Friday, November 26, 2004
From a Jets Fan: NO to the Jets' New Stadium...
WP: New Jets Stadium0 comments
As disclosure, I admit to having been a New York Jets fan since they formed the franchise in 1960 as the old New York Titans.
I have suffered accordingly, through some of the worst football this side of your Pop Warner or PeeWee kid leagues.
Luckily, I've never had to endure a Jets game in person. I was too young to see a Titans game, and have not been able to afford Jets tickets for most of my adult life.
But, though I may be a loyal Jets fan, I am also a loyal Manhattanite.
My Manhattan has been ravaged by financial excess and its drugs from the mid-'80s to today, just as badly as it was ravaged by bankruptcy and its drugs in the '70s.
Woody Johnson has been a fine owner, in purely football terms. He has given the management of the team the material to compete on even footing with the rest of the league.
This is all any fan can ask.
But, Johnson has proven a less stellar New Yorker.
Having their own stadium will not make the Jets a more appealing team to me. For the majority of fans who watch on TV, it really makes no difference where they play. On the moon would be OK, too. I'm never going to see the inside of that stadium. Only those who already have season tickets or are on the impossibly long waiting list will ever see the joint.
That also shoots any argument the Jets would have of doing this to better their financial footing. They already sell out every game. There's no gain to be had there. What they have is what they get.
But I will be living around the stadium and the Olympic Park they're suggesting now, and I and all other New Yorkers will be stuck with the upheaval of the construction of this boondoggle for years -- a mess that will make the infamous Boston Dig seem like a dirt pile.
Plus we'll be asked by billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg to pay $600 million just for a base floor and a retractable roof for this monstrosity.
On top of having to pay for the subway extensions and the gentrification of the area west of Times Square.
On top of the ongoing decay of the city's infrastructure.
This all would be tolerable if this construction were intended for real New Yorkers, who have loved this city through famine, pestilence, floods, fires and Rudy Giuliani.
Along the lines of the projects of Robert Moses forty to fifty years ago. For all of their immense downsides, they were all meant for the betterment of all NYers.
But not this one. There will be nothing in this whole eventual redesigned zone that any NYer will be able to afford if they don't make a six figure income. Not an apartment; not a bagel.
The idea is to finish the job of turning New York City into another Nantucket playground for the financially privleged.
But, New Yorkers will begin fighting back. It hasn't gained its reputation as a political hotspot for no reason.
Support for this project will be made to be a political hand grenade.
The city is close to being financially unlivable as it stands now. This project will make it all the more a bauble for the white well-to-do.
At that point, Bin Laden can have it. Let him blow the whole frickin' place up.
Decent folk will have been priced out long before.
posted by Gotham 1:32 PM
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