The regular: Allison Trautman at the Globe Pub

Globe Pub 1934 W Irving Park Rd, 773-871-3757

On Saturdays at 10am, it’s hard to find a seat at North Center’s Globe Pub. And harder to find somebody without a beer in hand.

“It’s not like a drink-to-get-drunk thing,” 23-year-old Allison Trautman says, defending her choice to drink so early in the day. “It’s European-style drinking. [Besides,] I had a full English breakfast. It’s not as good as in England, but they try.”

“They had black pudding,” her friend Kristina adds.

Did they eat the black pudding?

“No.”

A longtime fan of English rugby and soccer, Trautman has limited options in the city for watching these games live. That’s what brings her and the rest of these people, many of them Brits, to the Globe so early every weekend (though Trautman is most dedicated to the National League games, which happen about once a month). Still, she stands out from the crowd in a few key ways: She’s a woman. She’s under 25. And her passion for English rugby has a certain calm. With each passing minute as the rugby game plays on the screens, the crowd here grows more raucous. When points are scored, it can get downright scary—like being in the monkey house when the zoo catches on fire. Trautman just shrugs.

“It’s usually rowdier,” she says, and takes another swig of beer.

But any insinuation that she may not be as big a fan as her fellow revelers is met with bafflement. All around her people are wearing jerseys of their favorite players, and Trautman proudly asserts that she’s in England’s colors, too.

She is?

“Yeah,” Trautman says, motioning to her red-and-white cardigan-and-T-shirt ensemble. “Can’t you tell?”