I Missed This

A good article about attending football games. Feels sort of like a metaphor for America.

On the new Pats stadium:

The chasm between the "haves" and the "have-nots" was jarring. I've attended three Pats games in the Gillette Mausoleum and always felt like I had been transported into a David Lynch movie in which everything looked slightly the same, only it isn't even remotely the same. Throw in the dirty secret that it isn't really fun to attend an NFL game in the 21st century -- the routine of "kickoff, TV timeout, three plays, punt, TV timeout, five plays, field goal, TV timeout, kickoff, TV timeout, someone gets hurt on first down, prolonged TV timeout, three more plays, touchdown, extra point, TV timeout, kickoff, TV timeout" gets old after about 25 minutes -- and by 2006 Bug's friends were making pro-and-con lists for keeping their tickets.

So, why haven't they given them up yet?

"The tailgates," Bug says grimly. "If we could take the tailgate and replicate the camaraderie in our backyard, we'd do it."

Yikes. Even those tailgates became less enjoyable when the Patriots opened Patriot Place this season, a super-mall/mega-complex that bumped fans out of the main parking lot unless they paid an extortion fe— er, a premium fee. Team Buggy now tailgates on the other side of Route 1 for $50, crammed between a zillion other cars in a miasma of charcoal fumes. It takes them 35-40 minutes to walk from this space and find their seats inside. It takes them another 90 minutes to get home because common fans can't use the special access road for high rollers. Suddenly, it's an 11-hour commitment -- and a relatively expensive one -- to hang out and support their favorite team in an increasingly somber stadium.

Movies feel the same way. Expensive reserved seats. Long advertisements before the movie. $5 popcorn. But it's not just movies and football...it feels like everything is like this - expensive, exclusive, and inconvenient. I can't quite explain it. Maybe it was always this way, but I somehow suspect it wasn't. I can't figure how how to blame Bush for it, either.