I love stories. Everything we engage with has a story. Sports, music, art or politics. You name it. Usually there is a person or many behind the stories to identify with or to admire.
Manchester United is all about stories to me. From the ones which have already been written, to those which are about to happen. Stories from and about the former players and fellow Reds. Lifetime is not enough to hear all of them – not to mention to find enough time to experience the current era as fullest. But you have to try, right?
To provide a background story for my trip in the U.S., we must start from Helsinki Red Room. I didn’t plan to become a collector. It just happened. Too many items had too interesting story to not to buy and protect them.
About seven years ago I decided that my personal Manchester United memorabilia collection needs to be somewhere else than in boxes at home, office, and my parents’ place. It didn’t make sense anymore to have so many amazing items just getting dusted. And I’m not talking about having few hundred items. I had already more than 30 000 of them…
So, one thing led to another and there I was with 210m2 empty space with a lot of rooms. I spoke with my brother (whom I have worked with over 10 years now) and we decided that when we’ve come this far, we won’t stop here. Everything needs to be done with care and quality down to the details. It took more than six years, but we made it.
In autumn 2022 we had amazing opening week for Helsinki Red Room. 15 former Manchester United players led by Bryan Robson came to Finland. Stadium match against Finnish legends, golf tournament, night gala with fans… It was a week never to forget with fellow fans around the world.
I got some recognition from the club and when I informed them that I’m planning to go to have a popup Red Room in Las Vegas, they got really excited about it. We agreed to do a popup also in New York and San Diego with Marriott Hotels & Marriott Bonvoy. So it meant 11 days and three cities for me.
As I’m just a fan from Finland and this is not business for me, I started to plan my trip so that it won’t cost me a fortune. Even with the help from the club, it was going to be really expensive trip for me. “The popup museum” needed to fit into a carry-on bag so that I could guard it all the time when I travelled. It set me a good framework for the exhibition to be taken with me. Manchester United promised to take some extra items from the official museum with them. When I heard one of the items would be a match worn Duncan Edwards’ shirt, my plans changed completely as I needed to raise the bar myself.
To name a few items I took with me: the first United and England match programmes of Duncan Edwards, George Best’s club jacket, two Wes Brown’s match worn shirts and a fan rosette from 1958.
I also took a replica shirt I won from Tom Clare’s testimonial dinner raffle. Tom was one of the most beloved figures in the United fanbase across many decades and charmed and amazed thousands with his passionate memories on his beloved Busby Babes, in particular. Tom moved to Texas in his later years, and I wanted to honuor him by taking this special shirt with me. It was originally signed by Ryan Giggs, but I collected more signatures on the shirt during the testimonial – including Tom’s own signature.
So off I went to New York from Finland. I have 1-year-old son so I didn’t want to spend any extra days on my trip. That’s why I landed to NY just the night before I opened the popup museum at Marriott Marquis on Time Square. I had the best taxi driver ever. He was originally from India and made sure that the long and slow transportation was interesting. We spoke a lot about the sports in the U.S. and I told many stories from Finland. Good vibes to start my trip!
The Marriott Marquis hotel was huge. When your hotel lobby is on eight floor, you know the hotel is big. But somehow the feeling inside the hotel was a thousand times calmer than on the streets of New York. I liked that.
Jetlag (Finland is +8 hours to New York), early morning and last night’s long flight didn’t help when I started to put the popup ready for fellow Reds. We created a web application with my company (Live Current Media Inc.), so that people would find all the stories about the items even without me being present. It got a lot of praise from visitors, although the stories I personally shared were certainly a big part of the experience.
The conference room where I built up the first exhibition was nice. We had discussed about my needs with Marriott Hotels staff and everything was ready when I arrived. I even got one traditional bellhop (a baggage porter) to put my George Best club jacket to hang from. Things looked amazing when we opened the popup museum for guests.
I only got out from the hotel for 30 minutes during my first 24 hours in New York when I went to see the Manchester United double-decker on Time Square. DJ was playing on top of it and people were quite interested in why a bus from UK was in the middle of the square.
