World Cup opener in Brooklyn & Queens

Work is no excuse for missing a key World Cup game, like the opening game in the first-ever World Cup in Africa. I split the game in two locales: spending the first half in Brooklyn's South African restaurant Madiba in Fort Greene -- a raucous, butt-bumping, shoulder-scraping SRO scene -- then the second Sunnyside, Queens' inviting Haab Mexican Cafe, where things were already tensers as I walked in a minute after South Africa took a (surprising) 1-0 lead. Things got looser after Mexican tied it up.