The Downtown Brooklyn Thread

I might try to go see celtics v nets in december

i tagged along with the wife to see jay-z on Saturday, and it was alright for a big show with great seats I didn't have to pay for. Bummed that Friday's crowd got Big Daddy Kane in the encore while we got Memphis Bleek, though. Dunno who they had last night.

I haven't been in a pro sports arena since living in Central PA, so I can't tell you how this compares to others. Looks spiffy afaik, though, and it's funny how all the food sellers are like Calexico, Blue Marble, Fatty'cue, etc. Suppose that's great for tourists but personally i was like "ok I think I can wait a few hours and pay far less at the actual place."

favorite moment was hearing a guy in the bathroom yell "I might be the first shmuck in shorts to use this urinal!"

Looks spiffy afaik, though, and it's funny how all the food sellers are like Calexico, Blue Marble, Fatty'cue, etc. Suppose that's great for tourists but personally i was like "ok I think I can wait a few hours and pay far less at the actual place."

― da croupier, Monday, October 1, 2012 9:42 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's not like that wasn't true with the crappy hotdogs arenas used to sell.

again, i haven't been to a pro sports arenas in years (more than a decade for sports rather than music) so hell if i know what one should expect food-wise, price or quality.

I went to the cute liddle stadium where the Cyclones play and it was shocking to me how bad and unsatisfying the food was. No wonder it comes in huge portions, you can get through a whole order and feel as unsatisfied as if you hadn't eaten at all.

My basic plan is never to go to the Atlantic Yards stadium because fuck them, that's why. But I can appreciate that if you're going to pay extra to eat food in a self-contained place, it should at least be actual food you want.

i wasn't hating, to be clear. just noting why i didn't bother spending 10.50 to try calexico's "queso quesadilla."

Yeah, it's basically T/S: $10.50 for a $7 quesadilla or $5 for a $1.50 hot dog.

I am not down w/ Calexico. First time I went when the shop opened on Union it was awesome, but it's mostly let me down since, esp. the Greenpoint location, fwiw.

I haven't had it in a while. I ate at the one on Union a few times and I thought the meat was surprisingly good.

i order from the red hook one a lot but that's in part a matter of convenience.

while it is objectively A Bad Thing, I think the stadium looks pretty nice from the outside

feel like its going to age reallllyyy quickly

i passed by yesterday and the screen was already broken:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A4D4TlXCUAA798K.jpg

"queso quesadilla" << c'mon, guys, at least pretend to try?

now that it exists, in general it's better for the place to do well than not, right? or is there an argument for wanting an unsuccessful arena? i'm not planning to go much (though i may be back for Neil Young, depending if i get hooked up again) but i wasn't sure what the political sentiment was now that the issue has changed from "stadium or no stadium" or "boycott or not"

there is an argument for an unsuccessful arena if its failure would mean it was turned into apartment buildings

also do you really want to see thousands of people in ugly ass brooklyn nets gear, there is an argument on an aesthetic level

i am not having an aesthetic argument re: atlantic yards

I didn't follow the anti-AY campaign that closely but I did see the doc, which left me feeling a little less hardset against the arena than I thought it would. The thing does look monstruously ugly in photos though, like it looks more like something that would be a casino in the middle of a dystopic hell-hole. Not that it would be easy to design an arena that really suits downtown brooklyn, but blown opportunity there imo.

It needed to be a little more stately and dignified -- the Camden Yards of basketball arenas.

ugh

I don't know if faux-nostalgic is the answer either but I'm going to hate it anyway, whatever form it takes. Imo big stadiums need some kind of public space/parkland around them to ease the currently brutal transition to the streets but that would take even more room they don't have/didn't leave.

Alternately something like Toledo's baseball stadium - - - not great aesthetically, but there's at least an attempt to have it become part of the city rather than a big object in a parking lot which is the typical solution. I haven't been down to Barclay's yet, mostly been seething with jealousy at friends in Pasquarelli's studio who got opening night tickets, but from photos it looks like there's some attempt to provide street-level frontage on the sides...but the thing is just too out of scale to ever feel urbanistic? Is that more or less accurate? Alexandra Lange at the New Yorker is pretty brutal: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/09/what-comes-second-the-lesson-of-the-barclays-center.html

I think it's more 'don't have' in this case

xp

I went to the cute liddle stadium where the Cyclones play and it was shocking to me how bad and unsatisfying the food was.

Nathan's and nothing but

Trance event Sensation America is coming in October 2012.

bottom line is I'm priced out of all the nice parts of brooklyn that don't take an hour to get to my job and this is just another nail in the coffin. So wah.

Weren't there supposed to be all those Gehry-designed high-rises and public walks and stuff as part of the stadium complex? I haven't followed the saga that closely but it was going to be a lot more integrated iirc? Has all of that just not been done yet b/c it wasn't the driver for the schedule?

You know what else though? I hate that it's called the Barclays Center. Barclays. What a stupid-sounding word. Citifield has such a nicer ring to it for a bank-named sports complex.

gehry stuff went away w/ the recession

Barclays, leading Brit banking institution for generations, was a linchpin in the fight to impose meaningful sanctions on South Africa in the '80s. (they were eventually persuaded after many years of activism of course)

boom

I think stadium naming right deals are always stupid and dependent on make believe ROI numbers

first residential building now scheduled to break ground in December. It's going to be right next to the footprint of the arena, and the big plaza in front of it is where another of the towers is going to be.

i saw someone with a sign about Barclay's role in the slave trade on Friday night.

Barclay's center sounds so much better than a lot of naming rights stadium. Dick's Spoting Good Park, Quicken Loans Arena, FedEx Forum

Dick's Sporting Goods played a major role in the Armenian Genocide

where are the stadiums that are actually properly integrated into the city? yankee stadium?

my only other point of reference is, like, the philadelphia ring of stadiums that just sort of sits by itself in south philly, surrounded by parking lots.

also I vaguely recall seeing the century link field rise up at the end of a city street in seattle.

at&t park is a pretty good one

yankee stadium is like "in" the city but it doesnt really feel "integrated" at all. only sports bars and memorabilia shops for blocks and blocks

fenway

That's the thing - most stadiums are not properly integrated into the city, they're just plopped into some part of the city that already looks like garbage. Not that Atlantic Center Heights/PC Richardsville is beautiful, but the abutting neighborhoods are nice.

I do remember that Coors Field felt very nicely integrated into downtown Denver, like it was really pleasant to grab food and a beer across the street and then just stroll over.

I been to yankee stadium one time

I get the impression that that was more the 70s/80s model of stadium building: "Argh, the city is falling apart, maybe if we put a stadium here it will at least bring in some crappy bars and shops"

There's been a half-hearted effort to "integrate," particularly with the baseball stadia of the last 20 years, but more often they've been integrated into tourist/shopping/biz-hotel/nightlife areas: Baltimore, Denver, Minneapolis.

stadiums generally aren't gonna be well integrated because they are enormous buildings that you can't walk through and are rarely used. the best ones are walkable from downtown but not in the center of everything.

fwiw I wholeheartedly approve of the barclays center because it gives new yorkers one more thing to complain bitterly about, also I don't have to experience its ill effects... yet

it's just sad when these things get recession-pwned and then we have to live with the results for decades -- penn station is an example