After the first exhibition day I went to the Adidas flag ship store to see how many will arrive to see two United and two Arsenal legends. Many did. Actually so many, that I decided to leave in the middle of the interview. United legends were Andy Cole and Wes Brown.
Then I went to see fellow Reds in a local pub. I spent few hours talking with a local fan originally from India. He was so excited about the match that I got extra boost for it myself! I did not know him before I sat at the same table, but from the first second there was so much to talk about. One big Red family.
Jet lag started got the better of me, so I had to skip late night drinking. I managed to visit the Empire State Building on the way to my hotel. That ended up being my only tourist attraction during the whole trip. Spare time is useless on good trips, right?
During my two days exhibition in New York, we had about 250 visitors. I heard more than 100 new stories how people started to support Manchester United and I believe I got more than 200 fans more excited about the history of our beloved club.
I packed up the museum back to my carry-on bag and went immediately to the bus station to get to the MetLife stadium in New Jersey. I have never seen such a long queue in my life as the one waited me at the station. It took me almost two hours to get into the bus and I believe I was in the first half of the queue. With the New York traffic, I arrived 10 minutes late to the stadium to see United beat Arsenal – twice!
During the match I saw people pointing to another part of the stand but didn’t see anything special there myself. Later I read from the papers that Arsenal supporters had fought with each other. One big family, right?
The stadium was great, and the atmosphere was probably the best from the three matches I saw during my journey. I spent really nice time after the match with New York supporters until they kicked us out from the stadium.
If I thought it was hard to get to the stadium, the return trip was even worse. I had my bus ticket back to Manhattan with the same bus, but I tried to save some time by ordering an Uber (the bus queue was as long as Chelsea’s player list). After 35 minutes waiting the Uber to arrive, it just cancelled my trip. So there I went to the back of the queue. Three hours after the match I arrived at my hotel. Quick dinner in the lobby restaurant and to bed as next day I had my flight to San Diego.
I have to say massive thanks to local supporter’s club people, especially Dermott Allan and Peter Holland, who are amazing Reds. We will do great things together in the future!
If the Marriott in New York was right in the middle of everything at Time Square, San Diego Marriott Del Mar was little bit out from the centrum area and a lot more relaxed. That is more my style.
When I woke up to put things together the next morning of my arrival, there was nothing ready for me yet. Just a massive empty room. Luckily the staff were great and fixed everything within few hours. We opened on schedule and the first day was busy. Bryan Robson and Denis Irwin gave me a visit which was of course the highlight of my day. Robbo knew that I haven’t met Denis before, so he introduced us. Both are perfect ambassadors for the club.
As the company I work for is located in San Diego, I spent some time with my colleagues. We can’t see too often so it was a pleasure. Also John Gubba flew to San Diego to do some filming with me, which is always exiting. He is a documentarist who has done many great Manchester United related documentaries and is now filming a new one about me and my Red Room madness.
Second exhibition day in San Diego brought Wes Brown to visit me with some staff from the club. I bet it was not that sexy to film content from a popup museum compared to the first team stuff, so I did not make any connection with the MUTV employee. She disappeared fast. But Wes was kind as he always is. He spent time with me, and I did have few of his match worn shirts to talk about. He had seen those of course in Helsinki the last year, but you can’t hear the good stories too many times.
With Wes there was Collette Roche (the COO of United) and Rick McGagh (the Head of Fan Engagement), who I planned the New York and San Diego exhibition with. Rick is a proper Red and I spent a lot of time talking with him about United during the tour. As a fan, it is always super important to see that the club has employees who are fans themselves. To work with fellow Reds, it makes everything extra special. Rick deserves a special mention for his work he is doing. A great guy who is working hard for the fans.
Another special mentions that I want to give are to John Walker who is the Head of Museum and Jason Leach, who is basically a multitalented United employee and a Wikipedia for the club’s history – especially for George Best! Without the trust and support from them, I’d never have gone for the trip. Also, Jason was the biggest help for me when I arranged the Legends Weekend in Helsinki.
