Ever wonder where the city of New York obtains mountains of confetti for what used to be called ticker tape parades to honor sporting champions, astronauts or Chain Gang’s election to the Rock’n'Roll Hall Of Fame? Me neither, but the New York Post’s Chuck Bennett and Salim Algar report Friday’s celebrations for the newly crowned Yankees included sensitive personal information landing on lower Manhattan sidewalks.
“We’re finding pay stubs. We’re finding personal financial information. We found a balance sheet of someone’s trust fund showing $300,000 in stock,” said Damian Salo, 29, an internal auditor attending the parade with friends.
“It’s terrible. Here’s the VP of a financial-services company; he makes over $200,000,” he added, holding a pay stub.
Some of the documents came from the Liberty Street financial firm A.L. Sarroff, including their client accounts, with Social Security numbers and detailed banking data.
“They’re records that should have been shredded,” said firm founder Alan Sarroff. “An overzealous employee threw them out the window. He was reprimanded.”
Granted, this couldn’t have been the part of Friday’s assignment Michael Kay relished most. But either way, he’s absolutely flunked his audition for Hot 97.
The concrete pedestrian ramps at the brand-new $1.5 billion city-subsidized Yankee Stadium have been troubled by cracks, and the team is seeking to determine whether the problems were caused by the installation, the design, the concrete or other factors, according to several people briefed on the problems.
The ramps were built by a company accused of having links to the mob, and the concrete mix was designed and tested by a company under indictment on charges that it failed to perform some tests and falsified the results of others. But it is unclear whether work performed by either firm contributed to the deteriorating conditions of the ramps.
The company that evaluated the strength of the concrete poured for the walkways, Testwell Laboratories, its owners and several officers were indicted last year on state racketeering charges, and they have all denied the accusations. The case stems from a sweeping 18-month investigation of the concrete-testing industry that also led to charges against a second company. The investigation also forced the city to order the retesting of the concrete in 80 structures in four boroughs, including the stadium. More than half a dozen other companies remain under scrutiny in the case.
The above news comes on the heels of a New York Post report regarding the shoddy workmanship that went into the construction of Citi Field, another venue that couldn’t have been built without public funds. Though Michael Bloomberg is about as likely to lose the upcoming mayoral election as Chris X. Brodeur is to be invited to brunch tomorrow am with Rudy Giuliani at least two of the three men mentioned above have much to answer for.
“A colossal, spiritless box, it would fit more comfortably in a cornfield than at one of the busiest intersections of a vibrant metropolis.” That’s how architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff described Ellerbe Beckett’s spartan reduction of Frank Gehry’s original design for the proposed new Brookyn Nets arena, a review that clearly stuck in the craw of Atlantic Yards landgrabber Bruce Ratner.
Assisted by NYC firm SHoP, a new collaborative design with Beckett was presented by Ratner yesterday, with the Nets owner promising NBA action in Brooklyn perhaps as soon as the 2011-2012 season. That’s if a 4th or 5th design isn’t commissioned first, however. From the New York Post’s Rich Calder :
The building consists of three separate but woven bands. A main concourse is placed right at street level, allowing a direct view to and from Flatbush and Atlantic avenues. Large areas of glass at street level make it not only pedestrian-friendly, but also encourage a strong visual connection to the surrounding urban neighborhood, the developer says.
“The Barclays Center will quickly become an iconic part of the Brooklyn landscape,” said Mr. Ratner. “The design is elegant and intimate and also a bold architectural statement that will nicely complement the surrounding buildings and neighborhoods.”
“The arena design is irrelevant,” said Daniel Goldstein of the opposition group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. “Designs continue to come and go, but they change nothing. It’s all lipstick on a corrupt pig, window-dressing on a boondoggle.”
The state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, in October plans to hear a legal challenge by Goldstein’s group over the use of eminent domain to seize private land for the Atlantic Yards project. While the developer has won lower court rulings in the case, a victory by opponents here could doom the project.
When the modern history of NYC sports radio is written, some will undoubtedly credit Imus, Chris Russo or Mike Francesca or some combination of the 3 for WFAN’s standing as the nation’s first successful sports yack outlet (and with the possible exception of WEEI, still the most commercially successful). And while all of the above deserve some acknowledgement (Imus, for instance, is a creepy jogging shoe fetishist with serious racial hangups), the real station’s real stars have long been it’s loony callers. The infamous Jerome From Manhattan was profiled by the New York Times’ J.F. Gill back in October of 2004, and today, overexcited (and recently MIA) Mets fan Short Al of Brooklyn gets the Paper Of Record’s full treatment, courtesy of the Times’ Corey Kilgannon (thanks to Mac McCaughan for the link)
Short Al suddenly disappeared from WFAN’s airwaves last year, leading some listeners to worry that he had joined the great lineup of FANdroids who have died, including John from Sandy Hook and Doris from Rego Park. “I can’t tell you how many times people called in and asked, ‘Why hasn’t he been calling? What happened?’ ” said Marc Malusis, another of WFAN’s overnight hosts.
Short Al’s familiar phone number yielded no answer, but Mr. Malusis finally managed to find out — “Someone had a friend in law enforcement,” he explained — that Short Al from Brooklyn was Albert Kaufman, an 81-year-old retired letter carrier and a widower. Last year, Mr. Kaufman was hospitalized after a fall, and he left his Marine Park apartment to live with a daughter in Bensonhurst.
“He’s doing fine except for one thing,” Mr. Malusis said. “He can’t call anymore. His daughter won’t let him.”
Reached at his daughter’s apartment, Mr. Kaufman — in his familiar Brooklyn accent — confirmed that she did indeed put the kibosh on 4 a.m. phone calls to WFAN-AM (660).
Mr. Kaufman agreed to meet at a diner near his daughter’s apartment. He had already had his morning bagel, so he ordered coffee and coconut custard pie. Immediately, he went into a FANdroid-worthy rant — “How could a manager leave a pitcher in that long?” — about the Mets’ defeat the previous night.
As if making up for all those call-ins he missed, Short Al talked about how much potential he sees in Omir Santos, a Mets catcher, and declared that the Yankees should make their catcher, Jorge Posada, a designated hitter. He rattled off the starting lineups from the 1941 World Series between the Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, and then for the 1944 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the St. Louis Browns. All before the waitress brought his slice of pie.
Of the fledgling United Football League’s register-yourself-as-an-agent web page, reader Cosgrove Watt, asks, “has Darren Heitner been made aware of this unique and exciting opportunity yet?” And while I agree this could well represent Darren’s best shot at busting out of the web model / pro bowler ghetto, I’m more impressed with other aspects of the UFL’s business model. To wit, fielding 4 teams (NY, SF, Vegas, Orlando) playing in 7 different cities (the above four, plus Hartford, LA and Sacramento). If the star power of Jim Fassell and Denny Green doesn’t bring enough credibility to the upstart league, how about their grandiose plans for a New York stadium?
The league’s site audaciously claims “the most appealing venue may be the Mets’ new baseball stadium Citi Field in Willets Point in the New York City borough of Queens” (can’t you just imagine Jeff Wilpon blushing?), while adding hopefully, “the new Yankee Stadium, set to open spring 2009 with seating for 53,000, would also be ideal for a UFL team.” It’s a bit of a climb-down after those two buildings, however.
Another possible UFL venue is Laurence Wein Stadium at Columbia University in Manhattan. The stadium currently seats 16,500 with the possibility for expansion. Placing a UFL team in Wein stadium would make the UFL team the first major professional football team to play in Manhattan.
Hofstra University’s James M. Shuart Stadium, which opened in 1962 on Long Island, currently seats 15,000 but could also be expanded. Within the past decade, Shuart Stadium has received a new artificial turf playing surface, several sections of new chair-back seating, a new sound system and a $3.8 million Field House in the south end zone. Shuart Stadium also served as a home for the Long Island Rough Riders of professional soccer’s A-League.
Other possible UFL venues include Major League Soccer’s Red Bull New York, which is currently building a 25,000 seat stadium in Harrison, New Jersey (11 miles from New York City) and is planned to open in the summer of 2009; Rutgers Stadium (40 miles south of New York City) with a seating capacity of 41,500; and Princeton Stadium (50 miles south of New York City) which seats nearly 28,000.
It’s difficult, given my constant stream of low-paying work, for me to keep abreast on the goings-on with the Atlantic Yards project, Bruce Ratner’s misbegotten and quasi-comatose SimCity attempt to turn much of downtown Brooklyn into Tampa, only with Junior’s nearby and an arena for the Nets in the middle of it. Even relative to the opaque and misinformation-intensive standards set by every other pro sports franchise, the Nets are pretty much impossible to read — there’s a lot of brand-sensitive sunshine from the team’s pseudo-wunderkind PR maestro Brent Yormark, much talk about plans going forward, but no actual happening happening.
Relative to all that perfectly packaged nothing, it didn’t seem like an especially big deal when Ratner’s prestige architect/smokescreen Frank Gehry recently left the Atlantic Yards project. Kind of a big deal, but not as big a deal, say, as New York being broke as a fucking joke and Ratner finding himself short roughly $100 million and without a contractor.
