New York International Auto Show 2014

Sometimes I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm a car guy. My current circle of technorati friends (being mostly transplanted Manhattanites, though I AM A NATIVE, dammit) frowns upon such traditionally male-dominated and perceived sexist pursuits. But my wife likes cars almost as much as I do, and we go to the NY Auto Show every couple of years. The last time I seem to have written about it was in 2007 - and it's really interesting to re-read that post now! This year, after one of our current cars nearly burned down with me in it last week, we're actually in the market for something new. I was eager to check out all the models I'd been thinking about.

Under serious consideration were the Ford Mustang, Dodge Challenger, Mini Cooper, and Mazda 3. Dark horses included the Chevy Camaro, Hyundai Veloster, Hyundai Genesis Coupe, Subaru WRX, and Honda CRZ,

Yes, I realize that not all of those cars are even in the same class. What I'm looking for is just cheap fun, with maybe a little practicality thrown in. I don't really care how I get it.

The reason that 2007 post is interesting is the parallels to the 2014 show. For example, I wrote in 2007 that I was excited about the then-new Dodge Challenger. Well, here I am 7 years later:

I love the Challenger. Despite the photo at the top, it's my favorite of all the retro muscle cars, and I have always wanted one, since they were introduced. It's just the right size for me, it has just the right mix of new and old, it has good visibility, and it feels like a real car, not like a series of compromises. I mean you can get actual people in the back seat if you want. You can see out the windows. You can fit luggage or big boxes in the trunk.

This is how muscle cars really used to be in the 60's and 70's. They weren't just fast, wildly impractical cars that people used to take down to the track on weekends. I mean people really drove these things - they were actual cars, not just things to argue about 0-60 times over.

The big problem with the Challenger is the price. I can't really afford one with the options I'd want, and the base models look like rental cars. My second choice is the Mustang, which are cheaper to begin with and really not bad looking in their base config, but I'm not sure how I feel about buying a car right before a new model is introduced. Those 2015's do look nice, though...

I did try a 2014 Camaro - I've owned two Camaros in the past, after all - but goddammit it I cannot for the life of me figure out how anyone manages to drive one of these new ones. First of all, they are tremendously uncomfortable. Really small interior. Second, the windows feel like looking through a keyhole. They're tiny. I would actually be scared for my life driving one of these things on a New York highway.

I liked the interior of the Mazda 3, even if it was a little generic, but I've always been bothered by the new exterior and I think I finally figured out why:

(Not my photo.)

From the front, it looks like a big, serious car. But move just a few feet back, and it's a tiny little hatchback. It's like a mullet - all business in front, party in the back. From certain angles it's cute, from other angles it's badass, from still others it's a conservative little econobox. Nothing's consistent about the look. The front end is just cartoonishly oversized, like a caricature - now that I see it, I can't unsee it. I do like the car overall and it'd be in my top two if my wife had signed on. But she's not a fan, and given how I feel about the sheetmetal, she didn't have to try that hard to convince me to move on.

I also wrote in 2007 about how much I loved the 2008 Mini Cooper S. Well, guess what? I love the 2014 too.

The Mini is amazingly comfortable for a big guy like me. I mentioned this in 2007 as well. And its interior is unique - you either love it or hate it, but I love it. I like things that are functional but a little different, and the Mini's dash layout proves that there's plenty of room for personality without sacrificing form. It's not just different for the sake of it; it actually works, and looks neat. And it's aged really well - the all-new 2014 Mini interior doesn't look a whole lot different from what I remember from 2003 or 2007 (the speedo is centered behind the wheel now, obviously).

(Not my photo.)

The Mini's also better suited to my commute to Manhattan than a car like the Challenger or Mustang. Much as I love big American muscle cars, practicality matters too. The Mini would be easier to parallel park and I probably wouldn't feel too bad about leaving it out in the open where it's subject to bird poop. My town is just overrun with bird poop!

My dark horses were all quickly ruled out, mostly because I literally could not fit into any of them. This amazes me - it's 2014, why are mainstream cars that are all much bigger than the Mini too small for a 6'4" guy to fit in? I hit my head on the roof of both Hyundais, for example, and there was no way to lower the seat. I could barely even get into the Camaro. The WRX I didn't really even try once I realized it's a $40,000 car. Who pays that?? I'd much rather have a Challenger SRT/8 if I had that kind of money.

