By now, you know about the North Dakota radio host who ripped Philadelphia on Monday, describing his horrendous experience at Lincoln Financial Field in a letter titled, “Dear Amazon, anywhere but Philadelphia.”
Joel Heitkamp explained that his family was shoved and spat upon and had full beer cans thrown at them. He claims he was headbutted by a drunk Eagles fan and that police officers were complacent with the boorish behavior.
“I have never seen such a display in my life,” Heitkamp wrote.
He followed up with Philly Mag on Tuesday in a more tempered question and answer format, an interview where he didn’t really back down from his criticism of Philadelphia but did mention the hospitality of a “good guy named Ed.”
That’s Ed Callahan, the guy who runs the “Eagles Mobile II” tailgate. A Crossing Broad reader suggested we get in touch with Ed for his side of the story, so we did. Ed was nice enough to spend a few minutes on the phone Friday morning, and so was Joel, who got in touch with us later in the day.
Here’s what Ed had to say:
Ed Callahan: Let me give you the whole story as I know it. I do not know what happened to him inside the game. We had nothing to do with that. We have a following in North Dakota, our tailgate, because we’ve been welcoming North Dakota State Bison fans. Some of the folks up there reached out to Heitkamp and had him get in touch with me. We had coordinated earlier in the week. I not only welcomed him to the tailgate, but I arranged for the Green Room bar at 20th and Green Street to be the site for his Friday broadcast back to North Dakota. He interviewed me over the air for about ten minutes Friday afternoon. We also invited him to come down to the tailgate. He showed up and spent about an hour and a half with us. We did shots with him. I told him, about wearing Vikings gear, as long as you’re at my tailgate, you’re safe. Once you cross tenth street, my hands are clean. I have no responsibility for what happens then. Now, on Monday, I texted him and followed up and mentioned that it was a tough loss for them but that we enjoyed meeting you and your company. That’s when he unleashed on what happened in the stadium. But he said, he said to me, this was all in text, ‘you guys were great, I really enjoyed your time.’ Then he shoots out his story. Now, I think he wrote his story in the airport, and it got back to his station in Fargo, and his producer took the picture of my tailgate that I sent to Joel so he could find us, and put that picture as a header on the online story. I don’t know if you notice that when it pops up as the thumbnail.
Crossing Broad: Yeah, I saw that.
Callahan: It’s got a picture of my tailgate, and no mention in the story of how he was treated by us and how we arranged things for him, how we bent over backwards to welcome him. He enjoyed our hospitality for a couple hours, not only him, but his wife, his sister – not the Senator sister, another sister.
Now, he’s a pretty gregarious guy, okay? I think he’s a flame thrower in Fargo on his radio show. So, I have no doubt in my mind, that while he was treated like shit in that stadium, he wasn’t exactly taking tea and cookies to the Calcutta pool with Mother Theresa either. I waited three days after reading that story, because I read the story after exchanging those texts with him. And I went back to him – I’m a 28-year retired Naval officer – the first thing I said to him was, ‘Joel, one of the first things I learned in the Navy is never write anything for publication when you’re angry. Here’s what I’m pissed at. I’m pissed that we had reached out to you, that we had made arrangements for you, and you use a picture of my tailgate in that screed against Philadelphia.’ I said that’s unsatisfactory. He apologized. And he said he’s been over the air in Fargo saying how great we were and how accommodating we were and all of that. But hey, he’s miles away. He also said, ‘talk to the Philly papers,’ because he has gotten back to some folks I guess, and mentioned us. I didn’t see the article that was referenced in the Crossing Broad story by the Philly Mag guy. Did he mention anything positive in that interview or was it just not included?
CB: He did mention you guys there. Let me read the section. He said, quote, “we had been invited to a tailgate by a good guy named Ed. He told us that it was going to be interesting and that once we left the tailgate and went into the stadium, we were on our own.”
So he did mention you guys, but not in the original letter that he wrote. He didn’t talk about the positive experience he had at the tailgate until he spoke with Philly Mag later in the week.
Callahan: Okay, I saw that original story.
CB: Is it disappointing to you that he would leave out the part about your tailgate in his original letter?
Callahan: Oh, absolutely. But let me tell you also what he said. He said that the picture of our tailgate was attached to that story by his producer, and when he got back to North Dakota, he chewed them all out for doing that. And he did apologize, and I accepted his apology for lumping us in with whatever happened to him.
As far as I’m concerned, he was a pretty good guy. We had fun with him, trading barbs back and forth and trash talking, having a few drinks and enjoying ourselves. I also think the ass whipping that the Vikings got contributed to some of the vitriol in that letter.
