Sport And Shorts (At The Stag Victoria)
We'd met a few weeks earlier in a bar where we'd both worn Football shirts and we got chatting.
You didn't see many Gay blokes out in the late 1990s in Football kit.
Sadly I have NO pictures from the first Sports Kit night
We had about 10 people turn up to the first one and it was a great night one guy travelled all the way from Manchester for it.
One guy showed up in Tennis Kit and another in Swimming trunks which gave us all a Laugh.
We wanted to make it bigger & started asking Gay venues in central London if we could host a Sports Kit night.
Step foward Steve the manager from the Stag Victoria we asked and he said yes and it all grew from there.
We had someone in advertising who helped out with Posters and Flyers for the promotion.
Around the time of the first night at The Stag my friend David couldn't make his mind up what to have on his Arsenal shirt.
Overmars or Bergkamp so he merged the two...
The Stag hosted about 10 Sport Kit Nights and there was lots of money raised for HIV Charities.
The Sports and Shorts nights were always Great Fun and good natured.
In mid 2000 myself and David had a disagreement over something that wasn't my fault and we went our seperate ways.
The Sports and Shorts nights at The Stag carried on for another couple of years without me.
Regulars from S&S stopped taking to me, I was made to feel like a pariah & I ended up moving out of London.
I last saw some of the Sports and Shorts crowd in Sheffield in September 2001 but no one wanted to speak to me.
Sports and Shorts went on to spawn other Gay Football Kit Nights ran by other people at other venues in London.
Sports and Shorts was the ORIGINAL Gay Sports Kit Night
I tried to get a Sports Kit night off the ground in October 2001 in a bar in Manchester.
Despite my promotion of it 12 people turned up to the basement of the Retro Bar.
We didn't have the luxury of Social Media back in 2001
There were Yahoo groups but even they weren't great
I hardly own any football kit now apart from a couple of Leeds and England Shirts certainly no full kits.
I had a lot of my kit stolen when I moved to Manchester I really should have been more careful.
While It was fun organising S&S I don't really miss those days been there worn the shirt (so to speak)
David Overkamp (Not his real name) is actually a big name in the world of Classical Music.
Please Note: Archive Photos Courtesy of Wayback Machine