I just saw the Clout City post about Soldier Field

Hmmm I beat him to Soldier Field by about two years. I had written about it briefly sometime around Labor Day 2005.

I assume that he was actually in the seats where I actually had the luxury of being in a box. I can't say much about the bathrooms. I can at least compare and contrast the Soldier Field of old to the more modern arena. The different is between night and day.

I think the new Soldier Field is a better place to watch a football game and yes I mean from the seats not from a box. Especially if you're on the first level of seating along the side of the field. I only know because I was with my mom and some other friend and they talked to some other people who didn't have the priviledge of sitting in the box.

BTW, let me mention that the Chicago Football Classic the game I went to two years ago will being play this weekend so if the Bears aren't working out for you watch some college football. Two teams from an Historically Black College. I assure you it will be interesting.

Anyway, Ben Joravsky gave me more of a perspective from a fan who isn't likely to sit in a box to watch a game. Whether we're talking about the Bears in preseason, regular season, or the playoffs. Or maybe not the Bears maybe college football from HBCUs or the more mainstream college football programs. He went to the game by having a ticket handed to him and the team he saw the Bears playing, the Cleveland Browns, weren't exactly a hot ticket on whatever day he saw the Bears...

It was the first time I'd seen a game at the "new" Soldier Field, which just goes to show how little I get out. It opened in 2003.

But I figured it was a good chance to see how my tax dollars were spent. Remember, the stadium was renovated with about $360 million in tax dollars. True, it came out of the hotel-motel tax. But as the boys in the budget office never tire of telling me, tax revenue all goes into one big pot. So money spent on Soldier Field is money that might have been spent on something else, like buying books and computers for our cash-starved schools.

The game itself was pretty lousy. The Bears lost and looked bad doing so. The halftime show consisted of a cheesy act featuring Frisbee-catching dogs.

By the third quarter my main reason for staying was to check out the bathrooms. If you recall, one of the city's most compelling reason for spending all that public money rebuilding the joint -- the so-called public benefit, as they say -- was that they needed more bathrooms for the fans. Especially the women.

Well, sorry to report, the news on the bathroom front was bleak. Lines stretched outside most of the women's restrooms all night. And the men's room I visited was gross. Sure, they got rid of the old troughs. But a lot of Bears fans apparently don't believe in flushing toilets and have lousy aim.

The last paragraph of this post became a slam against Mayor Daley...

...I guess as long as Bears fans are happy, I'm happy for them. Like all the Chicagoans who keep on electing Mayor Daley, they expect so little, they're grateful for whatever they get.

OUCH!!!

You know the Bears organization and the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago were going back and forth for years over where the Bears were gonna play.

For instance the proposals I know of involved the Bears playing in a domed stadium. That stadium will be referred here as the McDome. So called because it was to be located not too far away from the McCormick place. And let me clarify that the McDome name was commonly used in the press. That and the fact that I'm unaware of any other names.

Another plan had the Bears playing in a stadium in Northwest Indiana. It might have actually been in Gary, I don't remember. That fell thru because it probably would have involved a lot of taxes to build this football stadium and the residents in Indiana were like hell no to that.

Another proposal was to put a retractable dome over Soldier Field. I don't think I would've cared for that. I had no problem with a new stadium for Bears fans. The only thing was the games wouldn't be on the lakefront anymore, unless they could find some land for that.

It reminds me that in the event the Bears were to have left Soldier Field for another profitable football venue, that place would have been more of a public stadium. I won't say it would've been free to the public, let's just say it would've gone back to what it used to be years ago. It was more of an open place than it was with the Bears there. No fancy seats just simple benches. It was adequate before someone decided to make it into a football venue.


These days there's a modern stadium built into an old stadium where the colonades should reign supreme but now it's the bowl of a more modern stadium towering over those columns. That's one reason I didn't like the current design was for exactly that reason. Besides I still remember when Monday Night Football emanated from Soldier Field the commentators maybe an Al Michaels or a Frank Gifford referring to the columns of Soldier Field said, "Welcome to Rome."


Heh, I liked that, but it's too bad that those features of Soldier Field won't be prominent anymore.