One thing I'll say about auto shows in general is that the older I get, the less I understand all this crowding around expensive cars you will never, ever afford, and that often won't ever even be produced. People go batshit crazy over the latest concept car that they'll never see again, or some Italian sports car that's completely unattainable. Why? There are people that go to auto shows only for this. Then there are people like me, who use the auto show like a big giant car dealer - a shopping tool. You can easily spot us - we're the ones sitting in the Scion XB's and Mazda 3's and Ford Fusions. You know, practical stuff that we might actually buy. We sort of smile and nod as we hold the doors open for each other, knowing we're kind of an odd breed at auto shows like this, where most people automatically make a beeline for the most expensive car at the show, even if it costs more than they'll make in their lifetime.

We're off to the Mini dealer this weekend.

Yankee Stadium (vs. Citi Field) - 09/20/2013

Six teams, three ballparks, one month. It's that time of year.

It's a myth that New Yorkers are in some kind of Hatfields vs. McCoys death feud when it comes to baseball teams - plenty of us like both the Mets and Yankees. I'm more of a fair weather type when it comes to the Yankees, and I do prefer pitchers to hit, but I still want the Yankees to win. They're still a home team, and they've got history.

Yankee Stadium has always been tougher for me to get to than Shea or Citi Field, though; the last time I managed it was 1996. I don't remember much about that game except that Mariano Rivera pitched the 8th, setting up John Wetteland. It was the start of Mo's career and he was only just becoming known. Back then, nobody was even talking about a new Yankee Stadium; the history at the old one made it sacrilege to even think about it.

Well, last night I got to see Rivera close out a game in his final season, at the new Yankee Stadium. It was both a nice bookend and a neat transition to the new stadium for me.

This wasn't actually my first visit to the new building - I previously took some visitors my wife and I had from Japan on an off-day stadium tour. The tour takes you through the museum, monument park, the press box and clubhouse.

Monument Park.

Babe Ruth signed baseball in the museum. They have signed baseballs from about 90% of all the players who ever played for the team. I didn't get an overview shot of the museum because it's actually really small.

Panorama from the press box. It was a rainy day.

You get to see a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, and you have the whole stadium to yourself. That said, it's a little strange walking through back alleys with no other fans around - I thought the stadium then felt kind of sterile and dead. Without all the people, any little flaws also stick out a lot more, and everything looks somehow uglier. The amount of plain concrete everywhere is a lot more apparent. I wasn't all that impressed. (The clubhouse was like the Rolls Royce of clubhouses, but most people never see that.)

Last night was the first time I got to see the stadium in its natural state - hosting a game. 41,000 fans showed up on a beautiful late summer Friday night to watch the Yanks fight for their playoff lives against the Giants. It gave me a good chance to compare the experience to Citi Field, the Mets' new stadium that opened at the same time, which I've also experienced both stuffed to the gills and more recently as a barren wasteland.

GETTING THERE
Yankee Stadium has to be a little unique in that the vast majority of people who go there get to it by public transportation. It's always been that way, and in fact it's ironically turned into a bit of a problem for the city, who helped finance the half dozen or so parking lots and garages around the stadium and are now finding the company that runs them unable to pay their rent. Nobody parks there!

If you can take the subway or Metro North, then Yankee Stadium's ridiculously easy to get to and is right next to the station. (Citi Field is just as close to the 7 line.) But if you do have to drive, it's a whole different story. Driving through the Bronx is like trying to navigate through a clogged shower pipe on a good day, not to mention the bridge tolls, not to mention the outrageous parking prices. I paid $25 to park in the furthest official lot from the stadium, almost a mile away, with a thoroughly confusing entrance and on the other side of the Metro North tracks. Citi Field parking is $20, but if you're early enough, that puts you basically at the door to the rotunda. You can pay more and get closer to Yankee Stadium, but $35 or more to park at a 3 hour baseball game is getting into the realm of highway robbery.

This is the scenic walk from the parking lot.

Apparently, roving golf gangs are a big problem near the stadium. Be careful!

