Let it be known that I grew up loving football and bleeding black and gold.
So let's see. In about 1996, my girl and I absolutely loved to be out and about in the Burgh. We were regulars at The O, hung out in Oakland, and went to places that we had no business being. Without fail, we'd head out to ladies night every week, only to get lost (going to the same place) and miss free cover by 10 minutes. The door guy got used to us and asked why we couldn't ever get there on time. We were those girls. We dressed like sluts and our mothers told us that we were gonna catch a cold in our coochies for wearing such short skirts out in the cold.
Anywho, this was the time when Rod Woodson still played for the Steelers, as did Yancey Thigpen. I figure, if you've gotten this far and you know football, you probably know what Rod Woodson looks like, espcially since he's still on TV as an analyst. Below is Mr. Thigpen.
As successful athletes often do, Rod Woodson opened a restaurant in Pittsburgh and called it Woodson's. Yes. Original. Despite being overpriced for a steelworking town, the restaurant did well. The food was just okay. The atmosphere is what kept it going. On this particular Sunday afternoon, the place was busy, but not packed and the game was on their 85 TVs placed side by side to make a huge screen.
So there we sat, enjoying a late lunch, people watching and talking shit. That's what we did. We were also stranger magnets. (Probably because of the way we dressed, but that's neither here nor there.) As we sat watching the game, a gentleman came over to our table and asked if he could sit down. It was obvious to us that he worked there since he was adorned in kitchen garb. Never ones to pass up an opportunity to possibly get a free, if not at least discounted meal, we welcomed his company.
He sat with us and chatted a while and subjected himself to the torture of listening to the running commentary of two smartasses. At one point, there was a close-up of Yancey. (Please notice the space between Yancey's eyes and above his nose that is occupied by eyebrows.) This is where our story gets, ahem, hairy.
Being the sticklers for the anti-unibrow movement that we were, we immediately started with the giggles regarding the unibrow. This probably went on for about 5 to 10 minutes where we were on a roll about his eyebrow and how he made enough money to get it cleaned up. Our new gentleman friend had a good laugh about it as well. A little more time passed before he decided that he really should get back to work. We bid him farewell and continued watching the game.
Five minutes couldn't have passed before we had another visitor. Again, an employee, I think he may have been the host. His visit was short and sweet and went a little something like this:
Host: So, do you guys know who that was that sat down with you?
Us: Uh, no. One of the cooks?
Host: Well, yes, but he's also Yancey Thigpen's brother.
Us: Outbursts of laughter.
The host didn't understand why we thought that was so funny and we didn't bother to tell him. He hung out for a couple minutes then went back to his duties. We stuck around until the end of the game to see if the other Thigpen would come back out, but he didn't and we paid our bill and took off for more troublemaking.
We didn't think about that lunch until the next week when the Steelers were playing and we got another close-up of Yancey, sans unibrow. HYSTERICAL! I guess that little bro told him that the ladies were having a good laugh at his expense and so he remedied the situation. We felt better that we could watch football without breaking into fits of laughter and we felt the best because a public service had been done. Yay us!
UPDATE:
I sent a link to this post to aforementioned friend who replied with more memories:
Yes I do remember, we actually got dude’s number if you remember we ended up going to a Steeler party later per his invite (another week or so) and he and a couple of his boyz tried to get us to go to Yancy’s apt, we declined the offer cuz we had other (nice looking) hook ups waiting for us. We were a trip. Thanks for the memory……..LOL
Ahh, good times.
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