Can we talk?
The new, improved BC Place opened Friday night, and you could cut the hype with a machete.
Esteemed colleagues in the media, especially the sports hacks, have gone literally bats over the revamp of the old dome, shrugging off the $ 563-million price tag. They’re gaga about the retractable roof and the impressive midfield jumbotron.
It didn’t hurt that the home team B.C. Lions knocked off the Edmonton Eskimos, always the best way to inaugurate a stadium.
But come on! I was there, and now I’m here.
To ask a few questions:
Why, after taxpayers coughed up nearly 600 million of their hard-earned dollars, did those taxpayers have to stand in long lines to go to the bathroom?
The retractable roof is a major engineering miracle, but was it just me, or was it quite breezy, chilly and uncomfortable? Don’t we get heat for our 560 million bucks?
Why did thirsty taxpayers have to spend $ 34 for four glasses of Bud? Seems to me PavCo should at least have bought one round on the house as a toast to the taxpayer.
And what about all the single welfare moms who can’t make ends meet to pay for a giant can opener? They don’t get any beer, but they do get toasted.
Why is the jumbotron in the middle of the roof so enormous that it dwarfs the players on the field? I could see every pore on Travis Lulay’s face on the jumbotron, but in the real-life view, the players looked like ants on the field. So everybody watched the jumbotron or one of the 1,100 other monitors. It was like watching the game in your man cave at home, except the beer and snacks at home are cheaper.
Why, for 560 million bucks plus the price of admission, were spectators relentlessly hounded by advertising? There might have been a game on, but who could tell? The celebrated jumbotron/sound system broadcast an endless stream of hype; the stadium is ringed with never-ending flashing ads; and after just about every play, the teams just stand there waiting for the home broadcast TV commercials to finish. Uh, is this football, or is it the CML, the Canadian Marketing league?
I’m not sure who is ultimately responsible for this tour de farce.
Strangely, Mayor Robertson and his family were sitting a few rows away all by themselves. No posse, no “people,” they were as exposed to the rigours of opening night as the rest of us.
I wonder if he enjoyed himself as much as I did.
Local news from metronews.ca/vancouver
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