But, yes, kind of a big deal. Despite the kind of baseline unlikelihood of Gehry’s original crashed-UFO arena design ever getting built — even Gehry didn’t think it would happen by the end, and whether you’ve been to Brooklyn or not, can you imagine actually seeing this anywhere? — that arena was always Ratner’s biggest selling point, even as the design was revised back repeatedly towards something cheaper and more conventional. “Sure, granted, we’re razing your neighborhood and building a bunch of high rises for rich people,” the pitch went, “but have you seen this crazy arena? It’s going to be sweet even on the 324 days a year when there isn’t a NBA basketball game happening there.” To say that this supposed selling point is moot after the arena’s new design — from architects Ellerbe Beckett — was leaked to the New York Times is to hugely understate just how much architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff fucking hates the new design. “It is a shameful betrayal of the public trust,” Ouroussoff cheers, “one that should enrage all those who care about this city.”
A colossal, spiritless box, it would fit more comfortably in a cornfield than at one of the busiest intersections of a vibrant metropolis. Its low-budget, no-frills design embodies the crass, bottom-line mentality that puts personal profit above the public good. If it is ever built, it will create a black hole in the heart of a vital neighborhood.
…A massive vaulted shed that rests on a masonry base, the arena is as glamorous as a storage warehouse. A rectangular window overlooks Atlantic, but without the other buildings it lacks the sense of mystery and surprise that was such an essential part of the Gehry design. A trapezoidal brick and glass box at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush is obviously intended as an echo of Gehry’s public space. But Gehry’s room, several stories tall, soared over the intersection. Ellerbe Becket’s, lower to the ground, just sits there, adding nothing.
Building this monstrosity at such a critical urban intersection would be deadly. Clearly, the city would be better off with nothing. But what’s at issue here is more than the betrayal of a particular community, as tragic as that could be. It is the way the city makes decisions about large-sale development.
Right or wrong — and judging by the Conseco Fieldhouse-lite looks of the thing, he seems right to me — it’s a nice reminder that no one piles up adjectives quite like an architecture critic.
Bloomberg said on his radio show Friday that the move bodes well for the project, which has stalled because of litigation, rising construction estimates and the economic downturn.
“Ratner came to the conclusion . . . that in this day and age you just cannot finance something as complex to build as that stadium,” Bloomberg said.
Ratner is replacing the Gehry design with work by architecture firm Ellerbe Becket of Kansas City, Mo., shaving millions from construction costs.
“Frank Gehry, who is a genius, designed a spectacular stadium,” Bloomberg said. “But this one, Ratner just . . . decided to part company because Ratner couldn’t afford to build if the economics didn’t work with today’s market.”
If you’re keeping track of the venue plans for LeBron James’ likely suitors the summer after next, Madison Square Garden unveiled plans this week for a half-billion dollar facelift. It remains to be seen how The Chosen One might react to a work environment featuring “PARDON OUR APPEARANCE” signs, but compared to the Izod Center, that might not be such a bad thing.
If you tuned into YES’ coverage of the Yankees’ 9-7, 14-inning victory over the A’s yesterday, it was hard not to notice the game reached a conclusion in front of what seemed like more participants than spectators. Granted, not everyone can hang around for all 14 innings, but less than a week after opening for business, Yankee Stadium was no more occupied than McAfee Coliseum might’ve been for an early April matinee. In Wednesday’s New York Times, Ken Belson tackled the Yankees and Mets’ early attendance woes and dropped this tidbit at the very end of his item :
Randy Levine (above), the Yankees’ president, said last week that attendance at the second home game was proportionately ahead of last year’s pace. Levine also said that 80 to 85 percent of the Stadium’s 4,000 premium seats had been sold for the full season.
For next season, the Yankees plan to raise premium ticket prices 4 percent.
Chutzpah? Unmitigated greed? Or, as WNBC.com’s Josh Alper (of the late, great Feed blog) sees it, completely out of touch with reality.
You have to admire the Yankees at some level for their staunch refusal to play the public relations game. Empty seats that make Yankee Stadium look like Pittsburgh? We don’t care because we’re making money all the same. Widespread negative response to a Stadium and the amount it costs to visit? We’re raising prices.
On another level, though, that plan turns your stomach. The team’s owner has admitted some of the tickets are overpriced, which is a pretty clear sign that they’re overpriced, but Levine sees no reason to turn back. Either Levine knows something we don’t about where the economy is headed in the next few months, or he’s insane.
Citing unnamed sources while trashing Mets and Yankee ownership for their overpriced/undersubscribed new venues (”a dozen games into the season, and both teams in this town are seeing something they never expected to see in their sparkling new ballparks: empty seats…in this context, they’re a beautiful sight to behold”), Newsday’s Wallace Matthews raises expectations for lower ticket prices.
When Opening Day at the new Yankee Stadium draws only 48,000 paid admissions, and the Mets, after nearly filling the 42,000 seats in their opener but then can’t draw much above 36,000, you know that the geniuses in the business offices who decided to Mel Brooks the baseball fans of this town made a serious error in judgment.
For the theatrically challenged, to “Mel Brooks” an audience is to charge infuriatingly high ticket prices for a show you expect to be a smash hit, as Brooks did by charging $450 for the best seats to “Young Frankenstein.” Fittingly, it was a flop and the seats went largely unsold.
So, too, it seems are the obscenely overpriced high-end tickets at both New York ballparks. At Sunday’s Yankees game, there were many empty seats in all price ranges — mostly in the high-rent districts, the ones they expected to sell out in a hurry. Across town, the Mets drew their fifth straight crowd of 36,000 or fewer.
This weekend, I spoke with two Yankees officials, both of whom begged for anonymity. (I like to make them beg.) Both agreed that ticket prices, presumably set before the bottom dropped out of the economy, might need to be adjusted.
“When you’ve got the owner of the team admitting the tickets are overpriced, you’ve got to figure something is in the works,” one of them said.
According to AP reports from the game, these Legends Suites usually sell for between $500 and $2625. Reporters at the game estimated that around half of those seats remained empty for the 1 p.m. start of the game. Behind that — in the field seats that go for $375 per game or $325 as part of a package — seemingly half of the seats remained empty as well.
Meanwhile, those of us watching the game at home are continually struck by the Legends Suite seats. They look like executive desk chairs or Business Class airline seats and less like a ballpark. The fans sitting in them often look like they don’t know what’s happening, and one fan was golf-clapping during Derek Jeter’s home run. The people most noticeable and TV — those sitting closest to the field — are somehow transcending a baseball game.
Yankee Stadium is still new. It’s got a lot of nooks and crazy, a Great Hall, some fancy food, and a lot of areas to explore. Right now, the Yankees are banking on the distractions as the cause of this seemingly muted fan outpouring. The empty seats are another matter, but this year, at least, the team is hamstrung by the high prices.
How many times have you wished there was an panoramic, interactive website that afforded you an 360-degree view of the CBGB’s toilets? Yeah, me neither, but it’s amazing someone went to all this effort.
Lest anyone believe Fred & Jeff Wilpon’s Monument To Avarice & Greed is the only facility built (partially) with NYC public money receiving criticism this week, the New York Daily News’ Fillip Bondy weighs in on the new Yankee Stadium bleachers, polling those who declare said section, “too gray…too cold.”
Perhaps most frustrating: The fenced-in walkways above the bleachers render taunting very difficult.
“There goes the ‘Jump!’ chant,” says Mike Donahue. “I mean, what’s the point? Nobody can jump through the fence.”
The troubles are many, solutions few. A coat of blue paint would be nice, yet there is also some inherently lousy planning more difficult to reverse. On cold days and nights, the wind whips in from above and behind the stands because there is no wall, and no Utz potato chip sign, protecting the Creatures. Because of this flaw, Bald Vinny Milano, leader of the roll call, lost his voice during one game and required a sub to continue the ritual.
There are silly flower pots and a giant scoreboard that nobody can really see and then there are all these people coming from other parts of the stadium to observe the roll call and get their vicarious thrills.
“I like that we can go to the rest of the stadium, but I hate that the rest of the stadium can come to us,” says Donahue, who reports he is still in “sensory overload” from the exhibitions.
Sheriff Tom Brown was always one of the few supporters of a new stadium, citing economic necessities. Now he reports considerable disappointment at the end result, which is too much the suburban mall for his tastes.
“The potted plants have got to go, the bathroom and beer lines seem as long as ever,” Sheriff Tom comments. “I defended a new stadium all along, but to me they bungled it.”
There is a tendency…well, there are two tendencies. There are many tendencies, in general, but two I’m going to write about here. The first is the tendency of Mets fans to ascribe certain general broad-stroke human/sports-fan traits to Mets Fans, as if they are the only ones who have picked up a tragic sense of life or a worldview reflecting a certain specific flavor of reflexive mordancy. This tendency is obviously kind of BS, in the same way that certain Red Sox fans view themselves as tragic heroes redeemed or Cubs fans like George Will imagine that their fandom indicates some deeper thing. But I am only a Mets fan, and have only been a Mets fan — I know what Mets fans do, because I do it. This is why I am mentioning this up top, before I talk about what my first trip to CitiField Not-Shea was like. If I get lost in The Mets Fan’s Unique Sense of X, please understand that I 1) at least know I’m doing so and 2) apologize for it.
