Does the Rose Garden as an arena, and home to your team mean anything to you yet? Do you think it ever will? I grew up in Portland going to Winterhawk and PTB games at the MC and it felt like it meant more. It felt like our place. (I live in LA now and have for too many years) When I'm home I always try to get the a Zurz game and the arena just doesn't mean anything to me. It might as well be in any city in the country. It's just a cookie cutter arena and has no real "Portland" feel to it. It might as well be in Denver or Atlanta or Detroit. I realize it may be an age thing (Childhood/teenage/young adult memories etc) and that maybe those of you that live in PDX might have a much different opinion. Esp the young-ens. But I'm interested in people comments re: the Rose Garden as an arena and what it means to you. It just doesn't illicit the same feelings for me as the MC and even when I talk to my friends back home my family etc, nobody seems to have any strong feelings towards the RG. Just wondering like
I was 9 when the RG openeed. I went to some games at the MC but most of them were losses. Most of my memories were at the RG.
I am a transplant from the east and I spent a lot of time in Veterans Stadium in Philly watching the Phillies play. Even though it was a cookie cutter concrete craphole I still felt an attachment to it since I spent so much time there as a kid. So, I'm sure there's an element of that. As an adult, I have been in some great baseball stadiums. It seems like baseball (and football) do a much better job than basketball of creating unique, stadium specific feels, that are different from city to city. I'm not sure if it's the nature of closed stadiums or if I just haven't visited the best basketball venues. It takes something really out of the ordinary, like MC, to even make me notice a basketball arena. I would have loved to visit the old Boston Garden as another example...the Rose Garden does not have that unique feel to me at all. Go BLA!
never really went to Blazers games as a kid at the MC. always watched on TV. I live in LA too...to me, the Rose Garden definitely feels like "home". There are decorations, blazers history and a theme. It feels good there...I always randomly bump into someone I know when I go back to Portland and watch a game. Then the whole riding the max in and out of the game is great. Fuck the cold, bland Staples Center which actually feels like you're in an office supply store.
Never got to see a game in the MC. Couldn't afford it growing up. Saw lots of WinterHawk games (especially the 83 Memorial Cup run) I agree that there's not a ton of character in the concourses. I spend a decent amount of time in SafeCo and like that you can see the game while getting a beer and a dog. I like the suites at the RG.
HA HA!! I'm not sure I totally agree though. I think Staples does feel like L.A. Especially with the surrounding area down there now. Although maybe that proves your point
I was actually there for a game last weekend (Clippers vs. Spurs), and it was actually pretty good now that they put LA Live there. But before that, when it was first built, it was fucking ghetto. Inside Staples Center sucks ass though. Shitty ass TV screens, hard to find stats, etc. I can't believe they had the Royal Room in there....a "club" up in the staples.
That probably has a lot to do with it. Most of the Arenas built from the 90's on all look the same on tv for the most part other than the different colored paint on the floor thanks to 2 or 3 companies building all of them. You used to get the unique feel even watching TV games what arena they were in. I just sort of wish the blazers would have done one thing that really made it stand out. Like a strange color playing surface or sumink. Some sort of vintage wood color. Might look more like the NW. Give it some flavor.
I will take that as a compliment. I didn't have anything to say about the Rose Garden feeling like home though, so I said nothing.
I don't know if the MC was any more "Portland" than the Rose Garden is now, but it was built in a different age with a different relationship with the team. It was only 12,888 (w/SRO), but that place SHOOK during a game, perhaps because it wasn't as well built. It was much more intimate, without a lot of other distractions (fancy scoreboard, dancers, booming PA system, etc.). You sat by the same people game after game. And, of course, the summit was reached in that building on June 5, 1977. That alone makes it an awfully special place. The nearest personal parallel I can think of is RFK vs. FedEx Field with the Redskins. RFK was 52K and the waiting list was 25 years long. FedEx is 94K and you can get a seat any time. However, the magic is gone. It just doesn't have the same feel. I'm not saying the RG can't ever be a special place, but it's going to need to have the Blazers manufacture the same kind of memories in that place as they did in the Glass Palace.
The Glass Palace was loud and raucous, with working class fans who expressed their Blazermania. The RG is a yuppie club for rude transplanted Californicators who have little genuine interest in the Blazers unless they're winning. It's not the wrapper, it's what's inside.
