PARKVILLE, Mo. – Late Saturday afternoon, a surge of Bills fans made a tavern in this Kansas City suburb look like O'Neill's Stadium Inn or Danny's South in Orchard Park.
A crowd clad in red, white and blue – but mostly blue – stuffed the bar to the gills and strained to hear the DJ.
"Bills Mafia, welcome to Al's Bar & Grill Kansas City," he yelled, drawing a roar from the fans before adding, "Remember to tip your servers."
Buffalo Bills fans at Taps on Main in Kansas City on Saturday, Jan. 22, 2022.
One day before the NFL divisional round playoff game between the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium, Bills fans were already deep in enemy territory.
"Crazy in there," one fan said walking out, shaking his head, but this didn't bother die-hard, road-tripping fans.
"I've made a lot of friends across the country because of the travel," said Joanie DeKoker, better known in the Bills Mafia community as "Mama J."
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Five hours before the official kickoff of the Bills Backers festivities at Al's, every table and every seat at the bar was filled.
"I couldn't believe we came in at 11:30 and we couldn't get a seat already," said Mike Anthony, a Bills fan who grew up on Long Island and lives in Las Vegas.
Early in the afternoon at Al's, the Sabres-Flyers game was playing on the TV over the bar, a WKBW-TV news crew was interviewing fans and John Lang, better known as Bills Elvis, was holding court in one corner.
Proprietor Al Burns, a Buffalo expatriate who opened his Bills-friendly tavern a dozen years ago, sat at one end of the bar and soaked in the atmosphere.
"This is what I live for," Burns said. "I absolutely live for this. These are the days that make everything worthwhile."
For the weekend, Burns said he ordered 80 cases of Labatt Blue and Blue Light, along with 19 kegs to serve on tap. He also ordered 2,000 pounds of wings, which he reluctantly serves with ranch to locals when requested.
When the handful of Chiefs fans inside Al's tried to get a "Tomahawk Chop" chant going, the Bills crowd drowned them out with a rousing "Let's Go, Buffalo."
Nearby, DeKoker, a Syracuse resident, said she's been to 183 Bills games in a row, in Orchard Park and on the road.
"I do it, first of all, because I love the Bills," said DeKoker, who was particularly close to the late Ezra "Pancho Billa" Castro and raises money for his children. "I want to be there when they win the big one. That's my goal."
Outside Al's, Kevin Parton – "Same as Dolly," though no relation – had a table of Bills shirts, caps and other merchandise set up to sell. He does this at home games and follows the team on the road, too, he said. His profits help cover the cost of his season tickets and then some.
Parton, who wore a Bills Starter-brand jacket that looked like it walked out of the 1990s, said he was hoping to add some world championship gear to his lineup.
"Absolutely," he said. "I dream about it – literally."
David Chapman drove 550 miles from La Junta, Colo., for the game. The Gowanda native remembered traveling with his classmates on a bus up to Orchard Park to see the recently completed Rich Stadium in the early 1970s.
"If you're from Western New York, you're part of Western New York," Chapman said. "And it doesn't matter where you live."
There were so many Bills fans, from Kansas City and from out of town, looking to have some fun before Sunday's game that local Bills Backers set up a pair of parties Saturday evening, at both Al's and at Taps on Main near downtown Kansas City.
Taps was opened three years ago by three brothers – Jason, Marc and Grant – who are the sons of a City of Tonawanda native, Barry Tower. The elder Tower raised them as Bills fans in Chiefs country.
"I always joke the only clothes I had until I was 11 were Bills clothes," Marc Tower said.
It's not a Bills Backers bar, the Towers family said, because they don't want to alienate their potential customer base. For example, framed signed jerseys for both quarterbacks in Sunday's game, Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes, hang high above the bar.
But Barry, Marc and Grant all proudly wore Bills gear Saturday afternoon as a steady crowd of Bills fans filed into the spacious sports bar.
"If the Bills win, Monday morning I will wake up similar to how I felt when my son was born," said Marc Tower, who is married to a Chiefs fan.
The bar is known for its "Tonawanda wings," based on a recipe from back home that Barry tweaked over the years. Grant Tower said they ordered about 1,000 pounds of wings for this weekend along with all the Labatt beer they could get their hands on.
Kristin Cangialosi, in town from Amherst with her husband, Tony, and two close friends, was lamenting that her record attending Bills road playoff games features losses to the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Houston Texans.
"I'm 0-2," she said, insisting she's not bad luck.
She said she hopes to bring a portable speaker into Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday to play the "Shout" song whenever the Bills score.
Outside Taps, three buddies from South Buffalo were using their phones to rent motorized scooters to ride around downtown. One pal, Kevin Murphy, was happily rating the barbecue they'd eaten already.
Another of the friends, Dan Parker, said Arrowhead will be the 15th stadium where he's seen the Bills play. He and his friends said locals have treated them well.
"Nobody's given us any guff yet," said Parker, who used a stronger word than "guff."
As they finished the rental process, one guy in a group passing by pointed to their Bills shirts and yelled, "I got money on you tomorrow."
The third member of the trio, Patrick Stanchak, said he would rather explore Kansas City than spend a lot of time at the Bills Backers bars, expressing a sentiment at odds with the weekend revelers inside.
"If I want to hang out with people from Buffalo," Stanchak said, "I'd just stay home."