Tendency the second (which does not just apply to Mets fans, of course, of course), then. This would be the way that we go about wrapping our personal aesthetic and political prejudices and preferences around our circumstances. This applies uniquely to Mets fans only in the sense that it justifies the fact that many of us were at least a little emotional over the demolition of Shea Stadium after last season. Even as we watched Not-Shea rising beyond the outfield — seeing that, no less, from our crummy plastic seats in that cloddish, cold poured-concrete urinal of an architectural relic — there was the sense that it would somehow never be a real home. Shea was that, even if it was not much else, even if it was a tacky, chilly, teardown of a home. No one who remembers anything good about the Mets remembers it happening anywhere but Shea (well, maybe some road wins or whatever). And that, in the way that we all kind of do this — Mets fans with Shea, but also this Mets fan with a couple shitty bars or songs or whatever that evoke particular moments in time, and probably you with your own set of emotional mnemonics — made Shea something we could miss. Even if, this side of the neon baseball dudes on the exterior, there wasn’t anything concrete about the place that was actually worth the missing.
And it’s fully in the past-tense now. This was, as much as anything, the first thing I noticed when I went out to Not-Shea last Saturday. This big, clean, fancy new stadium in front of me, and I was looking around for Shea, or whatever was left of it. The answer is basically nothing, or nothing but a fenced-off hillock of rubble and rusty steel with a sign propped up against the fence declaring the location “The Future Site of CitiField, home of the New York Mets.” To read that sign, you’ll have to stand with your back to the actual CitiField. To actually go see the Mets, you’ll have to turn around.
And there it is. The big fake Ebbets Field edifice that’s been talked about since the first stories on the design — by ubiquitous ballpark architects HOK, now known (in that faintly sinister nonsense brand-language way) as Populous — came out. No Mets fans I know was really that excited for the new stadium, honestly. It was like a haircut or a tetanus shot or some other dullish, unobjectionable practicality: something that is obviously worth-it-unto-necessary, but which is kind of tough to get psyched about. Shea wasn’t about to fall down, it wasn’t leaking or awash in nine-ounce roaches or anything like that — it was built to last, if clearly built with only that in mind. But it was time. Everyone else was doing it.
And, in a sense, Not-Shea is very much the stadium that everyone else is getting. Yes, there is some appropriating of local baseball history and architectural texture into the place — the ballyhooed rotunda (actually echo-y and municipal when I was there has videos of Jackie Robinson playing on an endless flatscreened loop, a statue of his number 42 in (Brooklyn) Dodger blue, is lined by an array of pictures and quotes; there’s also a nod to Queens’ Hell Gate Bridge in dead center and the seats are Polo Grounds green and the rotunda itself is modeled after Ebbets Field. (I’m jacking much of that from Nicholas Ourousoff’s New York Times review of this and the new Yankee Stadium, if you were curious) All very HOK-y, and all totally respectable and respectful and unobjectionable and…
…and actually kind of cool, actually, once you get in there. There was, of course, a lot of photo-taking going on (including by me, as you can see in the pics GC has kindly interspersed here) among the people there that day. (I’ll mention, here, that the game itself — which is already old news — was awful; Ollie Perez was bombed early, the Mets quickly sent a succession of fringe guys and Double-A anonymities to their doom against Dice-K and the Sox bullpen, et effing cetera) But the general sense of the crowd was less acquisitive (beyond the kids near me who were unflaggingly pestering players for autographs all game) or dutifully photojournalistic than it was bemused agape. For the first time in any Mets fan’s life, they were playing someplace new.
And while discovering the scope of that newness offered a few thrills of its own — here’s the old Shea home run apple, in its own little quasi-chapel space near the bullpen gate; there’s the actual (and actually delicious-smelling) food court, complete with Shake Shack and Blue Smoke and Tacqueria and some ultra-daunting lines — there was a bigger sort of awe going on. It wasn’t an awe unique to Mets fans in Not-Shea, I’ll grant. Kids get it, too, their first time in a hotel room.
I caught a lot of people looking up at the girders and the blinking billboards or even staring at the ubiquitous flat screens that played Geico commercials before the game and the SNY feed during it. Or just looking up, into the middle distance, where the stadium (rather gracefully) hulked around us. I saw an old editor of mine — who had been there before, had even written about it already — with that same moon-faced awe on his face. “I’m kind of surprised to say this,” he said, “but that bridge in center is pretty cool.” There was a lot of that; everything seemed to go slower because of it, as if the concessions guys and ushers were still finding new things about the place to pay attention to. There was a lot of that even on my part.
At the risk of pushing my luck, reader-patience-wise, I’m going to write a bit more on this Wednesday.
Len Berman, a fixture in NYC sports broadcasting over the past 30 years (and veteran of 6 years at Boston’s WBZ before that), is leaving WNBC sometime in the next several weeks, telling Newsday’s Neil Best, “I feel I have other talents besides just reading sports news”. Presumably,counting money is one of those talents, as Berman was said to be earning an eye-popping $1 million per year.
As an avid viewer of Berman’s evening sportscasts in the mid ’70’s and ’80’s, I’m reminded there was a time before “SportsCenter” shaped a nation’s sporting sensibilities. Despite having just a few minutes per telecast to work with, Berman’s efforts from that era in some small way helped to shape the climate we have today, even if the combined forces of 24 hour sports news and You Tube have essentially rendered a feature such as WNBC’s “Spanning The Globe” redundant.
OK, perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration, but the New York Times’ Ken Belson points out that for all of the improved creature comforts of NYC’s two new baseball stadiums, “fans on tighter budgets, though, will have to settle for seats in far-off sections, some of which have obstructed views of the field.“
Mets fans learned this the hard way on Sunday, when St. John’s and Georgetown played the first game at Citi Field. Steven Gottesman, who has a 15-game ticket plan, went to see his four seats in Section 533, Row 15, near the top of the upper deck down the left-field line. To his “shock and horror,” he could not see the warning track or about 20 feet of the outfield from the left-field line to center field.
“In other words, I will only know if a home run is hit if I am listening to a radio at the game or I wait to see the sign from the umpire,” Gottesman, 45, said in an e-mail message. “If Endy Chávez made his catch in this new stadium and I had been there, I would not have seen it.”
Some Yankee fans will have it even worse. That is because the 1,048 bleacher seats in Sections 201 and 239 have views partly blocked by the walls of the Mohegan Sun Sports Bar, which sits above Monument Park behind the center-field fence. Fans in Section 201, for instance, will not be able to see left field and, in some cases, even third base.
A more detailed description of additional obstructed views at Citi Field can be found here.
The New York Knicks have 3 home games remaining in the 2008-09 season. While the club is lottery-bound, the basketball product isn’t nearly as shameful / desperate as Cablevision’s continued attempts to give the Garden all the ambience of a suburban U.S.A. shopping mall and/or middle school assembly.
A: In an emergency, you can take a shit on this entry.
Until the Harris From Letch Patrol Birthplace & Museum Opens, this will have to do; from The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Annex.com (link courtesy Brooklyn Mutt). I’ve not been to see Mercer Street’s loving recreation of the famed CBGB awning, mostly because I spend most of my time in New York pouring through the racks of the Ned HaydenJohn Varatos Record Canteen. But my head is spinning at the wonders that oughta be displayed at this exhibit ; Rude Buddha flyers, Bill Popp & The Tapes setlists, a Texas Instruments calculator (still in the box, never opened), Copernicus’ smoking jacket, etc.
(photograph by Jesper Eklow)
The New York Metropolitans‘ new venue, Citi Field (above right), “is far more intimate than Shea and corrects some of Shea’s worst faults” opine the New York Times’ Ken Belson and Richard Sandomir. For instance, Aaron Heilman won’t be in the home team’s bullpen.
The walk from the subway station to Citi Field’s front entrance will take about as long as it took to reach Gate E at Shea, but an acre of planters, trees and other landscaping will usher fans to the new park’s brick exterior and ornate rotunda named for Jackie Robinson. Bricks embedded in the capacious plaza include inscriptions from fans who paid $195 to $345 for the privilege. Several applications were rejected because the language was deemed insulting of New York’s other baseball team.
Citi Field’s exterior is a splendid architectural response to the dullness of Shea, while the inner bowl is muted. Shea’s candy-colored plastic seats are gone (along with generations of chipped paint on the handrails) in favor of dark green seats everywhere.
“Dark green is the color of a classic ballpark,” said Dave Howard, the team’s executive vice president for business operations, as he stood ankle deep in snow. “And we thought the other team in town would use blue.”
Citi Field, with 28 different seating categories, also feels more fragmented than Shea, which had sections of box and reserved seats that stretched from one foul pole to the other. The collection of far smaller blocks of luxury suites, party rooms, restaurants and exclusive box seats spells exclusivity or exclusion, depending on your point of view.
Everything has a new name, as well. There’s the Ebbets Club, the Delta Sky360 Club and the Caesars Club. Seaver, Hodges and Stengel have their names on three of the five party suites. The name game is not done, either.
“In this economy, you don’t turn down sponsors,” Jeff Wilpon said. “Anyone who’s willing to pay. …”
Anyone, Jeff? Really?
Bruce Ratner’s quixotic quest to move the Nets from New Jersey to a Frank Gehry-designed nest set like a crashed UFO amid a planned patch of (currently unrentable) identikit luxury condos in Brooklyn has been covered before in this space. Fairly often. And I’m so biased in this due to my fading-but-lifelong affinity for the Nets — described at length here and in an essay in this book and in general by me every time I have four or more beers and basketball comes up — that I generally try to stay out of it.
