What do you get when legions of singing Scots wearing kilts meet samba-dancing Brazilians in canary yellow under the South Florida sun? One rollicking World Cup party.
There have been others, sure. Mexicans and South Koreans held a love fest last week. Americans staged a European-style march on Seattle. The traveling Scots drank Boston dry.
But ever since international soccer’s governing body released the schedule for this year’s tournament, football cognoscenti had eyed Wednesday evening’s match near Miami between Scotland and Brazil for its revelry potential.
The ingredients:
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Brazil, playing like the home team in Florida, the state where most Brazilians in the United States live.
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Scotland, returning to the World Cup after 28 years, eager to avenge its 2-1 loss to Brazil in the 1998 tournament in France.
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People from two countries who like to have a good time, brought together in a city that likes nothing more than to show people a good time.
The party has been going hard for days.
Brazilians flocking to the beach on Sunday evening — a huge mosh of humans gathering on the sand to the beat of a samba drum — turned Miami Beach into a smaller version of Rio de Janeiro’s famous Copacabana.
On Monday, Scots descended on Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, marching behind bagpipes to Marlins Stadium for a baseball game, as they did at Fenway Park in Boston and Yankee Stadium in New York. They danced in stadium corridors, breathing rare life into a Monday game for a team with one of Major League Baseball’s worst attendance records.
Then, on Tuesday afternoon, Scotland fans took over South Beach, packing many blocks of Ocean Drive between Art Deco hotels and the Atlantic, an incongruous throng of heavy tartan kilts under the palm trees. They marched undeterred despite the insufferable temperatures.
South Florida has been experiencing a prolonged swelter; a heat index of 110 degrees Fahrenheit prompted the World Cup Fan Festival in downtown Miami to temporarily suspend entry on Monday afternoon. A heat advisory was in effect on Tuesday as the pale Scots — at least compared with the much more comfortable Brazilians — partied.
Miami Beach city officials urged the Tartan Army, as Scotland’s fans are known, to bring water, and to wear hats and sunscreen. Some people appeared to be heeding that advice more than others.
“I’m losing my body weight in sweat,” said Alan McLuskey, 30, who was shirtless, his blue Scotland jersey tucked into his shorts, and holding a small bottle of Smirnoff Ice before the march started. Around him, there were already sunburns aplenty. Lime-topped Coronas abounded.
One man declared the kilts — made of wool, with dozens of insulating pleats — to be “awful” in the humidity, and volunteered that some fellow Scots were not wearing anything underneath them. The man himself was “too old” for that, he said.
“It’s a bit warm to be doing much,” said another man, Robert Cummings, who wore head-to-toe Scotland gear, including a sleeveless shirt that read, “Scottish, not British.” (When four men wearing England jerseys dared to walk by, the crowd rained down boos on them.)
Mr. Cummings, 61, who said he had also traveled to France to support Scotland in 1998, spent nine days in Boston this month before coming to Miami. After arriving a few days ago, Mr. Cummings said, his son proposed to his girlfriend on the South Pointe pier. She said yes.
Donnie MacNeil, 69, who lives on the remote Isle of Barra in Scotland, wore sandals with his kilt, showing off the Scottish flag his wife had painted on his toenails. Miami, he said, was “fantastic,” though his legs displayed a smattering of fresh bug bites.
A handful of Brazilians watched the march or marched alongside the Scots, sharing in their jolly mood and waving Brazilian flags. A group of about a half-dozen friends from Brazil’s Paraná state commandeered a table at an Ocean Drive grill for a solid couple of hours.
“It’s the best party,” said one of them, Guilherme Moreno, 33.
Marcello Rocha, who lives in Boston and is originally from São Paulo, said he was surprised to see so many Scotland fans.
“But tomorrow,” he predicted, “the stadium is going to be like Brazil.”
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