Rafi Kohan - The Arena: Inside the Tailgating, Ticket-Scalping, Mascot-Racing, Dubiously Funded, and Possibly Haunted Monuments of American Sport

Copyright 2017 by Rafi Kohan

All rights reserved
First Edition

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact W. W. Norton Special Sales at specialsales@wwnorton.com or 800-233-4830

Book design by Daniel Lagin
Production manager: Anna Oler
JACKET DESIGN BY STEVE ATTARDO
JACKET PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN MOORE / GETTY IMAGES

ISBN 978-1-63149-127-6

ISBN 978-1-63149-128-3 (e-book)

Liveright Publishing Corporation
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS

For Arielle, my home-field advantage

P icture a city, any city. Imagine a TV camera scanning the horizon. There are the buildingsthe high-rises, the landmarksall framed by the regions geographic signatures: its mountains, its bodies of water, its deserts. We know where we are. Now imagine another overhead shot, taken from some aerial advantage, from a satellite or a blimp. Slowly, we focus on a particular building. Its round or square or even ovaloid.

Oh, yes. We know where we are.

Theres the grassy expanse, the bustling sidelines, the athletes who squirm with nervous energy beneath an exploding fireworks display. Nearby, cheerleaders bleat in bursts of faithful incoherence, smiling eagerly at a face-painted and beer-brave crowd.

Some fans wander the concourses, examining the concession stands, weighing their options, deciding if they really want a hamburger wrapped in a pizza topped with bacon. (They do.)

Elsewhere, beneath the surface, an operations manager monitors the proceedings, making sure the smoke machines, pyro turbines, and giant American flags are escorted on and off the field.

The grounds crew fixes a divot.

A fan leaps the guardrail, races onto the playing turf, is chased and whisked away by security.

The crowd goes wild.

The national broadcast comes back from commercial break.

It is almost game time.

__________

For one year, from January 2015 to February 2016, I traveled the United States visiting sports stadiumsall manner of arenas, domes, ballparks, and football-specific pleasure palaces ( ahem , AT&T Stadium)for the purpose of writing a book, this book. The idea was to go beyond the ball games and architectural blueprints to explore the inner workings of these steel and concrete structures that hover over our towns, imposing their will on landscapes and skylines, to better understand our relationship to thempsychologically, economically, politically, culturally, historicallyas individuals, as cities, and as a society.

It seems fair to warn you now that this isnt a book about sports; its more like a book around sports. While reporting, I didnt care about wins and losses. I didnt hang out in locker rooms, hobnob with coaches, track statistics, or build a case for advanced analytics. Instead, I spent my time in the concourses and service tunnels, the parking lots and production booths, the groundskeeper clubhouses, sprawling concession warehouses, and cramped mascot rooms, as well as countless other corners of American stadiums that arent necessarily hidden but are almost assuredly unseen.

When talking about sports and fandom, the personal is unavoidable. For many Americans, stadiums serve as storage units for emotional memory, as touch points of interpersonal connection. They are where we take our sons and daughters, where traditions and allegiances are passed down like heirlooms, and where tailgates become family reunions. Stadiums are empty vessels that transform into volatile petri dishes. They are concrete monuments and fluid social spaces. And on game days, they gather us together.

In an era that has become both highly individualized and impenetrably siloed, with on-demand everything, sports venues serve as one of the last places in which to experience a live, collective cultural event. But even that aspect is changing. There is a trend within stadiums toward neighborhoodsluxury clubs, tequila bars, kids areas, celeb-chef-driven restaurantsthat offer something for everyone, a product mix. As Joe Spear of the sports architecture firm Populous remembers one client telling him, I dont want ten thousand of anything. In this way, even our cultural common areas are becoming subject to societys splintering. But we havent totally drifted apart yet. Communalism can be a hard habit to kick.

This book attempts to stitch together a variety of disparate stadium experiencesof the fans and the functionaries who populate our most loved and loathed arenasinto a kind of tapestry. Each chapter is meant to stand on its own, but together they should also provide a patchwork view into the microcosmic, compartmentalized, and often unconsidered worlds of modern American stadiums, highlighting idiosyncrasies and commonalities alike. Because while every stadium experience is different, they are also all one. This is their composite picture.

B y the time I meet the Mayor of Lambeau Field, hes already had a few. Then again, who in this townin and around this facilityon this dayhas not? It is the 2015 home opener for the Green Bay Packers, the NFLs most successful franchise, and the Sunday-night affair is as good an excuse as any for a town that never needs one (all 104,057 of them) to throw back cold beers and grill up some brats.

Many have been tailgating since the team-run parking lots opened, five hours before the 8:25 p.m. kickoff. Others, in unaffiliated parking areas, have been at it since six a.m., while somethe RV crowdhave been holding a hops-and-malt vigil in the former Kmart lot, just off Lombardi Avenue, since Friday. (On game days, the whole town turns into a massive makeshift parking lot, with vehicles covering every available blade of grass on nearby front lawns.) How long the Mayor presided over his own tailgate, how many hours or days before entering the stadium, is unclear. But it doesnt seem to matter. Time is a flat circle, after all, like a crushed wheel of cheese.

I spot the Mayor, who bears a passing resemblance to Breaking but is unquestionably the most historic. There is nothing flashy here, hardly any advertising visible around the bowl, which is painted in a green and gold color scheme, an almost uniform sartorial choice for crowd members as well (although an usher tells me that will change come deer-hunting season, when bright orange infiltrates the stands).

The Mayorwhose position is as unofficial as it is unelectedworks at the post office when not at the game, but I am always the Mayor, he assures me. Wearing a yellow polyurethane foam top hat made to look like cheese, a gold sash covered with Packers patches, a yellow-shirt-and-Packers-tie combo, and a green sport coatpicture Willy Wonka if the candy magnate had a lactose fetish instead of a sweet tooththe Mayor pats his pockets furiously, scrunching his goateed face in officious consternation. My cards, he says, turning to his adult son, Rob, on his way back from a beer and nachos run. You maybe gave them all out?