To sum up San Diego’s popup exhibition, we had little bit less than 200 visitors, many incredible stories, many new friendships, and sore feet. I was privileged to meet legendary Tony Hughes, energetic Bryce Guzzetta, the Viking Steve Norby and many other local members of the Red family. New lifelong friendships to cherish.
The match was not something to remember. Our youth team (featuring Jonny Evans) got beaten by League Two’s Hollywood team Wrexham. The only thing I will remember from that match will be the collision between Nathan Bishop and Paul Mullin, who was hospitalised with a punctured lung. It looked quite nasty from the stands. Oh, and seeing Ben Foster to play live for the first time in a long time was nice.
I postponed my flight to Las Vegas as I got a unique opportunity to participate Casillero del Diablo’s shootings with Bryan Robson and Andy Cole. They invited three fans to discuss with the former players about what makes someone or some moment a legendary one. The discussion was hosted by our former player Danny Webber. It will be interesting to see what kind of material will come out as we did enjoy the evening (and not least because of the red wine).
Last stop was Las Vegas. I don’t know how I managed to book a flight on a small plane with 20 seats. It was actually really nice experience, but I still don’t understand how I ended up to book that one. When you are enough tired anything can happen.
The Manchester United Supporter’s Convention was the original reason for me to travel to U.S. as I ended up helping the founders Adam Thelwell and Fraser Laveay with some arrangements. I also promised to bring my popup exhibition to Vegas so that started the idea of the U.S. tour.
The Convention’s hotel was on the old side of Las Vegas (downtown) where you literally can feel the history. The difference to Marriott hotels was quite massive when I entered the Plaza hotel. It was like stepping back in time. My room had A/C-system which started once in every five minutes and sounded like a tractor. The conference room was straight from the 80’s Soviet Union. Old school I’d say!
In any case the most important thing worked well. The events were full of happy fellow Reds and United legends did their job on the stage with always great Andy Mitten. I had my popup in the conference room among several other stands from local supporter clubs and collectors. Next to me was San Diego Supporter Clubs stand so I had the best company during our opening hours!
On the stage we saw Alex Stepney, David May, Wes Brown, Bryan Robson and Brian McClair. Once again, the Red crowd heard amazing stories from the past and of course got their selfies and autographs with the legends.
The Supporter’s Convention concept was great. To get fans around the world together to party and celebrate the greatest club in the world. When you mix our heroes (the club legends) into the mix, we have something to remember for the rest of our lives.
The match was played at the Allegiant Stadium. It is the home stadium for the Las Vegas Raiders of the National Football League (NFL). In the U.S. they call a sport where you play egg-shaped ball with your hand as football. That is completely another story, haha.
The stadium looked like Roomba (robot vacuum cleaner) but was still somehow beautiful. It is the second-most expensive stadium in the world ($1.9 billion). I have to say that the hospitality area was probably the most stylish and functional I have ever been in. The stadium experience was just great! There is not that much to say about the match, as Dortmund won it. It was great to see our new goalkeeper André Onana in action.
My trip’s last night was something to remember. I went to see David Copperfield show with Rick, Wes and his girlfriend. We had the opportunity to meet the magician himself after the show. I must admit that he has got little bit older from the times when I recorded his shows from TV to VHS-cassettes. It was amazing night and brought some memories from my childhood.
The last morning, we spent filming with Mr. Gubba for the documentary. Recorded my thoughts about the trip and went through all the cities I visited. It will be strange to see the documentary when it is done, as John has been filming material in Malta, Manchester, Helsinki, San Diego and Las Vegas… and more locations will come.
Now, when looking back to the trip, I feel really privileged. I could never have imagined where the fandom would take me. And what makes it all worth of it are my fellow Reds around the world. The same passion. The same big Red Family. I am extremely grateful to be a part of this story.