This means sitting out lots of bullshit from Ratner and his flubby PR maestro Brett Yormark. It means not really commenting on Forest City Ratner’s cheesy backroom politicking and eminent domain abuse and general shittery. And recently, it has meant very little, since everyone but Ratner seems to realize that until the economy turns around — and likely even then — his overambitious, underwhelming development project just isn’t happening.
As it should. The whole thing sucks all the way up to heaven, and as a New Yorker and Nets fan and someone who hates this sort of workaday economic injustice and cravenness, I still care, but…it’s a lot to take, daily. So it’s nice, in a way, to find that I can still be shocked by this. And simultaneously impressed. This report on how Ratner is angling to get stimulus funding for the Atlantic Yards project from New York’s Intelligencer blog, for instance…you can’t hear it, but I’m slow-clapping for Ratner over here. Well done, you magnificent bastard. Longtime New Yorkers will want to stick around to the end of the blog post for a cameo from vampiric unkillable political lamprey Alfonse D’Amato. Because of fucking course. So:
According to a government source, representatives of Forest City Ratner — the developers of the massive, foundering Brooklyn basketball-and-skyscraper project — have been pushing the idea with Governor David Paterson’s office, trying to elbow to the front of the line before any of the roughly $17 billion in federal aid arrives.
Atlantic Yards has been on life support since late last year, stalled by the collapse of the credit markets as well as lawsuits contesting Ratner’s attempt to seize property through eminent domain. Frank Gehry’s design for the showpiece NBA arena has been undergoing revision in an attempt to reduce costs that have swelled to $1 billion. Preparatory construction work on the 22-acre site was halted in December. Meanwhile, Ratner’s team has returned repeatedly to the city and state asking for subsidies beyond the possible $1.5 billion in direct and indirect taxpayer money that went into the original deal.
Ratner is nothing if not persistent, and he’s lined up a powerful group of political supporters for Atlantic Yards, including Mayor Bloomberg, Senator Chuck Schumer, and the project’s first elected cheerleader, [Brooklyn Borough President Marty] Markowitz (new senator Kirsten Gillibrand hasn’t taken a position on Atlantic Yards yet). Other than Markowitz, they haven’t said whether they like the idea of using stimulus money to revive the project. And there is a long list of more worthy state projects — from the Second Avenue subway to the Cross-Harbor Freight Tunnel to high-speed upstate rail links — that would produce bigger public benefit from the stimulus bucks without bailing out a private real-estate developer.
At the risk of making light of a serious dispute, I think it is safe to say that no longer are Dwight Gooden nor Ambiorix Burgos having the toughest time of any former New York Mets.
Considering James Dolan’s marketing dept. believes Donnie Walsh is a more marketable figure than an active member of the Knicks, there’s nothing surprising about MSG figuring Kobe, LeBron and KG are the primary reasons to watch New York’s basketball team. For those of us of a certain vintage, however, we can remember a time in which the franchise’s ownership actually believed the home team’s play and personality was a selling point.
While the Suns visit MSG tonight for the first time since Mike D’Antoni bolted Phoenix for Broadway, the Star-Ledger’s Steve Politi considers the possibility of C Shaquille O’Neal joining the Nets….as player/owner?
Imagine the Nets finally giving up their Brooklyn fantasy and moving to the Rock with one of the all-time greats in uniform. Imagine Shaq, after he decides to retire, staying with the franchise as a part owner, his smiling face on billboards and his hulking frame sitting in courtside seats.
The thought has certainly occurred to O’Neal, who already is heavily involved in real estate ventures in the city and has a strong interest in getting involved in the business side of the sport.
“Yes. Yes. Yes,” O’Neal said in a phone interview when asked if he wanted to get into ownership when he retired.
And if that team could be the Nets …
“It’d be nice — real nice,” he said. “I know the area, I know the people, it’s close to New York. Every organization needs two things: a great place to play and a couple of marquee players. You have that, and it’s a no brainer.”
So the player who can rescue the Nets for New Jersey is not LeBron James, the free agent everyone wants in 2010. As long as this team stays on this side of the Hudson River — and few outside the organization believe they’re getting to Brooklyn any more — James is not signing here, no matter how chummy he is with part owner Jay-Z.
Last November, the night before the Suns played the Nets at the Meadowlands, Shaq attended a Devils game at the Rock and got the grand tour from Devils owner Jeff Vanderbeek.
“I heard they were billing it as the No. 1 arena in the world, so I wanted to see for myself — and I agree,” O’Neal said, talking on a cell phone as he rode on the Suns team bus. “The place is great.”
He said he told Vanderbeek that night that, if he needed anything at all for the arena, he was prepared to help. You can bet that Vanderbeek saved his number and remembered the promise.
You can bet that anybody serious about keeping this team in New Jersey should rely on one of the most popular players of his generation, and that Shaq is ready and willing.
“I have no idea why the Nets aren’t playing there,” Shaq said. “It makes no sense. I know they’re trying to get to Brooklyn, but if I was the general manager or the owner of that team, I’d be playing in Newark right now.”
Even amongst the sizeable soccer-loving population of the tri-state area, the NY/NJ Fizzy-Energy Drinks have failed to seriously dent the local consciousness in their 11 years of operation. Reasons for this include the following but are not limited to :
a) the failure of the media (ahem,non-soccer blogs included) to note the club’s occasional achievements,
b) a pleathora of other sporting attractions competing for the entertainment dollar
c) a thoroughly unsuitable venue, complete with football hashmarks
d) the MLS’ level of play, while unquestionably higher than it was 11 years ago, is rarely of a first division caliber compared to most other domestic leagues
e) a steady diet of La Liga, Serie A, the EPL or Bundesliga on cable or satellite makes point “d” all too obvious
f) the American people still associate soccer with Alexi Lalas and will not support the game until he is dead,
and there’s also “g”, the relative futility of the former Metros throughout their swampy tenure. Save for a conference semi-final appearance in 2000, they’ve been a constant underachiever in the country’s biggest media market. Until now, perhaps.
Yesterday’s 3-0 victory over defending champs Houston catapulted the Fizzies into a conference final with Real Salt Lake, and while being 90 minutes away from the MLS Cup oughta be reason in and of itself for a general audience to sit up and take notice, I’m aware that probably isn’t the case. And if you cannot take vicarious pride in the achievements of the Meadlowlands’ Austrian-bankrolled soccer franchise, perhaps I can appeal to an altogether different sentiment. Revenge.
Former MSG President Dave Checketts brought the RSL expansion franchise to Utah just a few years after Guitar James Dolan elbowed him out of the limosine in New York. Under normal circumstances, this might make the Mormon executive something of a hero around some parts, but amongst numerous black marks on a long, long resume, there’s one executive decision Checketts should never live down in the eyes of New York Knicks fans.
The 2000 trade of C Patrick Ewing to Seattle in exchange for Glen Rice, Luc Longely and Travis Knight — long before Isiah Thomas’ arrival on Broadway — helped commence a period of digging-towards-salary-cap-hell the Knicks have yet to emerge from. Ewing’s expiring pact was shipped to the Sonics for 3 deals that ran for another combined 9 years, with another $90 million still owed to Rice, Longely and Knight. Of course, by the time the full enormity of this franchise-killing error came to bear on most of us, Checketts was long gone, establishing Real Salt Lake, buying the St. Louis Blues, and encouraging Jet Blue employees to sexually harrass innocent passengers.
Maybe you’d sooner gargle with broken glass than watch an MLS game. Perhaps the prospect of seeing the former Metro Stars earn a title just as unlikely as that of the Super Bowl champion Giants means nothing to you. That’s fine, I can accept that. But I cannot accept The East Rutherford XI being eliminated by a club owned by Dave Checketts. If petty grudges and intense prejudice mean as much to you as they do to me, you’re gonna watch the Fizzies throttle Real Salt Lake on television next Saturday, and you might run the risk of being asked to leave a drinking establishment in the process. Let’s Go Fizzies!
Occasional mid-afternoon hallucinations aside, I’m fully aware that Shea Stadium is closed for business and there’s no stopping the April unveiling of the Mets’ Citi Field aka The Wilpons’ Monument To Avarice & Greed. But why is it necessary — even in light of consecutive September humiliations —- for Jeff Wilpon to all but whip it out and gloat while pissing on a cherised (to some, anyway) venue? The New York Times’ Richard Sandomir ventured to Flushing and observed Wilpon and assorted hardhat minions engaged in some genuinely creepy bonding.
“They’re so high, and so close to Mr. Wilpon’s new baby,” said Toby Romano, a vice president of Breeze National, the demolition subcontractor, said of the twin light towers’ proximity to the nearly finished Citi Field.
“Nice and easy, we’ll pull them down,” said Danny Collins, a Breeze foreman.
“If it were me,” said Jeff Wilpon, the team’s chief operating officer, who wants Shea to be gone as soon as possible. “I’d just go in and bring them down.”
Collins, a veteran of demolishing skyscrapers, nonchalantly said the Shea razing was “like any other demolition,” but then called it a “great challenge” to tear down a place where, “I used to spend a lot of time with my uncles.”
Wilpon wanted to show the Mets’ clubhouse, now darkened and turned to rubble. But the menacing growl of an approaching Bobcat altered his route. Close by was the rear entrance to the ticket office. A large, ragged gash in a cinderblock wall made it appear that the Incredible Hulk had vented his frustrations over the work of Aaron Heilman.