Callahan and Heitkamp appear together in this picture posted to the tailgate’s Facebook page. Ed is on the right and Joel is in the middle:
And Heitkamp hosted his radio show on Friday from the Green Room in Fairmount:
Joel was good enough to give us a shout a little later on Friday, after wrapping up his show, to offer up his side of the story. We continued the discussion about his experience in Philadelphia and talked about some of the ways in which we can address the fan behavior problem:
Heitkamp: The picture of Ed’s tailgate shouldn’t have been up there. I’m not trying to throw my producer under the bus, but after we wrote it and sent it and she posts it, she used the Philly bus that was sent to us. I apologized to Ed for that, because that RV wasn’t a bad memory for me. I want to be upfront about that. The other thing about it was, whether or not I put Ed in the article, I knew that this article was going to cause trouble. I did. I was talking in generalities, and in fairness to Ed and his tailgate, and what I learned about Philly fans, I’m not not sure Ed wanted me to say, in any way, shape, or form, that he welcomed me around. I mean, think about it. Should I have put him in there? Probably. But in terms of, ‘boy, you didn’t mention the good,’ that’s pretty minor compared to the population of fans where it wasn’t good. I think what pushed me over the top was, well, number one, getting headbutted wasn’t good. But the more important thing was when they circled my wife and my sister and told them that they were going to rape them up the ass. That pushed it over the top for me.
Crossing Broad: I originally thought, and Ed mentioned this, that maybe you were just writing emotionally and off the cuff after a difficult weekend. But you haven’t backed away from any assertions about Philly fans, have you?
Heitkamp: No, I haven’t. And I haven’t because I saw, first hand, all of it at its worst. People have been sending me blog posts and Youtube and all of this, saying (audio cuts out briefly). And I knew that was going to come. Absolutely knew it was going to come. Then it was because, ‘we lost.’ But, Kevin, this went way further than that. It did. Beer cans thrown at you, people getting up and screaming in your face. I mentioned what happened to my wife. Check with the Vikings’ parents. They were sitting in a group and had beer cans thrown down on them. They ended up having to go up in the stands and arrest people and take them out. I’m not lying to you when I tell you that a security guy at the stadium told me, after the screaming in my face, to ‘get the hell out of here.’ It was, ‘you were never welcome here’ kind of stuff. This is a guy working for the stadium. And so, here’s what I’ll stick by – I’ll stick by my challenge of, when the Eagles play the Cowboys, the Chief of Police and the Mayor of Philly need to put Cowboy jerseys on, Cowboy baseball caps on, and just see how bad it is. Walk around. Walk around the tailgate and see what happens to them.
CB: My take on this has always been that the decent, law-abiding, tax-paying normal Philadelphian looks at those people and doesn’t feel any sort of pride or connection to that. But I also don’t think it’s just a ‘Philly problem.’ I mentioned the Giants and Dodgers fan stabbing from a few years ago (in another article). There’s been awful stuff at foreign soccer games. So I think where you start to lose some people is when this is described as a ‘Philly’ thing when we sort of look at it as a human problem, as trashy people acting like trash. Does that make sense?
Heitkamp: I understand what you’re getting at, I just disagree with it. I think they take specific pride in what they do. And I think the average fan that wouldn’t do that, I saw a number of fans there that were just chuckling while this was going on even though they weren’t the ones screaming and getting in your face. And the other thing, Kevin, is that it wasn’t an age thing. It wasn’t ‘hey these are 25 and 30 year olds.’ This was something that I think people have grown up with and taken some pride in, because it was 50 and 60 year olds, people my age. I just think it’s become acceptable. That’s what repulses me the most, that it’s acceptable.
CB: So, let’s “advance” the story here. That’s the old industry term, yeah? Let’s move the story forward. Outside of just attrition, and that mindset going away over time, what is the solution here? What can law enforcement do? What can the mayor do? Are there steps to be taken by the normal, decent Philly resident?
Heitkamp: Sure. Here’s what I would do if I was the Philly mayor, and I doubt he’d do it because it will cost him some votes. But first off I’d place undercover police so they can monitor all of this. Second, there’s no way I’d let people start tailgating at 9 a.m. for a game that’s going to start in the five o’ clock hour. No way I’d do that, they’re gonna be hammered, and hammered badly. I’d certainly monitor throwing beer cans at people. The city itself has to monitor physical violence and has to monitor people that are committing acts of terror, and that’s what they were doing. For my wife and my sister to go through that, that’s completely ridiculous. And the other thing I would do if I was the Eagles themselves, I would monitor every arrest, and if I found out that those people were season ticket holders, I wouldn’t let them be a season ticket holder. Because that would stop it. People would go, ‘I don’t want to lose my season tickets!’ And I know that there are a lot of people who tailgate who don’t have tickets and don’t go into the game, but if you put a list on there of people who can’t be STH anymore, you’re telling me as passionate as those fans are, they they wouldn’t stop it or curtail it? You bet it would. The other thing is, the NFL. The NFL itself has this family reputation that it wants. If the NFL wants to be represented that way, fine. But the ratings are down. They’ve been struggling with the general public over their image, if they want that to be their image, they need to look at one of their members and do something about it.
