THE KINGDOME…What landmark did you find disappointing when you saw it in person?

Born and raised in Sacramento, I guess the first Landmark I saw was The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. A trip to ‘The City’, which we rubes in Sacto. called SF way back when, was pretty exciting for a kid, and crossing the GGB today still produces a feeling of exhilaration! I guess my next Landmark would have been The Space Needle when I visited the Worlds Fair in Seattle in 1962. My friend Rick Winn and I hopped the fence and snuck in before the fair opened, so we would not have to wait in line to go to the top. Lady Liberty standing in the harbor did not disappoint when I visited NYC and I worked in the Shadow of the Sears Tower when I lived in Chicago. Leaving my beloved Windy City to return to the West Coast I stopped to see Mount Rushmore and left in awe.

In 1995 I was living in Portland with my daughter and her family. Ashley, Declan and kids went to Ireland for Christmas to visit family, leaving me to fend for myself. I decided to take Amtrak to Seattle to see my Oakland Raiders play the Seahawks in The Kingdome. I had seen many Raiders games at the Colosseum in Oakland and the 49′ers at Candlestick, so I was looking forward to seeing my first ‘indoor’ game. The train ride was scenic and The Kingdome impressive.  Pretty cool… until the game… What’s going on here??? The players look like high school kids. The field’s too close and What’s with the Rug???  The game experience was a complete disappointment. Was not football for me! Of course it didn’t help that I was surrounded by a bunch of idiots rooting for The Seahawks!  The beer didn’t even taste good!  I could not imagine watching the Seattle Mariners play baseball in there! I left in the third quarter and went to a bar across the street and enjoyed the rest of the game on TV… boy, did it ever look a lot better and the beer was good!

So, it wasn’t so much the Landmark that was a disappointment, but the experience associated with it. Mercifully, that Landmark ended in 2006… Seattle is better off with The Space Needle!

I wrote this on June 29, 2010