EXTERIOR AND PUBLIC SPACES
Yankee Stadium and Citi Field both have an obvious front and back (not all baseball parks do). You don't have to enter at the front, but it seems assumed that most fans will. At Yankee Stadium, the front is along 161st St., where you'll find the team store, the Hard Rock Cafe, and the oddly empty "Babe Ruth Plaza" that's just a sunken hole in the ground surrounded by concrete:

The exterior is granite and limestone all the way around and has the feel of a federal government building - it's very staid and serious and looks completely unlike really any other ballpark I can think of. It is meant to invoke the pre-renovation original Yankee Stadium and it probably does a reasonable job of it. The word "stately" is appropriate. I hesitate to even call it a "ballpark" - it's too big.

It also looks more cohesive than the working class, somewhat unfinished look of Citi Field (which is beautiful in a different way and also appropriate to its team), but you wonder if you're supposed to bow your head and say a prayer before entering it. Or maybe get permission from the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Yankee Stadium's answer to Citi Field's rotunda is the "Great Hall" along 161st St. It's huge - probably the largest interior space I've seen inside a baseball park. And you're just bombarded with Yankees imagery from the moment you enter. You will never, ever forget that you're in the home of the Yankees at this stadium, and that's the way it should be. This is one thing the Mets need to learn from their crosstown rivals.

They just need to stick some stained glass in those arches for the full effect.

Looking the opposite way in the Great Hall. The Hard Rock Cafe and team store are beyond the far wall.

The Great Hall at night, from the balcony on the suites level. (just above the Hard Rock Cafe sign).

SEATS AND SIGHT LINES
We sat in the front row of section 309, which is the third deck in right field (my wife wanted to see Ichiro!), just above the electronic advertising board that goes around the stadium. There's a 400 level deck above the 300 level (it looks connected but isn't). I was kind of surprised by how high this was. It felt about like the last row of the top deck at Citi Field does - and we had two entire decks behind us! The top of the upper deck must be about like the top of Shea Stadium.

Open this up for a little better view.

The stands at Yankee Stadium are definitely a lot bigger than Citi Field - you lose perspective in photos, but it's immediately obvious in real life. Citi Field has the feel of a small market ballpark (in a good way - it's got "intimacy") whereas Yankee Stadium feels like it could host an Olympics. This isn't just apparent visually but audibly too - you can hear every crack of the bat and every umpire call from the last row of the upper deck at Citi Field, but I could not hear anything from the field whatsoever at Yankee Stadium.

I was worried about seeing the scoreboard from where we were, but it seems like the stadium's designed in such a way that you can probably see it from anywhere in the stands (except the bleachers), including the last section in the outfield. It's pretty clever how they managed that. One thing they didn't quite manage is unobstructed views of the outfield itself - in row 1, you do have the glass and railing in the way, although it's not as bad as the first row of the equivalent section at Citi Field (which can also be blocked by the stairway).

The view when sitting back normally in row 1. You can lean forward a bit and mostly get around this.

The weird thing is despite being bigger, Yankee Stadium can feel a little claustrophobic at times, almost like the game's indoors. I think it's because the design of the outfield area makes it feel like a fully enclosed stadium, even though it's not. At Citi Field, there's a little more outside world coming through in between the scoreboards, and it feels more open. Neither stadium takes any advantage at all of the city views they have, though, which is a lost opportunity. I like to be able to see out over the walls of the park.

Ah, I love that moment when the sun shines just right on the scoreboard.

On the plus side, the Yankees do not blast music out at you every 15 seconds like the Mets do. Even when they do play something (like Rivera's "Enter Sandman"), the volume is something less than ear-splitting. The Yankees are a much more traditional team - for them, baseball is meant to be played in hushed tones.

FOOD, CONCESSIONS AND TEAM STORE
We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe before the game, as we did on our earlier tour. Their prices aren't any different than at any other Hard Rock Cafe (except for beer) and come on, you're not really going to do any better for stadium food. Big difference eating there on a game day, though! We got there before 5PM and already had to wait about 30 minutes. They'll text you when your table's ready so you can wander around or go buy stuff at the team store in the meantime, which we did. I bought a hat ($15) and program ($10), and looked at some other merchandise to compare it to Citi Field - I was surprised to find that in most cases, the Yankees charge less than the Mets. For example, a numbered/named replica jersey is $135 at the Yankees store, vs. $140 at the Mets store. Yankees T-shirts cost $30, vs. $40 at the Mets store. This is all wrong!

