* Don't look for Nationals Park to be featured in Architectural Digest anytime soon

April 1, 2008

I heard about this Washington Post item via one of my favorite podcasts, The Tony Kornheiser Show.

The raging redhead rails against this analysis of the new edifice by WaPo architecture columnist Philip Kennicott, calling him a variety of colorful names and attacking his skills as a writer.

The opening paragraph is apparently what set him off:

The gentle slope of the land on which new Nationals Park sits has one striking architectural consequence: After a visitor passes through the main-entrance gate, the field is laid out below, a sumptuous swath of green as satisfying to something primal in the American soul as a field of gazelles is to a lion stalking the savanna.

According to Mr. Tony, this is a perfect example of “pukey” writing. He continues to lambast Kennicott as “gutless” for burying his actual criticism on the jump page. Bring it up front, dares Kornheiser; let people know how you really feel:

And so the dreary list goes on. The interior spaces, accessible only to the public that can afford more expensive seats, are covered in carpeting that looks as if it came out of a Courtyard by Marriott. The private boxes are so generic in their fittings and finish, they remind one of the inside of a recreational vehicle. Look out of one of the elevator lobbies on the top ring and you see the exposed mechanicals on the roof of the team’s corporate offices, a forest of metal junk.

Kennicott continues

Of course? From the top of the stadium, look out at the skyline, toward the Capitol Dome. At first, it seems like a happy accident that it is most visible from the cheapest seats. But now look down into the neighborhoods where public schools have become dilapidated brick bunkers, their windows covered in forbidding metal mesh. It’s enough to make you weep. Not about the stadium, which is as generic as it goes. But rather the cynical pragmatism that governs our priorities, socially and architecturally. Washington is a city where people can stare straight at the most powerful symbol of their democratic enfranchisement, and still feel absolutely powerless to change the course of our winner-takes-all society.

And it didn’t have to be this way. It’s not just a matter of misplaced priorities, which we can all argue about. It’s also a matter of inept bargaining and bad planning.

The column, which includes a slide show about the new stadium, makes the most compelling arguments when it notes the misplaced priorities when it comes to spending public bucks. Why municipalities keep succumbing to demands by the gazillionaire owners for new taxpayer-funded facilities is beyond me on a fan level. Maybe if they would pay players on a scale commensurate with their importance in the grand scale of things, they’d have “enough” of a profit. But what do I know? I have no head for such complicated issues as economics. I’m sure there’s a logical reason on the part of the baseball powers that be why regular Joes and Janes can no longer afford to take their families to a game, why tickets costs are now in the $100 range, why the teams can get away with “niche pricing” for more popular games.

When the Red Sox and As where playing in Japan, some sports pundits complained about the advertising that appeared on the uniforms and wondered how long it would be until it became part of the regular attire. (See below. That’s a “Ricoh” emblem on the helmet and a “Pepsi” patch on the sleeve.) The iconoclasts said, look at NASCAR, look at golf…Sorry, those are individual sports where an athlete needs the financial support of a patron. One would hope that the major team sports would find little need to squeeze a few hundred thousand — nickels and dimes — from corporate sponsors. But I guess tradition is a dying concept. Look at the Cubs new owner and his philosophy about Wrigley Field and other issues.

One will note that the Nationals’ ballpark has not been “formally named” yet.

By the way, there’s a very cool virtual tour of the ballpark on the WaPo Web site.

That’s enough for now. My spleen is vented. Talk amongst yourselves.

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