If ever there was a classic example of the rape of the taxpayers, this is it. The so-called “University of Phoenix Stadiumâ€.
It’s not the University of Phoenix’s stadium, they just bid to have the naming rights. This is the stadium for the Phoenix Cardinals, not that they could be bothered to pay for their own damned stadium, but instead conned the public into voting to pay for it with public funds.
It stands there like a giant canker sore on the state. I so wish that the Pink Taco restaurant had managed to get the naming rights for it.
Nonetheless, there was a home and garden show there today, and I took the family out to see it… at least it’s well air conditioned.
The home & garden show was “the usualâ€, but we got some ideas for the homestead, and that’s good.
I doubt that they run the ticketing and admission process the same as the ball games, because if they do, it must be a catastrophe. There was a huge line stretching 15-25% of the way around the stadium just waiting to get to the tent (which at least had misters) which then wound you up and down 5 or 6 times before you could go to a box office ticketing window.
The tickets were bar-coded and when we went to the gate, they used portable scanners to scan the tickets… which took a ridiculous amount of time, the people were beginning to back up just because people could purchase and receive tickets faster than they could scan them. What’s wrong with ripping the bottom off the ticket? No doubt this is an example of some numb nuts selling technology to somebody because they thought it was cool.
Inside this model of modern stadium architecture looked exactly like… a plain old stadium. The only cool part, and it really is cool is the grass field.
Artificial grass is, of course, completely horrid to play sports on, but a necessary evil in many indoor stadiums. An indoor stadium is essential in Phoenix, where daytime temperatures regularly tip towards 115º in the summer. This stadium has an innovative solution: the entire grass field is basically on a huge train car, and one side of the stadium opens up to allow the field to be moved outside into the sunshine between games.
It also allows things like this home & garden show to be placed on the cement floor during the off season. Well, public funds paid for it, I felt I at least deserved to see it once.
