It just so happened that my train station, New Cross Gate, was also the train station for the nearest football club, Millwall. Their ground, The New Den, was just down the hill from where I lived. I used to pick up one of the club fanzines whenever I saw it at the newsstand and read up on the team news. Unfortunately, Millwall had a bit of a reputation, some of it earned and some not, for racism. It made me hesitant to support the club or to go to The Den to watch a match, since I didn't really have a band of friends to go with me. Instead, I ended up supporting Charlton Athletic, which was another South London club about a 10 minute bus ride away. To this day, they remain my club, though they have really fallen on hard times the past 10 years or so. When I started supporting them, they were a model midsized family club, well run, involved in the community, and with solid, hard working players. Nowadays, they are anything but that. But they are still my club.
Living in London, the easy thing to do would have been to latch onto one of the hugely successful London clubs, like Arsenal. Since the mid 90's when I lived in London, Chelsea Football Club (with their Russian millionaire owner) have become a force in the game. And now, Tottenham Hotspur are a club on the rise, with a new stadium under construction and a very good team on the pitch. But supporting a North London club while living in South London would have been something of a betrayal. Sort of like living on the North Side of Chicago and being a White Sox fan. I mean, it happens, but it usually isn't done. I never took the easy road and supported one of the big London clubs, because that's not where I lived.
In the 20 plus years since, football has caught on in the States (somewhat). There is the MLS. But I've never taken to it, even though Chicago has had a team for a while. I know that by default I fell into that hated group of football fans who thought they were "too good" for the MLS because they preferred European, Mexican, or South American football. And I was alright with that. I thought the MLS was a joke, with all the ripped off team names and all the nonsense. I still laugh whenever I hear "Real" or "Sporting" or "United" associated with the silly teams of the MLS. I mean, what a lack of originality!
When I came back to Chicago to finally finish college, naturally I designed a concept for my Chicago football team. I came up with the name "Pioneers" because Chicago has a rich history of being ahead of the curve. And I don't mean "pioneers" in the sense of the people who traveled to settle the Western territories, though it is true that Chicago was once "the West." But I mean the city was a leader in industry, in shipping, in architecture, in science, in the arts, in music. So "Pioneers" seemed an apt moniker. I used a ship to symbolize the pioneering spirit. Chicago is on Lake Michigan, so a ship on water also seemed to fit the concept, though it's not an original idea. There are plenty of football teams from shipping centers who have a ship in their emblem. But I went with it anyway.
I designed the badge for The Pioneers directly from a sketch I made while at Columbia College Chicago about 20 years ago. One day when I become a bazillionaire and the football club finally becomes a reality, the sketch of the original badge - on a crumpled piece of art paper - will be framed and prominently displayed in the club museum. Heh.