(Mets programs are $5 cheaper, though.)

You can also stand outside and have a beer while you wait, which we also did:

Oh yeah! Local beer - by way of LaCrosse, Wisconsin. (So... not local beer.)

Honestly, I don't really have a problem with the prices the Yankees charge for anything inside the stadium. Even the concession stands seemed somewhat cheaper than at Citi Field. A regular beer was $6 (though $11 if you add the souvenir cup, which I stupidly did). At Citi Field, beer is $8.25. Ice cream was $5 for a waffle cone (which holds a lot of ice cream); at Citi Field, it's $6 for a smaller cone. It's New York, and I understand everything is going to be expensive - I just think Citi Field goes a little too far.

I remember reading that same thing about Yankee Stadium when it first opened, so maybe they've reduced their prices. Now it's Citi's turn.

I will say that on the terrace level concourse, which serves both the 300 and 400 decks, there aren't enough concession stands and the lines snake all through the pathway, which makes walking the concourse itself feel like wading through molasses. The terrace level has the feel of an old-school stadium - you're not going to find anything special to eat, and you're going to miss an entire inning looking for the one concession that sells what you want and then waiting for your ice cream and diet soda. The only beer up there seemed to be Bud and Bud Light (I gotta believe they have better beer somewhere in the stadium), and it tasted watered down. Mmmmm, watered-down Bud Light - yum. Citi Field has a big craft beer stand on the equivalent level, and just better concession food in general. You just pay more for it.

This is the concourse near our seats. Not much going on up here, just a few concessions here and there. This was well before the game, so it wasn't very crowded yet.

THE FANS
I gotta say, New York has the best sports fans of anywhere I've been. We're not rude, we pay attention to the games, we by and large do not leave early, and we're not constantly and annoyingly trying to move around like the fans at some stadiums I could name. The fans at both Yankee Stadium and Citi Field are pretty similar in all those ways, as you'd expect from teams that play in the same city.

The two differences are a) the Yankees bleacher bums, which is something the Mets don't have, and b) the national and international crowd that the Mets don't attract like the Yankees do.

There were many, many Asian fans at the game last night, as there probably always are - no doubt mostly because of Ichiro, but the people behind us were actually Chinese and we heard some Koreans too. The Yankees did have a little ceremony before the game for Ichiro to celebrate his 4,000 major league-level hits, which the team is recognizing as a real statistic, so that may have drawn a few more Japanese fans than usual.

They gave him a crystal pitcher or some such, and he gave the MLB Hall of Fame the jersey he was wearing at the time of the 4,000th hit.

The Yankees just have that international cachet that the Mets don't, which always makes me kind of sad for the Mets. The Mets need an Ichiro of their own. Daisuke Matsuzaka just doesn't put butts in seats like Ichiro does.

And probably about 30% of the stadium last night was occupied by Giants fans, which was kind of offensive to be honest. New York fans are actually way more tolerant than they're reputed to be and nobody's ever treated as unwelcome in my experience (and yes, the Giants were once a New York team... before 1957), but it's just wrong to go into another team's stadium en masse and start booing the home players, singing "GIANTS" when it's "root root root for the HOME TEAM" and chanting "Let's Go Giants" chants throughout the game. That's kind of like a houseguest that doesn't flush the toilet, clogs up your drain with hair and spills toothpaste all over your sink because he's "making himself at home".

Well, at least we kicked their asses on the field. That shut 'em up.

Overall I'd still give the nod to Citi Field, mostly because it makes the game feel more like something you're participating in rather than something you're meant to stand back and admire. It's also just a lot easier to drive to and park at, which, for better or worse, is the way a lot of people in the outer boroughs (and beyond) get around. Yankee Stadium's like your high school's statuesque prom queen who you're too intimidated to even talk to. Citi Field is like the cute girl with glasses in science class who texts you out of the blue that she has a crush on you. There may be certain ways I wish Citi'd be more like The Stadium (pricing, team branding, lower volume, putting good players on the field), but they're superficial and can be fixed if the Mets just make an effort. But Yankee Stadium will always be Yankee Stadium, like it or not.

It's a nice problem to have two world class stadiums to visit now, in any case.

Citi Field 2013 - still a home run?

