Longtime Tribune douchebag Blair Kamin, the man who predicted gloom and doom for the city when the Bears decided to make new Soldier Field look like a cross between a giant ashtray and a spaceship that had crashed the lakefront, is at it again.
Today, his target is the big-assed Toyota sign the Cubs are planning to erect (snicker) just to the left of Al Yellon in the left field bleachers.
The Cubs are putting up the sign for two reasons.
1) Because the family who own the “Budweiser” house sold that ad space to the Horseshoe Casino and the Cubs want to block the view of it.
2) (Most importantly) because Toyota wants to give the Cubs $2.5 million just to hang up a sign.
According to Kamin this is an affront to good taste, common sense, and architectural aesthetics.
I’ve seen the ties Kamin wears, aesthetics are not his area of expertise.
While I understand and agree that one of the cool things about Wrigley Field is the lack of advertising. It just gives the place a classy, traditional look. That lasts about thirty seconds before some shirtless 270 pounder from Ottumwa, Iowa throws up on herself on her way to the bleachers.
Kamin says, basically, that the Cubs proved they don’t need the money because they had a big payroll last year, they have big attendance figures every year and they suck.
Well, Blair, the Tribune is laying off people left and right, and yet they are still paying some dope to be the architecture critic. So there’s no telling people what to do with their money, I guess.
Is the Toyota sign something to gaze at fondly during games? No. But I’m for the Ricketts family increasing revenue as much and as often as they want until they prove they don’t know what to do with it. I don’t care if they make the players wear sandwich boards out onto the field during games (Marlon Byrd would likely eat his).
Where the Chicago hysterical society gets off telling an outdoor amusement park where it can put an ad, is beyond me. (Originally I typed that “outdoor bemusement park” which fits even better.)
Blair Kamin can go on as much as he wants about how Wrigley is horizontal and this sign is vertical and the wrong color and blah, blah, blah. It’s a good thing I don’t own the Cubs then, because if a bunch of stuffed shirt, psuedo-conservationalists told me I couldn’t put that sign up, I’d paint it right on the front of the beloved hand operated scoreboard.
Besides, I kind of like the idea of a once proud, now shamed, automaker trying to rehab its image by aligning itself with the Cubs. Maybe that sudden acceleration stuff will rub off on Alfonso Soriano.
Maybe if we put up a Toyota sign we’ll be unstoppable? be dum psssssssssh
wait, with your opening line are you insinuating the saucer on the lake was a good idea???
building the mccaskeys a stadium that has less seats for bears fans to watch games, stole our hard earned dollars to double their net worth without any risk or investment on their part, increased our tax bill and deficit, lost chicago the olympic bid because you can no longer play anything but football and music at soldier field, and can only host non-bear events in a 5 month window of non-winter months in chicago, was among the biggest frauds ever committed against the people of chicago. say it so, joe, err andy. someone please get me jerral jones on the phone.
The only problem I see is that the sign only barely blocks the view of the Horseshoe Building in the mock-ups I’ve seen. I mean, if you’re going to pull an Eff You move, then go the full nine and pull an Eff You move, am I right?
And I like how you mentioned a 270-pounder before pivoting and throwing in the “her” pronoun. Nicely done.
Kamin’s actually a pretty good writer and I usually enjoy his stuff (one of his columns helped to save an architectural treasure on my block from being bulldozed for another cinder-block shower-stall condo about eight years ago, so I nearly always have good vibes for the guy), but he missed the mark badly here.
And Soldier Field is an abomination… if we knew what it was going to end up looking like, I have no doubt we would have demanded a retractable roof to host Super Bowls and Final Fours, etc.
Sure, Kamin occasionally writes a bad column. You occasionally write a bad blog post, like this one. Does that make you a douchebag, too?
Don’t mind little Frank. He has a real confidence problem.
Why did Kamin have to make that racist jibe at Milton Bradley? Hasn’t the poor man suffered enough at the hands of Chicago?
Blair Kamin treats Wrigley Field like an outdoor AMUSEMENT park.