World Cup From the stadium to the bar stool, watch for our ongoing reports T A B L E_T A L K From juicy ribs to oysters on the grill: Share your favorite barbecue stories in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Letter from Wimbledon By Simon Worrall Of mice and mist and other misadventures (07/08/98) The Cup runneth over and over By Ethan Zindler Professional scalpers and amateur partyers in Marseille (07/07/98) World Cup scenes By Matthew McAllester Passion and indifference mix in rural France (07/07/98) Hog heaven By David Kohn At the Memphis World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest (07/03/98) Mondo Weirdo Nude Beach of the Week Readers bare all on an isolated Maui beach -- and in the heart of Munich (07/03/98) Browse the Wanderlust Postmark archives		The Grand Eurotrash World Cup Bar Tour To catch World Cup fever in America, you've got to find the rest of the world. That's why God invented bars. - - - - - - - - - BY GARY KAMIYA SAN FRANCISCO July 8 -- They are howling and screaming in France right now, singing, "Allez les Bleus," spraying everybody in sight with bottles of champagne, embracing total strangers, belting out the Marseillaise in full, corny "Casablanca" mode and generally trampling underfoot the last vestiges of their Gallic reserve. I know, because I just got back from France 10 minutes ago. Well, it wasn't really France -- it was the Cafe Bastille in San Francisco. But it might as well have been. And I've got the champagne in my hair to prove it. France just defeated Croatia, 2-1, to advance to its first World Cup final, against mighty Brazil Sunday. And if the frenzied behavior of the hundreds of French people who mobbed the Bastille and poured bubbly on their high-thread-count cotton shirts and spilled over into the alley and ran into the street after the game shouting with joy is any indication, the land of Cartesian lucidity is finally starting to take this World Cup business with the same psychotic and ecstatic seriousness that the rest of the world -- not counting the U.S. -- does. Not counting the U.S. It is precisely because Americans don't care about the most passionately watched sporting event in the world that this year I embarked once again on the Grand World Cup Eurotrash Bar Tour. Four years ago, I realized that the only way to catch World Cup fever was to find the rest of the world. And that really isn't very hard -- you don't even have to leave your neighborhood to do it. That's why God invented bars. The Grand World Cup Eurotrash Bar Tour satisfies the requirements of each of the four basic daily food groups: watching sports, drinking in bars, observing different cultures and leering surreptitiously at members of the opposite sex -- a disproportionately high number of whom, if this is of any interest to you, and I think it is, come from the genetically gifted nations of France, Italy, Brazil and Argentina. Not only does the Tour satisfy these requirements, it does so in style. It allows one to watch, from the hooligan-free comfort of a bar stool, a sporting event compared to whose global import the Super Bowl and the World Series look like tiddlywinks contests for toddlers. It allows one to indulge in depraved, Bukowski-like early-morning drinking under the acceptable guise of being a Bohemian Sportsman. And it affords fascinating multicultural insights into Hectoring, Vaunting, Wailing and Teeth-Gnashing as practiced by the diverse peoples of the Earth. It is, in short, an entirely satisfactory pastime. As I constantly tell doubting philistine friends, even if you think watching soccer is like watching the grass grow, it's worth cultivating a taste for it every four years, just to take the Tour. I first discovered the joys of the Bar Tour during the 1994 World Cup, which was held in, among other American sites, Palo Alto, 45 minutes south of San Francisco. I went to five games, usually taking the train, which was a blast. I can't remember whether the omnipresent yellow-clad, singing and drum-pounding Brazilians were selling caipirinhas (their national drink, made from cachaza, a raunchy sugar-cane hooch of knee-shaking potency) in the station or at the stadium, but by the time I walked into Stanford Stadium a warm glow like that of a Gilberto Gil song enveloped me. Having just returned from a trip there, I was already predisposed to root for the Brazilians, and the caipirinha buzz closed the deal. N E X T+P A G E | Aimless gigolos transformed into men of patriotism and purpose - - - - - - - - - - - - AP PHOTO/THOMAS KIENZLE Top: Brazilian goalkeeper Taffarel celebrates after making a save in the penalty shoot-out in Brazil's semifinal match against Holland Tuesday. Brazil advanced to the final.