Citi Field is the Mets' beautiful stadium that opened in 2009, and my hometown ballpark for my favorite team. But is it still the home run that most people initially thought it was? I first visited in 2011 and finally made it back today - read on for my thoughts on the stadium in general, and how it's aged since my last visit.

First, let's jump back a tiny bit.

Photo by Mr. Kjetil Ree. (Own work) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons

(Sorry - I've been to Shea many times but apparently never took a picture of it myself!)

Shea Stadium, which Citi Field replaced, was a lot like the Mets themselves - the butt of jokes, originally unloved, but it developed a certain charm over the years, and a lot of unique history. Most Mets fans grew a little attached to it, and we were kind of sorry to see it go. (Yeah, kind of - I'm choosing my words carefully here.) Sure, it had an upper deck that was angled about 80 degrees and topped out seemingly about the height of the Chrysler Building, but it also had a giant outfield scoreboard that made a perfect target for Darryl Strawberry and Mike Piazza. The stadium was completely one with the team that played there - it was even fully painted in the Mets colors inside and out at the end. Whenever anyone thinks of the 1969, 1973, 1986 or 2000 Mets, they think of Shea.

All four Shea infield bases are still represented in the Citi Field parking lot, and I finally found them today. We actually parked today in what was center field at Shea.

We Mets fans were still excited to get one of those beautiful new retro ballparks we'd been jealous of ever since Oriole Park at Camden Yards was first built in 1989. Citi Field was designed as a retro-classic baseball-only park that evokes Ebbets Field (former home of the Brooklyn Dodgers), but with modern amenities and great sight lines from every seat - in short, everything Shea Stadium was not.

This is the famous Jackie Robinson Rotunda, modeled off the rotunda at the Dodgers' Ebbets Field. The Mets have defended this Dodger-fest as celebrating a "great American". Technically true but kind of disingenuous. Obviously, Robinson's being celebrated because he was a baseball player - and he's a baseball player that happened to play for a different team. The problem isn't that he's being celebrated - he should be - just that he dominates what is literally the main entrance to the Mets' stadium, and he was a Dodger. Don't the Mets have any "great Americans" to celebrate?

Visually, I have always wished the arches on the exterior extended all the way down the facade (see the exterior pic above), not just the rotunda.

Off to the right in the rotunda is the Mets team store and museum, which are connected. The team store is vastly overpriced but does have an insane amount of merchandise. The museum celebrates the great teams and players of the Mets past (and this solved one of the early complaints about Citi - in fact, the Mets museum is better than the Yankees museum in their new stadium!).

It was always a beautiful park, but in 2011 it didn't feel much like the home of the Mets, with the rotunda, the black walls and trim, etc. Most of the complaints have been well documented, so I won't go too deeply into the rest of them here. I was curious to see what improvements have been made over the past couple years, though, and if any more changes might improve the beauty and atmosphere of the stadium further.

First, there's that black wall - the 16 foot "Great Wall of Flushing" that was the Mets' contrived answer to Fenway's "Green Monster" - though a lot further from home plate. In 2011:

Pretty close to the same view (solely by chance!) in 2013:

Another angle that shows the lower, closer fence:

Personally, I don't like the way they did this. They did need to do something. Classic "jewel box" parks sometimes had fences like this to compensate for irregular dimensions dictated by exterior surroundings, but Citi Field already had a spacious outfield, so the 16 foot wall was really a contrivance that was unfair to hitters. In fact, two of the four home runs we saw today would have been doubles two years ago, but the method used to install the new fence feels like a Band-Aid. It's a brand new stadium that now has two fences because they messed up the first one. It reminds me a lot of the previous Yankee Stadium, which actually had three different outfield fences - but that stadium was fifty years old when that took place, so it was a little more excusable than on a stadium that was just built.

On the plus side, it does help the atmosphere that the new fence is blue.

Interestingly, this 2013 shot is also pretty much the same view as my pano above from 2011! I guess we like this spot - at Citi, none of the seats feel too far away, and on this side you have a perfect view of the scoreboards; from this height you also get a view outside of the stadium over the Pepsi Porch. (A little tip - avoid the first few rows of any section above field level at Citi. The railing gets in the way, and there's a chance the even more intrusive stairway railings could also obstruct your view.)

We had a little adventure today too - a 56 minute rain delay:

That song the organist's playing sounds really familiar, doesn't it? Hint: it's Purple Rain.

