Modern Marvels

[bandit12]

bump for those that may have missed this.

[Paul W]

I-35W did not collapse because of Target Field.

when private capital was spent to buy land and construct stadiums, the franchises payed real estate and other taxes.
not like now, when they get a free ride.
money and attention spent on stadiums is not spent on road maintenance...
the clock is ticking right under your feet...

watch the history international show - "the crumbling of america"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBSPcIGGcIc

[SJLT252]

The big problem with public financing of ballparks is that in certian cities it is only project completed on schedule, compared to say the World Trade Center, where construction has barely started when it should have been completed around 3 years ago at the latest. It shows how messed up the governments priorities are, when we have major issues such as poor flood protection in many cities and highways that need to be despretly fixed, among many other issues. I guess the government would rather fixate on bread and circuses so they don't have to worry about stuff like 10 percent unemployment and major infastructure issues, such as the levees in New Orleans and our collasping highway system.

[Eyeshade]

In principle I agree with Paul, problem is the public $ spent on ballparks/mallparks is a drop in the bucket of cash needed to fix our public infrastructure.

[JohnCropp]

'ya know if americans gave the crumbling national infrastructure as much attention as they do to using public funds to build mallparks for private franchises, this country would be better off.
the clock is ticking right under your feet...

until the 1930's private capital was used exclusively to build ballparks, the 40 year period before that was the time of the greatest expansion of public infrastructure.
we should revisit that formula because it works...

I-35W did not collapse because of Target Field.

[milladrive]

I'd never seen that episode. Thanx much for the link!

[Paul W]

'ya know if americans gave the crumbling national infrastructure as much attention as they do to using public funds to build mallparks for private franchises, this country would be better off.
the clock is ticking right under your feet...

until the 1930's private capital was used exclusively to build ballparks, the 40 year period before that was the time of the greatest expansion of public infrastructure.
we should revisit that formula because it works...

[robardin]

what a whitewash!!
... never mentioned also is that most non-pricy seating in these new places were farther away from the field than the places that they replaced.

Not to quibble with any other beef you had, but I just had to say that I did some research and analysis on this oft-repeated statement and it just doesn't match up with the facts, unless you were in one of the six or so sections at Shea that were directly behind home plate, which was not "most seating" even at Shea. I myself had a Saturday ticket plan for 9 years, and my seat locations in Mezz Reserved sections 17, 20 or 23 would literally be outside the ballpark at Citi Field:



[I see now I'd mislabeled where Section 332 is -- the schematic overlaying Shea on top of Citi Field was done before the Acela Club was designed in, and my green circle/arrow for 332 should be moved over another box or so, as Section 333 was cut in half for the Acela club.]

If you can prove it to me otherwise I'd like to see it.

I can agree with being upset about the view from Left Field Landing or "LF Reserved" or losing the left field corner in pricy Caesars Club level seats, but reluctantly agree that it's worth the tradeoff to be closer to the field for any section not in the blessed quadrant behind home plate, because I never seemed to get those seats anyway.

I would suspect the same is true for those other ballparks designed to be "closer to the field" than the stadium bowls they replaced. The people most loudly decrying how their view is no better, or worse than it used to be at the old park are those minority who had the very best seats -- though by the same measure, likely also the longest tenured and loyal of ticket plan holders. For the fans in the other 75% of the ballpark it's a pretty big improvement.

Well, maybe 60%. I don't care for the significant shift of capacity to the outfield, but that's a separate issue and one that's also a matter of personal taste.

[bandit12]

Bump for anyone that missed it.

[Digitalballparks]

Ah, the nice people on the history channel who completely snubbed us at http://www.Digitalballparks.com

We taped 30 minutes of documentary interviews but I guess their notoriously "conservative" producer didn't realize I had long hair, before they called me into the studios.

They certainly didn't mind using all our photos though...

(why isn't there an avitar with a middle finger?)

[Aviator_Frank]

Surprisingly, not one mention of Dodger Stadium, the one park that truly bucked the concrete cookie-cutter trend in the 60's.

[doctor_gogol]

I thought it was an OK doc. It's probably meant for total neophytes who don't know much. But it didn't suck. I was disappointed that they only mentioned Tiger Stadium/Navin Field in passing.


There is another one on Domed Stadiums. I can post the links if anyone wants them. But it's terrible. They start out with a simple gloss over for about 5 min of domes in general, then 80% of it is about the Sky Dome. They don't even mention the Metrodome or the Silverdome.

[NYBase]

Cool, got it. That was ez to fix

Will watch later...

[mets16]

Quick Time sucks. I'm on a Mac. Download the VLC media player. It works wonders.

[doctor_gogol]

i need some codec to get it to play on qt

I'm guessing that you have a Mac.

Try this:

http://perian.org/