'Security Arrested Dad': Grim Yelp Reviews of Stadiums
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Welcome to Grim Yelp Reviews, a new regular feature where we share people’s worst experiences at the worst places. This week: sportsball.
Earlier this week, the White Sox played the Orioles in an empty stadium, with Camden Yards closed to the public due to protests in Baltimore over the murder of Freddie Gray by police. The stadium was silent, broken only by the crack of the bat, the hock of the players spitting everywhere, and the choatic swirl of our own dark thoughts about the failed experiment of a just and egalitarian American society.
But even without the news peg of a horrifying extrajudicial police killing, stadiums are still quite often the site of truly depressing encounters. Think about it: you’re cramming thousands of strangers, many of them very inebriated, into the world’s tiniest seats, rooting for opposing teams, marinating in their own resentment, getting up only to wait in hours-long bathroom lines, only to give up, piss in a cup and then punch each other in the head.
It should be no surprise, then, that Grim Yelp Reviews of stadiums are really, really grim. We can divide them into two beautifully simple categories: complaints about the stadium itself (vomit, parking, more vomit), and complaints about fellow stadium-goers. (After reading several dozen reviews as research, I have just one question: Is it really that hard to sit in public for a few hours and watch sports without lobbing a racial slur at the person next to you? Is it?)
As always, to protect the names of the innocent and not-so-innocent alike, we’ve redacted the names of the businesses, as well as the identities of the Yelpers who wrote the reviews. We realize you can probably find out all of that information by employing five seconds of Google magic.
The Stadium
The cheerleaders are obviously just subtly telegraphing their discontent:
Crappy parking, crappy owner, crappy traffic… $9 beers are crazy. Cheerleaders dancing when the other team scores is wrong.
Uh, what if you’re… heavy-flowing?
For the ladies you cannot bring in even the smallest purse so if you’re on your period you better plan on missing the game because you can’t pack a tampon or a pad unless you can fit in your pocket.
Look, this is a review of FedEx Field, where the Washington Racial Slurs play, and it’s really incomplete if I don’t leave in that identifying information. I think “evil greedy jocksniffer” is a very good insult and I applaud it:
Traffic so terrible that you spend 10 minutes to move 10 feet, concessions so overpriced and foul that it’ll be the most expensive bout of diarrhea you will ever have, fans so rude and obnoxious that they chant DALLAS SUCKS (and they do) whenever the game is out of hand, and restrooms so dirty due to the fans episodes of diarrhea thanks to the food, expired beer, and watching a team whose performance will make you sick.
Nevermind the fact that you’re charged a parking fee even when you don’t park and there’s a tailgating fee to tailgate and a tailgating fine if you tailgate in a non-designated tailgating area. Last I checked, every stadium has open tailgating… Except Fed Ex Field!
So if you’re someone who loves spending insane amounts of money to watch an underachieving team of overpaid prima donnas owned by an evil greedy jocksniffer of an owner playing in a toilet bowl that is a stadium then ladies and gentleman, let me present to you your Washington Redskins at Fed Ex Field!
I… feel like there’s more to this story:
The Stadium-Goers
From a review of a concert held in a giant stadium that usually hosts sports things, this woman sounds amazing and I encourage her to Dance Her Dance:
Whenever you are surrounded by this many people, there’s always going to be one person you think needs to be banished from the Earth. Remember that Seinfeld episode about Elaine’s bad dancing? Well, she was two rows ahead of us at the show. Our entire section was seated, while she stood there doing her bizarre chicken dance and periodically jabbing her fist towards the air. Good lord. I really wanted to start throwing things at her. The poor woman in the seat next to her was blocking her face with her purse to avoid any violent arm swinging. If you were in a smaller, general admission venue, you would at least be able to relocate from this sort of distracting nonsense. Our entire section was mesmerized by this woman.
There’s so much going on here. After reading many, many other reviews written by the same person, I’m like 98 percent sure it’s a joke. The other 2 percent is delighted:
America!
I’d post a negative star for choker’s fans if I could. I just returned from the Niner vs. choker game tonight. To recap, I was called both a “faggot” and a “chink” tonight by choker’s fans. To the first comment, I replied “I’d rather be a faggot than a BITCH!” To the latter, I expressed “It’s 2009 and we have a Black president. Is it REALLY like that??” “Yeah, it’s like that,” he replied
Stay Classy [City] !!BTW- how many rings do you have?Thought so =o
I don’t think the Manson Family actually made it to many sporting events, but I appreciate the metaphor:
First it cost $25 to park your car and we drove around the parking for over 35 mins looking for a parking space, the parking attendents were a joke, they just kept waving you through with no destination, Second there were so many people drinking there that were drunk, and were drinking until they were vomiting, “Real Nice Family Enviroment” , Once inside there were 3 fights during the game in my section and people were spilling beer on my kids “Real Nice Family Enviroment”. After the game returning back to the car there were fights going on in the parking lot and my kids had a hard time stepping over the vomit that was in between the cars, “Real Nice Family Eviroment” . You are spending a huge amount of money to go to see the Charges play and this was a horrible enviroment to bring childern to, The only family that Qualcomm Stadium is suited for is the “ Manson Family” !!!
Pretty grim. Until next time, you know they show sports on TV now?
Image via Shutterstock, grim design by Jim Cooke
Contact the author at [email protected].
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