The old ticket office led, unencumbered by walls, to the stadium’s old main office entrance, and to where the elevator once moved with maddening slowness. It is gone.
“The shaft makes an excellent garbage chute,” said Daryl Mattis, a project supervisor for Hunt-Bovis, the Mets’ construction partner.
J.W. Colucci, an Bobcat operator was asked, what’s it like to be wrecking Shea?
“Sometimes,” Colucci said, a smile on his dusty face, “it feels better than sex.”
Wilpon added: “I’d love to drive a Bobcat, blasting through this place.”
Quite a stretch, too, playing the part of “retired centerfielder Ronnie Holland” in a 1994 episode of “New York Undercover”. Amazing to see so many scenes shot in and around West 4th Street and 6th Avenue, a testament to Sir Bonilla’s versatility. He can show you the Bronx…or the West Village.
As part of Bronx Banter’s ongoing series of Yankee Stadium recollections, noted Bobby Bonilla nemesis Bob Klapisch tells Alex Belth about the time in 1997 that David Wells had the temerity to complain to his paymaster about a proto-Jeffrey Maier interfering with Paul O’Neil in right field (link taken from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory).
“Hey, George, you need to get some security out there in right field. Build a wall or something,” Wells (above) said.
Steinbrenner: “Never mind about the fucking security, you just worry about your pitching. You better start winning some games, because you’re not the pitcher I thought you were.”
Wells: “Is that right? Well, you can go fuck yourself. If you don’t like it, you can trade me.”
Steinbrenner: “Believe me, I would, but no one wants your fat ass.”
Wells: “You better get the fuck out of this room, before I fucking knock you out.”
Steinbrenner: “Go ahead, do it. Try it. You think I’m afraid of you?”
Wells and Steinbrenner apparently eyeballed each other for another moment, before the tension defused. No punches were thrown.
How did I know all this? Three teammates and one of the Yankee trainers were in the clubhouse during the exchange – two of whom couldn’t wait to give me the blow-by-blow as soon as the game was over.
Boomer was waiting for me the next day at his locker, where we usually made small talk before batting practice. But not this time.
“Who told you about me and George?” Wells asked coldly. It was more of a threat than a question: our war was just beginning.
“You know I can’t tell you, David,” I said. “If you told me something in confidence, I’d respect that. It’s called protecting your sources.”
“Fuck that. I have to know who’s the rat in this clubhouse,” he said.
“Sorry,” I said, even though I wasn’t.
“Listen, you think about it during the game,” Wells said. “You come down here afterwards and tell me who I can and can’t trust. If you don’t, we’re done.”
Tuesday, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs offered only a “no comment” when asked about the financing for the nearly $950 million arena, fueling persistent doubts about the viability of Ratner’s plan, which has been systematically downscaled and delayed since it was first rolled out more than four years ago.
The latest setback came Monday, when Ratner said that ongoing legal disputes had again pushed back ground breaking for the arena, Originally slated to open in 2006, and most recently in 2010, it will now not be ready before 2011.
For his part, Ratner remains resolute.
“Atlantic Yards will be built and it will create thousands of needed jobs and affordable homes,” Ratner said in a prepared statement. “This is all the more important as our city and country confront one of the most difficult economic downturns in history.”
Atlantic Yards — 16 skyscrapers, an 18,000-seat basketball arena for the Nets, and thousands of apartments at a site at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues — has been delayed by a string of legal challenges and questions about financing.
That leaves the Nets playing at the aging Izod Center in the Meadowlands for at least the next three years, which will perpetuate competition with the Prudential Center hockey arena in Newark.
The latest delay may complicate the $400 million naming-rights deal with Barclays Bank, which is expected to help offset the cost of the arena, according to published reports. The deal with Barclays was contingent on Ratner’s financing for the project to be in place by the end of November.
As part of New York Magazine’s 40th Anniversary, a number of NYC sports-thinker types of considerable repute were asked to select their Top Ten New York Athletes of the past four decades. Along with expert testimony from the likes of Mike Lupica and Christopher Russo, another Big Apple fixture, former Deadspin editor Will Leitch — when you think of Gotham, you think of Will — contributed the following :
1. Reggie Jackson
In his first game back in the Bronx after he signed with the Angels, Yankee Stadium chanted his name. They wouldn’t even do that for Jeter.
Really? If Darryl Strawberry, Patrick Ewing and Mark Messier all received standing ovations the first time they returned to New York in a different uniform, why is it so hard to believe a 4 time World Champ like Jeter wouldn’t receive similar treatment?
2. Lawrence Taylor
Dominating, gruesome, monstrous, awesome, and would have been even better if he weren’t high so often. That he was makes him even more of a terrifying, otherworldly force of nightmares.
We’ve already established that Will has some issues with black people, but with all due respect to L.T.’s defensive prowess, it’s kinda fucked up to describe him as “gruesome, monstrous” without acknowledging he might’ve been pretty sharp, too. Did Mark Gastineau have the presence of mind to send hookers to opponents’ hotel rooms?
7. Dwight Gooden
Hard to separate him from Darryl Strawberry; they were the only two people who could make you forget anyone played baseball in the Bronx.
Actually, Will, Straw and Dr. K were very easy to separate. For instance, one played right field and hit monstrous (whoops) home runs, the other was the most exciting young pitcher since Mark Fidyrch or Fernando Valenzuela. “The only two people who could make you forget anyone played baseball in the Bronx?” For the first time, someone has the guts to claim Fritz Peterson’s star power overshadowed Tom Seaver.
10. Pelé
When he entered Studio 54, the place actually went quiet with awe.
The same could be said of Lillian Carter. When she wasn’t wearing panties, anyway. But I’ve got to stand up for Leitch’s credibility on this one. He’s not old enough to have attended the original Studio 54, and while I’m not either, I’m certain a past-his-prime Pele being recognized in a nightclub is a far greater testament to his iconic status than any of his accomplishments on the soccer pitch. Had I been asked to compile such a top ten, Anthony Mason would’ve ranked high simply because someone told me he tipped well at the China Club.
(Metal Mike and Tom Terrific, acknowledging the cheers of Sam Championungrateful jerks Flushing’s adoring fans)
There’s so much blame to go around after the New York Mets’ 2nd consecutive September collapse ; David Wright, Joe Smith, Jeff Wilpon, Tony Bernazard, Joe McEwing, Kevin Elster, Gregg Jeffries, Rusty Staub…..tell me when to stop, please. Former SportsChannel mouthpiece Ted Robinson, however, suggests a group addition to the above list ; Shea Stadium’s paying customers. From MSNBC.com (link swiped from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory) :
What struck me most Friday was the negativity. Florida scored two runs in the first inning and the rest of the night was mired in a cloud of gloom.
Yes, the economy is part of the reason. Shea Stadium crowds are always littered with Wall Streeters and last Friday night seemed to have a large percentage of those who were blowing off steam and getting Heinekenized and Budweisered.
Before the game I saw Mets general manager Omar Minaya and told him something that appeared in this blog last September — I believe the Mets would have made the playoffs last year if they had played the final week on the road. I still believe that and double down on the thought this year.
By Sunday, I was back in California for the best seat available on baseball’s best day — my couch with DirecTV. As I flipped between games at Shea Stadium, Milwaukee, Minnesota and Chicago, I was struck by the enthusiasm in three parks. Only Shea Stadium didn’t offer its team an obvious home-field advantage.
A stadium whose character was defined by its occupants rather than its structure was closed in grand style. The Mets lone member of the Hall of Fame, Seaver, and his eventual partner in Cooperstown, Piazza, teamed as the battery for the final pitch and walked together out the centerfield gate.
All the while most of the sellout crowd stayed and cheered. It was wonderful, yet bizarre. They love their team, the National League heritage started by the Dodgers and Giants when they played in New York, and the great players who have worn the orange and blue. But the fans seem to love the players more after the fact, more after they are through playing.
During my years as a broadcaster for the Mets, I wondered why the booing at Shea Stadium was so vicious. I have heard such booing often during the final Mets games of the last two seasons. After Sunday’s game – which turned out to be the last ever at Shea Stadium — I heard cheers. And I can’t help but wonder why over my years of watching the Mets I had not heard them more often.
Crap TV historians have long contended an ill-advised song & dance number between Rob Lowe and Snow White at the 1989 Academy Awards was one of the small screen’s most cringe-inducing moments. Until now, the whereabouts of the young lady who danced alongside Mr. Lowe has been the matter of speculation. I am happy to announce that she’s found gainful employment — this evening she was shown (sans close up) before a national television audience playing the part of Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium’s closing ceremonies.
On a few occasions, ESPN’s cameras caught glimpses of fans as well current & retired players looking befuddled at the Yankees’ attempts to have actors portray the Babe, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle. Clearly these unsophisticated types have no idea how difficult it is to stage a production of this magnitude. I realize George Steinbrenner once had business partners with Broadway connections, but who knew that young Hank was such a huge fan of “Zoo Animals On Wheels”?
“Shea is a dump. Any person who likes Shea Stadium itself is either horribly drunk or horribly stoned (or, quite possibly, both). Too bad I won’t be in New York when they demolish it, so I could break-dance on it’s grave. Maybe to Beatles music, to honor Shea Stadium’s greatest moment.” – Gamingboy, Baseball Think Factory
Greatest moment? Not for the first time, Larry Zbysko has been royally dissed.
