, perhaps because of the team’s lack of recent success. (“You won’t get me to say that,” Smith said.) The Kanbulance, he said, draws about 100 tailgaters a game.
For last Saturday’s game against the University of Memphis, they had 24 pounds of taco meat, he said.
Also in Lawrence, Le Taun, the owner of Extreme Bus Builders, 619 N. Second St., has found himself busy, tricking out limos and party buses and turning out mobile man caves and tailgating rigs.
The buses are sent to him from across the country to be refurbished, fit with LED laser disco lights, upholstered benches in team colors and flat-panel TVs. One, for a KU fan, is a bus used mainly for golf outings with glass etched with the word “Jayhawk” and an image of the mascot.
One client, a wealthy fan of the Michigan State Spartans, had a bus used at sobriety checkpoints shipped from Florida and fitted with a black and white interior. OK, they’re not school colors, but tiny Spartan heads were placed in the interior at different points.
“He asked me what was the largest number of TVs I’d ever put in a bus. I said six. He told me, ‘Give me eight,’ ” recalled Taun, who said most jobs run between $7,500 and $12,000, not including the cost of the vehicle.
The guy also bought a flatbed truck that Taun fitted with a full kitchen.
“When he goes tailgating,” Taun said, “he hires a driver for the bus and a chef cooks on the truck in the kitchen.”
Sensing the desire for higher-end tailgating, Ryan Goyer of Overland Park and his brother, Danny Goyer, started a rental business four months ago, trailergating.com. For $150 a hour, or $700 to $1,400 for a tailgating event ($700 for a Royals game, $900 for the Chiefs), the company will haul an enclosed trailer to a site.
When an outside panel is lifted, it reveals two flat-panel TVs, a satellite dish, two keg beer dispensers and a large cooler. Inside the trailer is a toilet, sink and, of course, another television.
“It’s like having an outdoor living room,” Ryan Goyer said. “That’s what I think the focus is.”
Business is solid, he said. He’s already had bookings, typically for corporate tailgating events, at K-State, the University of Missouri, Royals games and Arrowhead, among other sites.
“Our initial goal was to hit at least 10 (events) this season,” he said, noting that they had already reached 13 as of last week. “Hopefully, the Royals will got the playoffs and we’ll go higher than that.”
Goyer noted, as did many others, that outside tailgating has become so cushy that many people in the parking lots no longer even go to the games.
But don’t mention such sacrilege to the guys on the Arrowhead Assault Vehicle.
“We never miss a kickoff,” Michler said.
This story was originally published September 16, 2015 at 2:23 PM.