Other than this, the weather was very nice. And I don't think it kept many people away - it was sunny before the game and after this passed. I was joking with my wife during the storm that they should have built a dome.

But you will notice how few people are in my 2013 shots, and that brings up another point, which is that I'm a little concerned the Mets aren't making enough money to do proper upkeep. A lot of the stadium was dirtier today than 100 year old Fenway Park was when my wife and I visited a couple of weeks ago, and there were certainly no ushers at Citi to wipe off our seats before we sat down like there were in Boston. Many of the seats were covered in bird poop or just general dust and dirt (from lack of use). A lot of the walkways this time were strewn with garbage and gum or were starting to visibly chip and decay. Weathering and fading of paint is already happening.

I didn't see anyone cleaning, there generally wasn't a lot of staff around and the staff there was seemed apathetic. At the concessions, one clerk was actually eating lunch as she rang me up.

Some of this may be general depression over having such a crappy team and small crowds late in the season. I hope that's all it is, and that next year the stadium will be gleaming (and crowded) again. Shea Stadium went through its ups and downs too; by the early 80's it was already kind of a dump, but in the 90's after a very slight renovation it was actually pretty nice again. The quality of the team does seem to make a big difference to how well the stadium is maintained.

There might be another related correlation too - I'm really curious to know if there's a link between building a new stadium and a decline in team quality. Both the Mets and Yankees have visibly declined in quality since building their new stadiums. The Yankees still have one of the highest payrolls in baseball, but the Mets have gone from one of the highest in the 00's to one of the lowest now, and I have to believe it's because they're having to divert a lot of their (already-lower) revenue to paying off the new stadium.

I left empty-handed from the team store because despite the great selection, prices were literally 60% higher than I could find elsewhere. One example of something I was specifically looking to buy: a Gary Carter Cooperstown Replica Jersey can be had for $89 online, but was $140 at the team store.

No line at the Shake Shack today.

Food is also a big ripoff, and in fact, one fan randomly shouted his own complaint about that to us as we were buying ice cream! $6 for an ice cream cone, $8.25 for a beer. At Blue Smoke, for two sandwiches, one order of fries and two diet Pepsis, we spent $35. Both times I've gone to Citi Field, I've expected to gorge myself on the great food they have, only to end up barely satisfying myself because of the crazy prices. (ProTip: Blue Smoke is better than Shake Shack, though it's possible there's even better food hidden away - there's a lot of "hidden" stuff to find at Citi Field.)

So here are some suggestions I have for making Citi Field better, in case any Mets brass see this:

* Reduce concession and store prices. The Mets seem to be doing all they can to make back the $800 million cost of this stadium - and I haven't even mentioned the extreme amount of advertising! The problem is they are pricing people completely out of the things they need to sell in order to make that money. I might have bought that jersey for $100 or $110, and they'd still have made a profit (I know how much clothes cost to make) - but as it is, they got nothing from me. That's a net loss because the price was too high - you only get the profit when you get a sale.

Prices for baseball in New York have gone completely out of whack lately because of the two new stadiums, and everybody knows it.

* I actually think the entire outfield could use a bit of renovation both to really correct the fences and to make the ballpark an even nicer place. First, increase the slope of the field level seats in left, center and above the "Mo's Zone" in right so they can meet flush with the new fence. Ideally, remove the Promenade seats (the upper deck) in left - no one ever sits there past opening day, and removing that entire deck would make the stadium feel a lot more open. The reduced capacity can be partially made up by the added seats fixing field level would provide (and these seats generate more revenue). That second part may be more of a wish list item, but I think the first part is actually realistic.

* Probably not gonna happen as it's strictly a vanity thing, but add arches all the way around the exterior - I feel like it looks unfinished as it is now (and always has). This doesn't seem like it'd be a huge project - the frame of the stadium appears the same all the way around, and the arches just look like inserts. See here:

Past the rotunda, the facade has kind of a 1960's bus station look without the arches. It's not going to age well.

* Maintain both the stadium itself and standards for professionalism among stadium employees, even if the team stinks. During the lean years, the stadium is the only thing the team has to entice paying customers.