A two-out, RBI single in the last of the 9th by the oft-criticized Robinson Cano gave the Yankees a 1-0 win over Baltimore in Yankee Stadium’s penultimate game. On the eve of the venue’s farewell, the New York Times’ David Gonzales departs from the nostalgia fest to declare, “the park that looms so large in the minds of the fans has been but a backdrop for me — imposing from afar, but up close about as real as a theatrical prop.”
It’s just that too often, no one much respected the neighborhood outside its walls, including Yankee executives. That’s what makes for my melancholy heart.
Over the years there was griping about how the area was unsafe — this despite scores of police officers assigned to games and the presence of two pretty well-fortified courthouses and a transit police station a couple of blocks away. And there were arguments about whether the Yankees could develop a fan base in the Bronx — a borough that is home to legions of baseball-mad Dominicans and Puerto Ricans.
On one level, you could dismiss it as just posturing, a bargaining ploy over the years meant to wrest something new from the city — tax breaks or a stadium. But for a track man at Cardinal Hayes High School who ran past the stadium every day, it could feel like an entire community’s recent history had been reduced to a negotiating tactic.
Whatever indifference I felt toward the stadium turned to something like active dislike in 1977. That was the year that Howard Cosell famously declared to a national audience, “The Bronx is burning,” while calling a game there. Those few words felt like a body blow.
While no one would argue the South Bronx was a paradise, I never found the area by the stadium to be threatening, especially on game days. For a while in the early 1990s, my office was across the street from Macombs. I parked my car on the street and not once had it broken into. My biggest fear was being locked in the building by a security guard who liked to sneak off and smoke pot with his friends.
Yet the slights continued. An executive called neighborhood kids “monkeys” in 1994. He was in charge of community relations. Judging by the reaction of local schools and youth groups at the time, community relations was close to an oxymoron. Whatever requests they made of the team — for money, tickets or speakers — went unanswered, they said.
Although it took almost two years, local groups are getting grants from the community benefits agreement that was part of the stadium deal. More is promised. Local activists are waiting for the replacement parks they were promised, too.
Cynics amongst us (ie., me) might well figure the E-Street Band’s Nils Lofgren had little else to accomplish musically after playing alongside Tommy Keene. On the contrary, opines the Journal News’ Peter Abraham, unveiling the free “Yankee Stadium” MP3 that Lofgren —-”just about the best guitar player walking the face of the earth” (don’t all complain at once, Doyle fans) — graciously makes available thru his website.
“Years before beers started pouring like spit in a schoolyard, before a gangplank of stringy flesh had been constructed between Jonah Hex’s crevisious lips, before the sweet ravages of gutter-twang swept me off my cleats…there was Michael Burke. Punk hero.” BTF fixture Repoz contributes “Lasting Yankee Stadium Memory #8″ to Alex Belth’s tremendous Bronx Banter, the former putting a human face on late Yankee president Michael Burke (above, left).
Speaking of an independent’s day, here it was July 4th, 1969…A double dip with the tough Scheinchock/Klimblum led Cleveland Indians. 17,884 mourning fans in attendance…mourning yes, for you see, ex-Stone Brian Jones had died just the day before.
“He Anita Pallenberg.
We Aneeda Blomberg”
Became The Stadium cry!
In between games Mr. Burke was laying his usual solid craic from his dugout box, when four kids slowly walked down the then-unchained aisle and tossed a full pack of Chinatown’s finest under Mr. Burke’s seat. It made an explosive blamm-o of a sound not heard at The Stadium since Tony Kubek got a special invite to the Bill Virdon Laryngala Ball.
Naturally, the nearest burr-headed souse of usher stumblebummed into action, yelling at the top of his Yuenglings…”I’LL GET THOSE FUCKIN’ NIGGERS!”
But a shaken Mr. Burke (obviously still suffering from severe CSR’s thanks to the Hermann Göring Panzerkorps pulverizing 1943 fall tour of Salerno) said something that has stayed with me forever…”No, no. They’re only kids having some fun. Let them be.”
(the Cumbucket Media Board Of Directors present your editor with a cake, three weeks early)
September marks the anniversary of one of the most influential, often imitated and widely read sports blogs in existence. But enough about Deadspin, it also happens to be the 5th anniversary of Can’t Stop The Bleeding becoming part of the daily routine for several dozen of you. Accordingly, we’ll be marking this historic event on Monday, September 22, at 7:10pm. The New York Mets will host the Chicago Cubs that evening in the final Monday regular season game at Shea Stadium, and CSTB has secured a special stash of upper deck seats for the occasion. Tickets are $11.50 — probably the last time you’ll see a Mets home game for that cheap — and you’re encouaged to RSVP at info@cantstopthebleeding.com if you’d like to attend. There’s a limit of 2 tickets per applicant.
A postgame event is being planned for a somewhat more intimate venue late that evening. Same address to RSVP, however no paypal action is required if you’re going to skip the trip to Shea. But keep in mind, this could be your last chance to a) experience a night at NYC’s 2nd most beloved ballpark, b) apologize to Carlos Delgado or c) throw batteries at Scott Schoeneweis bask in the splendor of a CSTB field trip before Cumbucket Media sells the entire operation to Emmis Broadcasting.
Wouldn’t it be great if Bleecker Bob’s reopened as a clubhouse for Steve Bartkowski’s legion of fans in the Tri-State area? No? Alternatively, on the occasion of Brett Favre’s solid-if-not-spectacular showing against the Giants last night, the New York Times’ Jeff Bercovici reports the former Packers QB’s sizeable NYC cult has a chosen a unique home to follow his new exploits. It’s a slippery slope, from Bob Dylan to Phil Ochs to Music For Dozens to His Favreness, but who am I to begrudge these Brett boosters a fun night out?
After moving to New York in 1980, Patrick Mr. Daley took a job tending bar at Kettle of Fish, which, in its original Macdougal Street location, had been a hangout for Jack Kerouac, Bob Dylan and other Village habitués.In 1998, he bought the bar, which had settled into a low-ceilinged wood-and-brick space on Christopher Street, previously occupied by the Lion’s Head, and he set about remaking it as a shrine to all things green and gold. The wall behind the bar is heavy with plaques and signed photos, with pride of place going to a Packers stock certificate.
Over the years, a few retired players have stopped by, Mr. Daley said, adding, “Hopefully, Brett will come in now that he’s in New York.” One of Mr. Daley’s employees pointed out that Favre, a recovering alcoholic and painkiller addict, no longer drinks. Mr. Daley’s response: “Well, we’ll find out if he comes in.”
(* – OK, I do realize we’re not even talking about the same building and if I bothered to do any research, I’d already know the original Folk City is now a Duane Reade, a Washington Mutual or a combination Duane Reade/Pinkberry.
(buncha good looking girls hanging out in front of 2nd Ave./St. Mark’s Place’s venerable Gem Spa, long before the price of an egg cream rose to $75.00)
Even for an decorated Joe Namath/Pete Maravich biographer like Fox Sports’ Mark Kriegel, $2500 for a box seat at the New Yankee Stadium seems exorbitant (link courtesy Repoz and Baseball Think Factory). “The ascendance of the hedge fund classes has transformed the city,” claims Kriegel, “and nowhere is that transformation — a system of segregation by net worth — more apparent than at the stadiums and arenas.” Indeed, opera dogs or not, a night at the Met seems downright reasonable by comparison. Other than, you know, the singing.
Everytime I go home to Manhattan, it feels less home-like. I suffer the symptoms of Tourrette’s Syndrome. You can find a Whole Foods, but not a Greek diner. It’s not my city anymore. The funky people — as insufferable as some of them might have been — have been banished in favor of the fund people. The resultant metropolis is Trump-like, which is to say, more crude and predictable and more like every other city with an Olive Garden and a Banana Republic. Not all of these fund people are Yankee fans. Some of them are Knicks fans, too. The mythical aficionados of the city game have long since been replaced by sheep with BlackBerries. OK, maybe they deserve to be gouged. Then there are the Mets fans. The Mets are asking (and getting) only $495 for their best seat when Citi Field opens next year. After last year’s historic collapse, they are celebrated for a 79 percent increase.
The football teams, however, are the absolute best. Jets and Giants fans will have to buy personal seat licenses for the privilege of keeping their season tickets. In any other business this is called a shake-down. The Jets haven’t been to a Super Bowl in almost 40 years.Still, their nerve pales in comparison to the Giants. A single PSL for the Giants will run up to twenty grand. The cost of a ticket for next season will also rise exponentially.
I know a guy whose seats will go from $85 to $700 when the new football stadium opens in 2010. He doesn’t want to give his name for fear of reprisal, believing that the Maras and the Tisches can be as vindictive as the Sopranos. He’s desperately trying to hold on to the tickets, which have been in his wife’s family since the fifties when an uncle bought them to celebrate his survival in the Korean War.
But most likely, they’ll be sold. The corporation that buys them will enjoy waitress service and free non-alcoholic beverages.
This is what you get for supporting a team through lean the years of Pete Gogolak and Homer Jones and Joe Pisarsik.
