Buh-Bye Civic Arena

I'm not sure what these people are talking about when they say we need to save and reuse the old Civic Arena. We have a brand new arena now and anything that you might use the old one for can now be moved over. The fact is there will be a lot of new things coming now that we wouldn't have seen before because the crappiness of the Civic Arena was keeping them away. Don't these people realize that to keep the old arena you will need to pay to maintain it? I've been there and I see how badly that place is falling apart.

I know we all have memories there, etc but the time has come to move on. I've heard someone say previously 'If they demolished Yankee Stadium then they can demolish the Civic Arena' and I find that to be true. All these other cities aren't keeping their old arenas around when the new ones get built. Not even ones with as much history as Yankee Stadium (FYI, I am not a Yankee fan) It just doesn't seem like a viable option. Just because it COULD be used for such and such a purpose doesn't mean that it SHOULD. Just because it might be a cool idea to do this and that and the other thing to it to make it useful doesn't mean that someone is going to pony up the money to make that happen, especially when there is going to be very little return from it.

When grandma dies we don't prop her up in the corner and use her for other purposes. We look at our old photos, remember the good times and move on. That is what we need to do here. Sure it'll be hard to see it go but something new and cool will go in its place and we'll all grow to love that just as much and maybe even more.

Consol Energy Center First Look

Today I got to see the arena for the first time. It's definitely new and nice. I don't know how happy we are with our seats. I understand the upper bowl is UP more rather than BACK the way the old arena was but it seems like we are slightly more right than we were before too and that ain't cool. Plus we're 4 rows from the very back? Where the heck did all the section E & F people go? They stuffed them all behind us? I don't think so.

Since is was a free tour everything was open to us. We got to walk around in all the clubs and stuff that we will probably never have access to during a regular event so that was neat to see that.

They also have these screens at the entrance that they call the 'Interactive Hall Of Fame'. You can pick a player and touch the screen and see all their stats and videos of their greatest plays, etc. It's all pretty neat stuff.

There is also this one machine at the end with a circle on the ground that once you touch the screen it displays a countdown. You stand in the circle and pose and it will take your picture when it hits 0. You can then type in your email and it will send it to you. That is cool. I think I am going to try and do that for every game and make a collection. Here is the pic from the tour.


All in all I was very impressed. Definitely better than the poor old, falling apart Civic Arena. I can't wait to see some games here!! :D