I will be sharing this with all my disgruntled sports pals. A couple of times in my life I've been invited to a luxury box or something like The Truss without having to pay. Lucky me! And....boooooring.  Why would you go to a ballpark to sit indoors? These places truly blow. Best time I've had attending sports was circa 2000, $4 dollar ticket, $1 dog night at the long gone Metrodome in Minneapolis. Me and my friends took advantage many times. Outfield, pretty lousy seats, but you were surrounded by FANS. And there was a night when the spunky Twins of that era picked apart the Yankees and all of us in the outfield were suddenly friends. And, kids, DO NOT do the following, but... a number of those $1 dogs were purchased directly for the purpose of throwing them at the Yankees. That unfortunately put an end to $1 dog night, but I'm pretty sure everyone there at that game would agree it was worth it. 

This is a good read and I will also share. Something I've thought about a lot recently but didn't put it into these terms. A sort of creep related to this is the decade-old trend of rock concerts in baseball parks. I used to be able to see the same band, in a rock venue and pay rock venue prices for things like beer ($8 nowadays, maybe). Now, same band at Wrigley, and a beer is like $24. Not cool.

Semi-related, due to work, I attended the GP in Las Vegas last year and spent one night (qualifying) in the McLaren paddock. That experience ruined me forever, but the positive is that no luxury experience at any event can come close (I imagine) to the sheer decadence of that scene. So I will not be seeking it out or paying for it...

I think about this a lot. I hate spending a lot of money to have fun; it goes against my frugal working-class upbringing. 

Last night, waiting at the train station, I helped a young man fill out paperwork - he'd just gotten his first "real" job and was glowing with joy and pride. He talked about being at the station, watching young people come off the train for a night in the city, "having the time of their lives". He wished that could be him, and now he had the chance to live that life, but also he wanted to save up for a house and felt that it would be irresponsible to party. 

I guess he thought that since I'm a generation older I'd have an answer. I didn't know what to tell him - those kids might be running up credit card debt? You have to live your own life? There's always someone with more money than you? But a good response might have been that there are always was to have fun without spending a lot of money, or there should be. 

This piece rhymes with one of my all-time favorite magazine pieces, written by Tom Junod: The Water-Park Scandal and Two Americas in the Raw: Are We a Nation of Line-Cutters, or Are We the Line? (archive link).

But here’s the thing about waiting in line at Whitewater, here’s the lesson that you learn from the spectacle of America in the raw: It works. When my daughter gapes and marvels, I tell her that human beings come in all shapes and sizes, and it’s an explanation that seems to satisfy her because it’s inescapable. When I hear the censorious voice in my head saying that the woman in front of me shouldn’t be wearing that bikini, I go on to draw the only conclusion that the evidence all around me permits: that no one should, and that therefore everyone can. Going to Whitewater is like bathing in the Ganges, with chlorine and funnel cakes — and also with the elemental difference that not everyone is poor, lowly, untouchable, an outcast. Rather, everyone is quite simply American, and so the line slouches and stumbles forward, the very definition of a mixed blessing — a blessing mixed black and white, rich and poor, slovenly and buff, and so on down the line. It can be slow going, it can be frustrating, but people have no choice to make the best of it, so they talk to one another, they gripe amusingly, they laugh, they compromise, they endure, and they scream when they finally go down a water slide whose initial pitch approaches 90 degrees. No one cuts, or tries to; the line works because for all its inherent and exhibitionistic imperfections it keeps its promise of equal access, and, by God, it moves.

My first taste of in-person baseball fandom was watching games in the old Exhibition Stadium bleachers during the summer of 1985, the first year the Toronto Blue Jays were truly good. That was also the year George Brett broke our hearts, but let's not go there. Anyway if memory serves, that ticket cost $3. It might even have been $2. Either way, the present day post-inflation equivalent would be what... $7? $8? 

The fans in those seats knew their baseball, and it was a real education to listen to them kibitz and cheer. Doubt you'd get that same experience in the recently rebranded West Jet Flight Deck outfield seats.  

This sort of dovetails with your post a few months ago, about "subscription-tiered citizenship." I think about all the bands I saw growing up, and how I was able to afford tickets on my part-time, grocery store salary. The experience of going to those shows -- and sharing them with other people -- really molded me. Now, I try to buy tickets to a show for my daughter, and I can't even get in the queue; it's totally rigged against you if you don't have the right credit card, or the right connection or whatever. Granted, there are many DIY punk rock shows that are still affordable, but that's not her bag, and it makes me sad that she can't enjoy seeing those performers surrounded by people that also love them. 

Sort of related to the observations at the end of this article, I find that I don't care for most fancy restaurants. There is like a bell curve for fanciness for me. I can love a dump if it has great food, I can enjoy "nice" restaurants if they whole thing isn't too pretentious, but there is a line that gets crossed where I don't care how good the food is, the experience starts to be UNenjoyable. Where I can't be myself because the expense makes everyone feel like they have to pretend to be the Monopoly Guy. A great, fun waiter/waitress can total destroy the barrier between the pretentious, stuffy, "Jeeves" experience and a great meal, but "exclusive" experiences are normally NOT great for me. I tend to notice how it takes me away from the fun group experience which is way better. I typically will have a more enjoyable evening at the place with rough edges (but still great food ;)

I saw a clip of the president of the American Outlaws (the largest supporter group in the US) saying that it's good that high ticket prices for the world cup keep out some people, and I thought "What the holy f###?".

Right at the leadership of the group purported to represent the most enthusiastic US fans, leadership celebrating the exclusion of the wrong (poor) kind of fans. 

- Proud supporter of my local USL2 team

https://www.uslleaguetwo.com/league-teams