The venerable discount tube socks and licensed sports gear chain Modell’s spun into action late this week, stocking their shelves with large quantities of newly manufactured Brett Favre Jets jerseys and t-shirts. “In an era of celebrity worship, instant gratification and express delivery, the arrival of a new player is often accompanied by the nearly simultaneous appearance of his jersey on the racks of sporting goods stores and the backs of local fans,” writes the New York Times’ Colin Moynihan, who happened to stop by the same Herald Square Modell’s your MetroCard-wielding editor visited yesterday afternoon.
Unlike Moynihan and the Gang Green-infected hordes shelling out $80 for a Favre replica, I had another garment in mind. And trust me, there’s no rush on the shirt shown above.
After ESPN’s Jon Miller reminded those watching the Mets’ 7-0 defeat of the Rockies last night that many of Shea Stadium’s more memorable moments weren’t baseball-related, the Sports Hernia added, “nice to hear everyone shares the same affinity for Shea and are all getting in one last massive dump before they take a wrecking ball to it.”
TSH’s alternative list of Shea Memories (”in 1986 when everyone played shitfaced and still won”) is about as funny as you’d expect, and much like the serious takes on Flushing lore, fails to recognize Survival Research Laboratories‘ 1988 performance “‘The Misfortunes of Desire” ; not, sadly, a robotic take on the relationship between Darryl and Lisa Strawberry.
The New York Times’ Mel Gussow described the show as “anticlimatic…demoralizing…about as exciting as watching a building under construction.” Presumably, Mr. Gussow wasn’t one of the hundreds of patrons who managed to leave the premises with several of the counterfeit $50 bills SRL shot out of a cannon. For sheer spectacle, I thought “The Misfortunes Of Desire” was a more than adequate demoltion derby. If it was “menace and danger” the Paper Of Record required, SRL could’ve just shown a video of Sid Ferandez negotiating the post-game spread in his underwear.
(the star of “Moonlight & Valentino”, just happy to be mentioned in the same breath as Bobby Ebz)
“The Garden State has made some mighty contributions to pop music: Frank Sinatra, Yo La Tengo, the Four Seasons, Fountains of Wayne and, of course, Bruce Springsteen, to name just a few,” wrote the New York Daily News’ Michael O’Keefe this past Sunday, adding “the state’s latest musical innovation may be its niftiest yet: Fans of Sayreville’s own Bon Jovi have apparently learned how to defy the laws of gravity!” Not for the first time, Genocide are ignored by the MSM.
Back in August 2004, as it was becoming crystal clear that the Bush administration had cynically exploited the Sept. 11 attack to drag America into a pointless war in Iraq, thousands of people from around the world came to New York to voice their outrage during the Republican National Convention.
Anti-war groups hoped to channel that anger with a massive demonstration in Central Park, but the city refused to issue the necessary protest permits. Peace, love and understanding, the city argued in federal court, is not healthy for Great Lawn grass and other living things.
But when Major League Baseball and its corporate sponsors decided to host a Bon Jovi concert this coming Saturday, in conjunction with the July 15 All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium, nobody in the Bloomberg administration apparently raised a Sambora about the grass. Is Bloomberg livin’ on a prayer, hoping Bon Jovi fans will hover over the Great Lawn?
The Bloomberg administration will argue that this is all about numbers – the 60,000 rock fans expected for the Bon Jovi concert won’t have the same impact on the grass as the 250,000 protesters United for Peace and Justice hoped to rally in Central Park in 2004.
But given how Bloomberg has consistently put the greed of the sports teams – especially the Yankees, Mets and Nets – over the needs of ordinary citizens, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Besides the fact that he sported a mustache that would make Jeff Kent flip his snowmobile in jealousy, Derek Bell’s yacht-bound life of debauched luxury — immortalized in this space via an amazing-if-unsubstantiated anecdote from Sam Frank — was easily the most interesting thing about his up-and-down career. His sole full season as a Met had its good and bad moments, but knowing that he was retiring every night to his floating home in aquatic Queens always made Bell that much more likable. Or creepy. Depending on whether you’re Sam’s friend or not, I guess.
Anyway, I have no idea what Derek Bell is up to now. I imagine he’s still getting paid by the Pirates, somehow. But a recent article at MSNBC.com about the scourge of shipwrecks in Queens’ Jamaica Bay — which I found via the resolutely non-sporty Greenbuildingsnyc — made me wonder whether Derek hadn’t simply consigned his old homeboat — don’t call it a houseboat, please, it cheapens it — to Davey Johnson’s Jones’ locker after signing that absurd deal with Pittsburgh in 2001.
At any time, scores of discarded boats — dinghies, rowboats, runabouts, even the occasional barge — litter the shores and lie submerged in its shallow water. It’s a nautical junkyard, one more worry for ecologists in an area of the Gateway National Recreation Area where delicate marshes already are imperiled by rising water.
National Park Service officials say many of the boats are dumped by owners who simply don’t want to deal with the hassle and cost of taking them to salvage yards. Others have simply drifted in after breaking away from their slips.
…They may pose threats to the environment, to navigation, or simply spoil the experience for visitors. Some derelict craft have become hangouts for drug users, and those with engines can leak oil onto beaches or into the water, especially during storm surges, he said.
All pretty bad, I agree. But with the departure of Paul LoDuca, at least Mets fans can rest assured the deserted boats aren’t used for assignations with MySpace pop stars.
At the risky of lending validity to a former Deadspin editor’s claim this blog is too New York centric, I can only say a new call to WFAN from Jerome Mittleman is a more welcome blast from the past than watching Curtis Sliwa dry hump Bernard Goetz.
My apologies to any readers who are either diagnosed schizos or just happen to be sleeping with one. I meant to say, “The Highly Erratic (And Possibly Bi-Polar) Mets”, a club who on Friday managed to a) score 15 runs at Yankee Stadium despite featuring a batting order that had Trot Nixon, Marlon Anderson, Fernando Tatis and Brian Schneider hitting 6-9 respectively and b) make Sidney (Fucking) Ponson (above) look like a decent 5th starter in the nightcap at Shea.
Though Carlos Delgado’s club-record 9 RBI performance in the matinee made most of the headlines, Mike Pelfrey (barely) getting thru a labored 5 innings was as crucial as it was improbable. Jerry Manuel didn’t want to tax his relief corps too heavily in either contest (whoops!), and if Friday proved anything as conclusively as both ballparks having no idea how to cope with capacity crowds (Mets officials being slightly more competent than their Bronx counterparts when it comes to getting fans into their seats with 40 minutes of their arrival), the Yankee pen (Mariano Rivera excepted) is an absolute disaster. Though the roof really caved in on Edwar Ramirez and Ross Ohlendorf — perhaps the only person booed more lustily by Bombers fans than Jose Reyes — the tone was most certainly set by Dan Geise (4 IP, 6 runs, 5 hits, 4 walks), a starter apparently under the impression he’s being paid by the hour. It took over 120 minutes to complete 4 1/2 innings Friday afternoon, and at one point I was pretty convinced the 2nd game in Flushing would have a delayed start.
After sundown while facing the Aruban Assassin, the Mets failed to cash in on bases loaded scenarios in the 2nd and 3rd innings, and when Delgado grounded out to strand a pair of runners in the first, he was jeered by a portion of the home crowd. Say what you will about Mets fans, but their ‘what have you done for me lately?’ ‘tude is pretty hard to shake.
On another tip, say what you will about Yankee fans, but the overwhelming majority of them are smarter and nicer than the woman in Sec. 35 of the Tier Reserved seats who spent much of the afternoon screaming “THEY CAN’T EVEN SPEAK ENGLISH” each time Beltran or Delgado came to the plate. At least I think it was a woman — Craig Carton’s voice isn’t usually that high and I’m presuming he can probably get better seats.
How enraged was the mob at MSG last night? Even Jeff Lageman was booing the Knicks’ selection of Danilo Gallinari at no. 6 overall. While I personally would’ve loved to see New York take a flier on G D.J. Augustin (who might’ve been a stretch at no. 9), I’m still eager to see him regain the consistent form he flashed prior to his sophmore year in Austin . He’ll try to do so in a Bobcats uniform, however, and the Daily News’ Frank Isola predicts the selection of Gallinari means David Lee is a goner.
I’m hearing that the Knicks could be working on a deal with the Charlotte Bobcats to acquire point guard Raymond Felton for Lee, who played for Bobcats coach Larry Brown.
When Mike D’Antoni coached the Phoenix Suns he gave the front office a the thumbs-down to drafting Lee because he felt that Lee wasn’t a good enough shooter.
If Brown’s that commited to acquiring young talent he previously stunted nutured, surely Memphis would consider trading Darko Milicic?
My basketball career has gone precipitously downhill since eighth grade. Back then, my pre/pubescing self earned the nickname “Paxson” (as in John; I think it was a compliment to my jumper, but it might’ve referred to my haircut) and was actually pretty good. Since then, disuse and liver abuse have worn my game down to a downcast shadow of its former self. But one of the few places in New York where I’ve played multiple basketball games is Sara D. Roosevelt Park, on the Lower East Side, at Houston and Chrystie Streets. Sara Roosevelt, for those who don’t know (like me before I looked her up on Wikipedia), was the mother of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was her only son, much as my only legitimately decent full-game basketball performance since college came in the park bearing her name. Even then, the comparisons I got from friends after the game were to Robert Horry. No one’s ever dared compare me to Tyrone Nesby; I can only dream of appearing in the same sentence as Kevin Edwards. Except for just now, when I did it. Anyway, I guess maybe “The Kevin Edwards of CSTB Guest-Bloggers” isn’t totally unfair. What I’m saying is, I have some experience with this park.