And one more for you, and this one is gonna blow you away a little bit – I believe that if somebody from my team, that if people wearing my colors are going in and the home team does that, I’m gonna get involved (in stopping other fan’s behavior). (Vikings owner) Zygi Wilf needs to deal himself a hand. He needs to call ownership of the Eagles and talk to the commissioner and advocate on behalf of his fans that had all of this done to them.
CB: I’ll leave you with this one; sounds to me like you think the change really begins with the neutral fan who is complacent in letting this happen, and not even necessarily the offenders themselves.
Heitkamp: I agree, and it has to start at the top of the Eagles’ organization. The Ed Callahans of the world are not the problem. Ed, while we took a lot of crap from them when we got to the tailgate, we should have! We were wearing Viking colors and that’s good rivalry stuff. I get that. But that isn’t the problem. You can deal with that and have fun with that. It’s the physical violence, it’s the vulgarity, it’s the intimidation. It is women who spent money on tickets, leaving, leaving at halftime and saying, ‘how are we going to get out of here?’ No woman that bought a ticket to a game should have to talk about the threat of being raped.
As we wrapped up the discussion, Joel wanted to throw in one more thing about the Philadelphia fans who have been sending messages of apology for the fan behavior:
Heitkamp: I keep emailing them back, saying, ‘it’s not your fault.’ It’s not your fault. It should be directed at Eagles’ management and the city. If those two do their jobs, then it’ll get fixed. But it’s not your fault.
So there you have it, some clarity on the tailgating situation and doubling-down on the in-stadium fan behavior.
39 Responses
The douche on the left in the visor needs a full 40 oz beer thrown at his face. Go birds!!!
I thinking the beating on the field was way worse and they have video of that.
Sorry, I’d like to see video proof of what this guy says.
I’m not about to take any vikings fan word for it after they just saw their team get their ass beat
really really bad.
You could break his dentures.
But Dougie Fresh is the only one in town who can wear a Visor and not take crap.
I was down there for over 8 hours. Dozens of Vikings passed through our tailgate and at least 10 were in our section. Didn’t witness a single issue. About 75% of what he said is absolutely BS inserted to make the story worse. Yeah, a group surrounded his wife and threatened sodomy, APEX security screaming at him to get out…. GTFOOH….. He’s butthurt because he had some beer sprayed near him and got yelled at on the way out by eagles fans. The rest is BS.
Completely agree. The guy is a blowhard and he saw an opportunity to grossly embellish his experience. He must miss all the attention he got as a senator or whatever office he held. I have to think that if he’s a former politician, eventually he’ll be named in some type of sex scandal. Then we can really rip him!
Enough. They are butt hurt and cannot get over it. I mean, they go in colors flying with the reputation the Eagles fans have had for over 50 years? What did they expect? It was all a work to get them more pub. Nonsense.
Sorry, but making tailgating start later won’t work.
They’ll just get drunk at home or ‘on the way’.
Undercover police……….and it would take dozens of them…how many lots are there
might work.
……..
Please post the Zuggy Wulf audio of his phone call when that comes out.
Maybe he should just complain to Ziggy Wulf.
If the vikings would have won home field this wouldn’t be an issue.
Blame Cam Newton……………..
What a baby. Who cares about him and his made up stories. Go Birds.
what a jackass, if I saw him I’d have tried to whip a can of beer in the tooth gap he’s rocking. Also, North Dakota sucks, glad he has to live there.
If this guy was a member of the media, how did he not have suite or club box seats. This is the only way to watch the game if you are worried about your safety. We as eagles fans have all been treated really bad at other stadiums wearing our colors. I didn’t know how much of crybabies these Vikings fans are
I’m kinda on your side on this one. Maybe he just isn’t as big of a deal as he is making himself out to be? I mean what’s the average number of listeners he gets on a good day in NORTH DAKOTA… maybe a couple thousand? Not renown enough to get box seats, or even lower level, sounds to me like he scalped some tickets in the nose-bleeds. It’s nowhere near the Vet, but everyone knows the top sections aren’t as well behaved. I was sitting lower level and there were a couple of vikings fans were in that section as well, I saw no issues. Sections to the left and right of me same story, no issue. Other fans have commented the same observation, so the politeness wasn’t confined to just these 3 sections. Either he’s telling the truth and just has terrible luck with the 1% of asshats, or he’s embellishing the story. Sadly there is no evidence to support either claim so we don’t really know which one is true.
