11/21/24
September 18, 2009
New York Times Critic Pans Cowboys Stadium: In a piece that doesn't give nearly enough attention to Telemanjaro, Nicolai Ouroussoff, the architecture critic for the New York Times, reviews the new Cowboys Stadium. "[I]ts enormous retractable roof, acres of parking and cavernous interiors are straight out of Eisenhower's America, with its embrace of car culture and a grandiose, bigger-is-better mentality. The result is a somewhat crude reworking of old ideas, one that looks especially unoriginal when compared with the sophisticated and often dazzling stadiums that have been built in Europe and the Far East over the last few years." Ouroussoff, who describes more in a video that illustrates the components of the design, wrote earlier this year that the new Yankees and Mets ballparks were both "a disappointment to students of architecture."
This new stadium is staggeringly awesome when you see it in person -- both good awesome and bad awesome. The place is so large it destroys your sense of scale. I can see why an architecture critic would not like it, but sports fans who go anywhere within 300 miles of DFW must make a pilgrimage or renounce sports fandom entirely.
Remember watching the last Summer Olympics and seeing the stunning amount of money, time and engineering the Chinese devoted to the stadiums and the spectacle? Selling us cut-rate consumer goods and loaning us money has worked out pretty well for them.
Cowboys Stadium is so monstrously huge you'd think the Chinese owned it. I don't know how Jerry Jones managed to create something of that magnitude with U.S. dollars in this economy.
posted by rcade at 02:14 PM on September 18, 2009
Seeing the model rotate in the video, I like the overall design. I like that the basic germ of the design is a football (or appears to be so).
If that video display ever lets go during a cattle judging event, it'll be the Jonestron Massacre Chapter Two.
posted by beaverboard at 02:31 PM on September 18, 2009
I'm not sure where I saw this originally (possibly here), but check out 1:50 of this video. Can you imagine showing up ticket-in-hand, to THAT??
posted by inigo2 at 02:47 PM on September 18, 2009
wow. That whole section was bad...what were they thinking? The prices for those have to be like $5, just for those who want the atmosphere, but will be bringing their own TV to watch.
posted by bdaddy at 03:10 PM on September 18, 2009
reminds me of "Wings".
Helen: "What's OBSVU mean?"
Joe: "That's Latin for 'really good seat'"
posted by bdaddy at 03:12 PM on September 18, 2009
wow. That whole section was bad...what were they thinking? The prices for those have to be like $5, just for those who want the atmosphere, but will be bringing their own TV to watch.
Yeah, no kidding. And I would like to see this monument to sport. But I can't help thinking, isn't everyone at that stadium already just watching it on TV? It's like TV with massive surroundsound. Even the little TV screens at other stadia seem to attract the full time attention of half the audience. This phenomenon will swallow itself and then the screen can be put where the field is and the players sent to the green screen. Why not?
posted by rumple at 05:26 PM on September 18, 2009
Also, corporate booths on the sidelines? I just threw up in my mouth some. I mean, FFS, I guess it is good that some corporate hacks finally figured out that the booth is a sucky place to watch most games if you're a sports fan. But to put the jackasses right on the sidelines...just seems like creeping capitalism to me I guess.
posted by rumple at 05:45 PM on September 18, 2009
Those seats are unbelievably shitty, and it may be ugly and sterile, but holy fuckshit, that thing is impressive. A monument to capitalism perhaps, but goddamn.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 09:37 PM on September 18, 2009
Dang Weedy. Lay off the smoke and watch your language. My 11 year old son reads this too. But it is pretty durn guady. Mister Jones is gonna try to break the NFL attendence record Sunday with about 104,000 folks. He can just about pay the place off with about 10 of those crowds ;-)
posted by kerrycindy at 10:31 PM on September 18, 2009
Apologies to kerrycindy. Not intending to offend.
However, to your son, Those seats are indeed what we adults call shitty. The rest of it you can ignore.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 01:44 AM on September 19, 2009
Goddamnit Weedy, if I told you once.
posted by yerfatma at 10:23 AM on September 19, 2009
Stop using that word for the TV screen, please. It's not going to happen.
posted by The_Special_Juan at 11:49 AM on September 19, 2009
Stop using that word for the TV screen, please. It's not going to happen.
/gets my popcorn ready, and sits back to watch.
posted by tommybiden at 12:04 PM on September 19, 2009
It's not going to happen.
It already is. There's even a guy who coined the name independently.
There's some competition from Jerrytron (not bad) and Godzillatron (already used elsewhere), but Telemanjaro has escaped into the wild.
"Needs a better name. The best i've seen so far is Telemanjaro." -- commenter on Dallas Cowboys Blog at the Dallas Morning News
posted by rcade at 12:57 PM on September 19, 2009
More like a monument to socialism/statism given that it's state owned.
posted by aerotive at 12:54 AM on September 22, 2009
Cowboys Stadium was primarily funded by the city of Arlington -- which provided $933 million in bonds and raised its taxes -- but is privately owned. So it's a monument to socialism that enriches an individual capitalist.
posted by rcade at 07:24 AM on September 22, 2009
"[I]ts enormous retractable roof, acres of parking and cavernous interiors are straight out of Eisenhower's America, with its embrace of car culture and a grandiose, bigger-is-better mentality.
Thanks for pointin' out the obvious, komrade Ouroussoff, but that's how we do things in the Lone Star State. If I recall, the same things were said about Texas Stadium when it first opened.
1.2 billion just doesn't go as far as it used to.