But even including my glorious performances at the park (i.e. the time I scored five times in a game to 11) (once), what went down there earlier this evening was kind of a new thing. In a little-promoted but very well-attended game that benefited the charitable foundations of participants Claudio Reyna and Steve Nash, Sara Roosevelt Park hosted an 8-on-8 soccer game between an assemblage of MLS and European stars, NBA players and, uh, ESPN writer Marc Stein (who modestly failed to mention his presence in the game while writing it up at ESPN.com). Much of the large crowd — which climbed mold-like, up the park’s chain link fences and into some fragile-looking nearby trees, and stood nearby on the sidewalk and on benches — seemed to be there as much for the soccer stars as for the basketball players. All of us, though, came together in a couple of ways.
Foremost among those was a gentle, generally good-natured heckling of Baron Davis, who showed up for the event wearing Harry Caray-frame glasses, a baseball cap featuring an upside down Dodgers-style LA, and garish, mid-calf-length ancient-school Reebok Pumps. He, like all the other players, was outfitted with a t-shirt and khaki shorts. Unlike the rest of them, he refused to tighten the belt on those shorts enough that his undergarments weren’t always constantly at least kind of showing. Unlike Nash, who scored a pair of goals and is clearly a very good soccer player, Davis obviously had little experience with the game. He did have a sense of humor, though — highlighted by a belly-flop onto prone Liverpool forward Robbie Fowler, who (amusingly) feigned injury after a clumsy-ish Davis tackle — and also managed to score a goal off a nice feed from Jason Kidd. Yeah, Kidd also played. He was actually pretty good, and assisted on two goals. Also, if I even need to mention this, he’s freaking yooge: as big across as Claudio Reyna is up and down, give or take a few inches.
In all, the NBA delegation included Kidd, Nash, Davis, Leandrinho Barbosa (who’s good) and Raja Bell (who’s less good, but didn’t injure anyone); the soccer side of things was highlighted by Fowler (good, but short), Reyna (according to his bio, two inches shorter and a few pounds heavier than me, somehow), Henry (um, more to come here) and a few others who’ve played in Europe and the MLS. All told, considering that the game was played on a patch of Astroturf laid over a scraggly stretch of asphalt much smaller than the average soccer pitch (see what I did there? the terminology? right, I don’t really know what it means, but I heard Andy Gray say it once), it was pretty awesome. Actually, even if you/one don’t/doesn’t consider that, it was pretty fucking amazing. (If you’d like to read a higher-paid non-freelancer writing this, check out Joshua Robinson’s recap in today’s New York Times)
Goals — especially Davis’, but also lights-out penalty kicks from Henry and Reyna and a pair by Chelsea FC’s Solomon Kalou and Henry — were applauded robustly, but for the most part, the crowd was weirdly quiet. The only sound I heard, outside of nearby conversations, for much of the second half was the bassline and backbeat to various classic rock songs bumping from a nearby minivan, overlaid with the repeating jingle from a nearby ice cream truck. It was surprisingly catchy. The silence wasn’t a result of boredom, at least not on the Forsyth St. side of things (fucking Chrystie St is another story; I hate those guys); the reason, I’m pretty sure, was that the crowd was legitimately rapt before the combination of celebrity and virtuosity on display.
At the risk of losing your attention — raptness/rapture is more than I can hope for, except when I’m weighing in on the reallyimportantshit — I’ll mention a couple of things. (If you’d rather just look at pictures, check this guy’s flickr feed for shots of the game) First of which is this: if they ever choose to do an And1 Tour for soccer, and Thierry Henry is somehow otherwise unemployed (and he won’t be), you should go see it if he’s participating. While all the big-time soccer dudes showed (unsurprisingly, yet still surprisingly) ridiculous skills, Henry is absolutely the most exuberant and brilliant soccer player I’ve ever seen.
I thought as much during the few instances in which I’ve watched him on TV — and I haven’t watched nearly as much soccer as GC has, or as you probably have — but seeing him from 10 or so feet away was astonishing. The control of the ball, and the aplomb with which he utilized it — juggling it past defenders, lobbing a pass to himself over the head of Jason Kidd (who was even more overmatched by Henry than he was by Chris Paul), trapping the ball between his nose and forehead and running seven or so strides with it there — was amazing. The weather was bathwater-warm for the entire game, but while all the players broke a sweat to various degrees (Stein, a ringer for Patton Oswalt but not terrible at soccer, was sweating before he entered the game; Davis seemed barely to sweat), Henry was well-soaked by the end of the game. He gave the crowd a show, and the crowd gave him a sort of benign, buzzingly impromptu New York respect: a buzz gathered when he got the ball, and a sort of unspoken shout rose from the greater surrounding city din whenever Henry passed or uncorked a (half-speed: the goalies were unknowns, and playing with Baron Davis’ bespectacled goofery as their last line of defense) shot on goal. To say he was the best player out there is, obviously, obvious. It’s also unfair to him. It was a different type of greatness, and getting to see it up close was the sort of good fortune few Americans will have until he signs with the LA Galaxy in five years or something.
When the game was over — I think the yellow team (Henry and Nash’s) defeated the blue (Barbosa, Reyna and Kaloud’s) by a couple of goals — the players posed for a few photos and made their way into the LES. Henry was surrounded by a surprisingly modest mob, signed a few autographs, and climbed into a black SUV. Fowler left through the same gate, ran a block or two, realized he wasn’t being followed, and slowed down, about a block ahead of where me and my friends were walking to a bar in the neighborhood. I was half surprised when we didn’t find him there, slouched and sweating over a pint of Newcastle. My calves hurt from standing on tiptoe for an hour and a half, trying to see what was going on. His probably were sore from doing amazing soccer-related things (I can only imagine how his nostrils felt). Within a couple of blocks, we were both New Yorkers, soaking up what was good and (and this is cliched, and a self-satisfied cliche, but in this case…) unique about the city on our way to somewhere else. There were other things to do (I met my girlfriend for dinner, if you must know), but this was a pretty good one to do, all things considered.
The Associated Press says that “the NHL is threatening to kick the owners of the New York Rangers out of the league or force them to sell the team.” That’s certainly not burying the lead, but also an unlikely outcome. From Lynn Zinser of the Times:
The case stems from an anti-trust lawsuit the Garden filed last September, attempting to stop the N.H.L. from incorporating the Rangers’ Web site into a league-wide collective controlled by NHL.com. The team has suffered mostly setbacks in its case, with a judge in the Second Circuit United States Court of Appeals in March calling the team’s request for an injunction, “without merit.”…
The conflict began when N.H.L. owners voted — by a margin of 25-3 — to transfer the digital rights of all 30 teams to the league. It is a model used by most professional leagues. The Rangers were among the dissenters, however, arguing that they should be able to operate their Web site for their own benefit.
The Garden started the case off with a bitter note when it filed suit on September 28, calling the N.H.L. an “illegal cartel” and calling the digital merger a “blatant expropriation of team assets” while arguing that the league is in violation of anti-trust laws. It also said the N.H.L. had done a poor job of marketing the league.
Well shoot, why not sue over the Versus contract then?
Garden management responded by defending its right to sue the league.
“Every American citizen or business has a right to go to court and have its dispute heard by an impartial judge,” said a statement released by Garden spokesman Barry Watkins.
Except according to our president, of course. And speaking of lawsuits, wouldn’t Anucha Browne-Sanders be a great hire by the NHL right now?
Not that I mean to pile on Matt, who does excellent work, but one of his links today, Develop Willet’s Point, raises my ire just a bit. I’m not ready to call the man behind it a flack for City Hall, but C. McShane (if that is his real name, says the guy named Pulp) is pretty jazzed about Mayor Mike’s vision for our fair pit.
I know MetsBlog used to be the go to sports blog for Fred Thompson ads and I believe it was part of the Pajamas Media consortium for a time (I will take back this slur if it turns out to be wrong), so for all I know, Matt Cerrone is a pro-business Republican who supports using eminent domain for the greater good and all that. But maybe he isn’t. But I do think it’s important we know what Matt thinks of the Willet’s Point redevelopment plan because it’s another test of that independence he promised his readers he would have after the merger with SNY.
Is he going to stick to Wilpon and Co.’s party line that the place is a hopeless garbage pit and has to be razed to the ground? Is he aware of any of the area’s history, the city’s neglect of it whenever they aren’t trying to push its businesses out? Is it telling that he hasn’t ever linked to No Land Grab, the anti-Atlantic Yards blog, despite the fact that they’ve followed the Willet’s Point story for longer than Develop Willet’s Point, which has been around for all of five days?
As baseball fans, we don’t want to deal with these issues, we just want a good bar to go to after the game, and I understand that. But there are people who work at Willet’s Point who will more than likely be forgotten by the city, no matter what promises our Billionaire King makes. There’s also the matter of affordable housing, the enormous clean up costs involved with the area and the question of whether the whole development will turn into a sweetheart deal with a connected developer that changes the entire neighborhood of Flushing. The people in Willet’s Point deserve better than being pushed out just so we can better enjoy a baseball game.
Well put. The potential for abuse in this instance is so pronounced, Donald Manes is currently clawing at the inside of his coffin, desperate to get in on the payday.