I thought I should admit that I did throw a french fry at a vikings fan yelling and heckling after their first/only TD, but comon… it’s just one fry!
This has to burn Mikey Miss. He is talking about this guy and would benefit greatly reading this and mentioning it on his show. But I know his hatred for Kyle so not happening, oh well.
I was at the game, lower level behind Vikings bench where all their loser fans were. (section 123) No fights, no beer throwing. Occasional verbal taunting, certainly not harassment or abuse. Security was everywhere inside the stadium.
Do a youtube search for fights at the game. The results are meager. The drunk punching the horse, beers thrown at team bus and minor verbal abuse in the parking lot of some female Vikings fans. NOT A SINGLE VIDEO OF A FIGHT IN THE STADIUM.
Something doesn’t square. They are a bunch of wussies.
That’s what you get for vandalizing our rocky statue.
We’ll be nice once the eagles win as many superbowls as the vikings have won….WHOOPS!
Plus you can always get us back by canceling our BnB reservations.
Have fun ice hole fishing and getting the tooth gap fixed.
This was a good read. My BS meter says there was some embellishment by my North Dakota Radio. I have no doubt he was treat poorly but I would not bring my sister to a game wearing a visiting jersey. Ex- wife,…yes. What you should be able to do and what you should do are 2 different things – wearing another teams jersey into a visiting stadium in Phila, NY, NJ, Oakland, Dallas.
This doesn’t make it right, but…..
He knew what he was getting himself into…or did he just ignore the MN press and decide to ‘go for’?
I mean a lot of people are not dumb enough to drink and drive….but really, that what this guy just did.
Did he bleed purple?
They don’t know how To take a loss like a man
Heard Aton Shander talking a big game this morning about how he’s gonna kick some Vikings ass next week. Yea real tough guy. What a tool. Update girl don’t you have copy to read.
You talk about Aton Shander an awful lot.
Do you have a thing for him?
Aton is a total fraud. Grew up in NYC and CT but is an Eagles fan.
Hey Kinker,
You should have asked him if it is fair to characterize MN congressman as “T*T grabbing harrasers and abusers
of women” just because Al Franken got ‘caught’ and resigned?
I mean a higher percentage of MN congressman got ‘caught’ than a higher percentage of
eagles fans, sop it MUST BE TRUE right?
You dropped the ball on that one.
Also, if you want to help eliminate the problem, require a game ticket to be in the parking lot
oooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrr get cuffed, taken away and fined if you get caught. Yeah i know…it will require
a sheit load of people.
Watch how every local radio host exaggerate and say they are approaching $4000. The other day I was listening to W I P and the producer said he just looked them up on the Hub and claimed they were $500-600 higher than what they actually were. All these guys do the same thing. They never tell the truth. National media are the same. They will claim tickets are $5000 when they are half as much because bullshitting the story is more important. Most of the public are too dumb to check it out for themselves.
Who still listens to sports radio in Philly?
Hello hello
Social injustice and Red State White privilege
Please contact “Mister” Ernest Owens (dont call him EO!)
Suck it!
He will try to ask some controversial question to either Bill or Tom so they show the clip nationally. He does it every year.
Always tries to make the game about him. The funny thing is outside of Philly no one gives a shit who he is.
No one gives a sh!t about him in Philly.
Why is that a problem. Everyone kisses those guys rings, and does nothing to challenge them. I hope he does! #MystiqueThis
I’m up on the water tower again
I was gang r aped in the Jetro lot by a group of Vikings fans. One person repeatedly used the horns of his Viking helmet to assault me. you don’t see me bitching and moaning. Go birds!!!
Kinker, kinker, kinker:
Stop ducking the question. You read these comments all the time. How many cats in your faux hipster home? O/U is set at 1.5 and I have the over. There’s a lot at stake here so please let us know. Also, curious: remind me again why there are no Eagles credentials for any of the “writers” of this site? Something about how there were too many already ??
That’s not even a lot of cats…? That’s like a normal amount of cats. Also you can’t have half a cat, I mean I guess you COULD but why would you want half a cat? Maybe you’re from Jersey? Who measures social status by cats anyway?
I wa following this guy’s argument until he accused fans of committing “acts of terror.” That’s just straight up dooshery. He loses all credibility at that point.
Heading out to Minneapolis tomorrow. Can’t wait. I hear those midwestern chicks really know how to ride a dick. My 10 incher will be rocking!!!
They were “warned” in the news and by others. They scoffed it off, laughed even. They all came here wanting to mix it up and strut into town with their purple pigtails and clapping. This WAS NOT a friendly Pre-Season game, cheif. Someone sounds butt-hurt. “Ohh, I never?!” And, I bet you never will if you know what’s best for you, assclown.
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