San Francisco Has a Wild Parrot Sports Team: Should Brooklyn?

Meet the SF Parrots

Happily, San Francisco now has a soccer club named after its famous wild parrots called the Northbeach Wild Parrots (AKA SF Parrots). The team's motto is "soccer at its wildest;" its uniforms are bright green like the  wild conures made famous in Mark Bittner's charming film, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.

The SF Parrots are in the CYSA league and rostered 19 players in the 2012 lineup. These kids are no slouches; in September they won 1st place in the U16 group of the Golden Gate Invitational Tournament.

Should Brooklyn have a Parrot-themed soccer team? Maybe. When sports teams -- or automobiles for that matter -- are named after animals, these animals are usually aggressive. Hawks. Bears. Sharks. Naming a team after a prey species -- a pigeon, starling or parrot -- would be courting failure on the field.

On the other hand, the parrots we find in Brooklyn have been known to be aggressive. And they're as tough or tougher than the SF parrots due to NYC's violent weather, as proved recently when the parrot nests survived Hurricane Sandy.

If anyone in Brooklyn is interesting in forming a parrot-themed soccer team, please note that the two best places to play ball and see wild parrots at the same time are at the athletic field at Brooklyn College (where the monthly safaris happen) and in The Dust Bowl/Quaker Parrot Park in Bay Ridge.

Go Parrots!

Back in Zuccotti Again...

Brr -- it's too cold to play outside! But January/February is the time when it's good to hunker down and record demos! Here's one I wrote after I walked by Zuccotti Park last week -- birthplace of Occupy Wall Street -- on my way to a wedding at Federal Hall. The park was empty -- just a couple of tourists and about 40 pigeons, and that made me sad and more than a bit sentimental for the glory days...
Lyrics:

Back in Zuccotti again
But where the heck are my friends?
Has anyone seen the Man in the Box?
Officer Winsky or the Hipster Cop?
It was a while ago
But I can't let go
So I'm sitting alone with a pigeon on my hand
And I'm back in Zuccotti again

Back in Zuccotti again
But where the heck are my friends?
Has anyone seen the Ladies Who Knit?
The guy with the sign that says "it's fucked up and bullshit"?
It was a while ago
But I can't let go
So I'm sitting alone with a pigeon on my hand
And I'm back in Zuccotti again

Parrot Drives Car

BirdBuggy - a beak-directed, robotically-assisted, parrot-driven vehicle that was designed to keep a pet African Grey amused, has taken the Internet by storm. Some question the wisdom of taking this much trouble to keep a parrot amused. After all, African Greys can fly -- so why do they need to drive? Aren't there less elaborate ways of keeping one's parrot amused?

Sure. But driving is fun -- and Pepper the parrot, who drives the BirdBuggy, seems to be having plenty of it.

Let us praise Andrew Gray, of the University of Florida, who created the BirdBuggy, and Pepper, its intrepid driver. May the BirdBuggy land Andrew a job as well as a medal for creating 2013's first parrot viral video.