SneakerPimp53
Becoming X
We're discussion your opinions, not objective facts. It's necessary to address those opinions and who they belong to, and I'm still waiting for an example of a product that was replaced by something inferior for "centuries" only to have the original be brought back.
Some people feel that way about the civil rights movement, can't please everyone after all. A person is always free to vote with his or her feet, but obviously they don't feel strongly enough to stop attending major league sporting events. So once again we arrive at the reality it's just nostalgia.
Until some critical part of the structure gives way and thousands of people are killed or injured. How many lives are worth the cost of preserving old buildings for the sake of it?
Everything under the sun ages, and there comes a point where it needs to be replaced. Doesn't matter how well built it was.
I know legions of people from the Bay area that didn't go to games at the Stick because of the wind, myself included. The original was a terrible venue for all sorts of reasons. Actually, I can't think of a single way the Stick was better than its replacement.
If you actually look the number of seats was increased by a fair amount during this period. Sure, they wanted to meet the new demand for football. In an efficient and capitalist way: multi-purpose stadiums.
Considering how quickly the NFL replaced MLB as the number one entertainment sports league in the US they were wise to want to accommodate football. I'm sure there were baseball minorities that were upset, but the reality there is it had nothing to do with stadiums and everything to do with baseball loosing it's prime position to football. The new multi-purpose stadiums just became a symbolic outgrowth that baseball's heyday was at an end. So once again, we arrive at the reality that the issue is nostalgia.
It's a combination of factors: some of it is the multi-purposes weren't great for football or baseball, and a good chunk of it is the cash rich NFL wants (and can demand) venues that are football specific.
There is a lot of money to be made in the boxes, and when a stadium doesn't have any boxes, or too few, it puts the team at a competitive disadvantage. Of course the general seating has also grown as well, Jerry Jones' new baby is the direction that new stadiums will head. But there's far more to it than that. The experience the fan expects is radically different. When I was a kid you could get hot dogs, those terrible nachos with the fake cheese, and maybe some kind of crappy microwave pizza. New stadiums are set up to offer fans numerous concessions choices of quality products. Older stadiums simply don't have the facilities to accommodate this demand.
However, there are more seats in the nosebleed sections now. Even those it is wikipedia I don't doubt for a second that the cheap seats are a little further away from the field now to accommodate the luxury boxes. But if the teams can't make money from the luxury boxes those costs will be passed on to the general seating. So would you rather have the luxury boxes and cheap seats still available, or just have absolutely no affordable seating?
Traditionally it was a poor quality hot dog and a cheap beer. Fans today want more options than that, and it requires facilities set up to provide that. MLB attendance has been in decline for awhile now. The fact we're in the middle of a global recession that has left people a lot less entertainment money isn't helping. Stadium concessions are a huge profit center, and were always overpriced. Just the reality of what happens when you have a captive market. People just notice the high prices more now because of the recession. It's a little easier to splurge on overpriced hot dogs when you aren't paying for them with unemployment insurance.
Then stop presenting your personal opinions as facts.
No it's not.
I hate to break it to you, but when you tear something down and rebuild it, it stops being whatever it used to be just the same. It's now just another new stadium because the new Solider Field isn't a recreation of the previous incarnations. It's just a new stadium that happens to be built on the site of a former stadium. Which if that works for the people of Chicago then great for them. That doesn't work for every city. Holding on to outmoded structures for the sake of nostalgia is pointless and counter-productive.
Building a stadium that costs hundreds of millions, or even a billion like Jerry Jones' new beast, is hardily a hastily made decision. Far more often than not stadiums are in need of replacement years, if not decades, before they are actually replaced. The interests of the average fan have to be balanced with the interests of everyone else, that's just the way the world works. The average fan has two choices: see the benefits of a new stadium for the team/city/region, or choose to be overly nostalgic and view the whole thing as a big middle finger.
They didn't loose the neighborhood hardware store to Wal-Mart's three aisles of hardware. They lost it to the Home Depot and the Lowes' of the world that they chose to shop at freely (as a funny side note Lowes' started out as a neighborhood hardware store). They choose to shop there after the local hardware store didn't have what they needed, or was 20 percent more expensive on the same items. Then when it's gone, and only after it's gone, do people start waxing nostalgic and remembering going down there and getting supplies for their treehouses when they were 10. In doing so they automatically forget all the reasons they started shopping at the Home Depot instead of the neighborhood hardware store.
I fail to see what is lost when a business model is replaced by a model that meets the same needs in a better fashion. Viewed objectively that's all that is taking place: the better big box model is replacing small local independent stores that operate inefficiently. It's only an issue because people have nostalgic memories tied up in some of the stores that are closing. Change is just a part of life, one that we all must learn to embrace.
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