* Paint some more stuff blue or orange. There's still far too much dour black - Citi Field is oddly dark in its color scheme, and it goes towards the place still not feeling "Metsy" enough. It still feels like the people running this team are ashamed of it. At the very least, they don't understand branding - every nook and cranny in this stadium should scream "Mets" - like Shea did. A lot of the black is starting to fade to grey anyway - it needs to be repainted.

Partly I think these are regular sorts of issues that either crop up or make themselves apparent with any new stadium after a few years, and I also think that Citi Field will have a different feel after it's got some history behind it (and a team worthy of it). It still feels almost like the Mets are playing away games here. Even with no further updates to the stadium, that will probably change once the team makes some memories at Citi.

It's still a fun place to be, and I like it better than the new Yankee Stadium (watch for a post on it soon!). It's also incredibly easy to get to by any mode of transportation - people really don't give it enough credit for this! Try driving to Yankee Stadium (I have!) - it's a nightmare by comparison. It takes me 20 minutes to get to Citi from my house, and getting in and out of the parking lot takes literally 30 seconds from parking spot to the highway.

Oh, and I can't complain too much about prices - our tickets today cost six bucks each. It's ironic that the one bargain at this stadium is the price of the tickets to see the game - though that's largely reflective of the quality of the team.

Of course, the Mets lost.

The East Village NYC, circa 1992

Believe it or not, there is a better reason for this blog being named Alphabet City than just a stretch at the figurative, or a play on words. I used to actually live in the East Village, and afterwards I still went to school and then worked in both the East Village and Alphabet City. But this blog is nearly ten years old, if you can believe it, and I've since moved on with my life.  And I've just never renamed it.

I've had this long-term scanning project going on that I'll probably never finish on my own. These are photos I first scanned 5 or 6 years ago now and just found again tonight, but that I actually took when I lived on 1st Avenue in 1992, just after the Tompkins Square Park Riot and just before the Squatter Riots. It's hard to find photos of the area at that time so I thought somebody might enjoy these. The neighborhood back then was a lot different than the New Jersey bar-hopping crowd is used to these days...

There was a lot more creative graffiti at that time - it wasn't just the stupid tagging that exists now. The neighborhood was so ugly in parts that a lot of landlords actually contracted stuff like this, or at least encouraged it to cover the tags.

Dig that 3D effect. That is actually crazy hard to do. I mean, from what I understand.

I used to love this dragon. Whoever painted that had some serious skills with a spray can.

But this is what most of the neighborhood looked like. I am not sure why I took this photo. The most interesting thing to me about it now is that according to the sign in the top right, something apparently cost 25 cents. Nothing costs 25 cents in New York City anymore.

6th Street. I'm sure I was trying to show all the Indian restaurants, which are mostly still there.

You could pretty much count on seeing a couple of cop cars and an ambulance close by any time you stepped out your front door in those days. This was a high crime area. It's hard to overstate that - it was really a whole different way of thinking about life, and I am glad now that I don't have to live that way anymore. This scene was common but I think I took this photo to show a friend somewhere else.

This was one of the common tags around the neighborhood - you'd see this everywhere.

The 9th precinct, as seen at that time in "NYPD Blue." (They called it the 15th, but it was the 9th.)

This was also typical of what most of the neighborhood looked like. This was the middle of the day.

This was a junkyard or something on Avenue A; I am not totally sure because I didn't go there that much even though I only lived one block over. At that time, unless you lived there, you probably didn't have much reason to venture beyond 1st Avenue, and crime got progressively worse the further east you went. I knew a guy who lived on Avenue D and he told me he got chased home pretty much every night - it was almost like a game. I always pictured it like that sped-up scene in "A Christmas Story" where Scut Farkus is chasing Ralphie home. Or like the Keystone Kops, except with bad guys instead of cops.

This was my street - 3rd St. and 1st Ave. (The corner is right behind me here.) Dance Tracks was a pretty cool indie record store that sold (wait for it) dance music.

And that was my building on the left. The Hell's Angels headquarters was more or less across the street and I could watch them out my window. The NYPD hated them and did all they could to shut them down, but they were really good neighbors. They were quiet and kept to themselves, and believe me, nobody messed with anyone on 3rd St. because that was their territory. This was the safest block in the neighborhood. I never even heard so much as a car get broken into.

Maybe I'll post more after I scan some more stuff, or find more scans I've already done and lost (I swear I remember more from this era than this).