Caryn Rose
Caryn Rose is a Brooklyn-based writer and photographer who documents rock-and-roll, baseball and urban life. Her first novel, B-Sides and Broken Hearts, is now available. email
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I remember the night Joey Ramone died. I remember getting the news, I remember the first email hitting my inbox with a ding and then the ding ding ding continuing, building, as I sat there reading that first email with that first news story, not believing what I was reading, and then reading it again and again as though rereading it I would find something different, that he would somehow not be dead. I remember listening to the U2 show from Irving Plaza and thinking that things sounded good, as they covered “I Remember You,” not knowing that they had just seen Joey in his hospital room and things were not good, at all. I remember sitting there feeling alone, 3,000 miles away from New York City, wanting to go into a bodega, buy a 7 day votive candle, walk down Bowery and stand in front of CBGBs and light that candle and stand there and cry for a good long while. But I couldn’t do that, because I wasn’t there.
A few months later, I started a novel about how someone’s life changed the night Joey Ramone died. It was originally titled JOEY RAMONE IS DEAD, and is now called B-SIDES AND BROKEN HEARTS.
The first time I met Nick Hornby, I took a deep breath and blurted out that my goal was to write the woman’s version of High Fidelity. I wanted to read a book where a woman could like music as much as a guy and not be called a groupie or be told that she sure knew a lot about music for a girl.
So I wrote the book I had always wanted to read.
if you…
- ever made a cassette with the same song for the entire side
- waited in line to buy a record the minute it came out
- got asked “so are you a groupie?” when you explained this was the third (eighth, tenth, twentieth) show you’d seen on this tour
- spent your lunch money on music or concert tickets
- been told you “sure know a lot about music for a girl”
- bought multiple copies of a record because you wore it out
- Bought multiple copies of a cd so you could have one for the work, one for the car, and one for home
- check someone’s lastfm feed before accepting a date with them
- would pull out white light, white heat at someone’s house to see if it had ever been played (thank you, Lester)
- can quote stage patter, interview quotes, or random lines in album reviews
- refer to band members by their first names so often your friends would start to raise their eyebrows
- [insert your own obsessive trait here]
It doesn’t matter if you love the Beatles, the Ramones, or even (yes!) Dave Matthews. If you love music, this is for you.
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I am reading on Thursday at 7:30 as part of Pete’s Reading Series, along with Rosie Schaap! Details here. See you there?
Found in an old notebook from college (Civil Rights & Discrimination, if you care), a letter I started to someone I must have met at the BITUSA shows I went to in Greensboro, North Carolina, January 1985.
I went to Greensboro because the logic was that it would be easier to get good tickets (and it was—I was in the first section of the floor both nights) and these were indoor arena shows (obviously, in January). I believe there was also some invocation of the logic that even with flight (People Express!) and hotel, it would be cheaper than going to the scalpers in NYC later, not to mention the complete and utter lack of interest in seeing a show in a stadium. I don’t remember if at that point I had already been shut out of the local shows, or if it was just planning ahead.
I don’t remember Sherry or who she was or where she was from. I remember the shows and have very specific memories of them, and know I talked to people constantly because I was always trying to meet more people to go to shows with. Did she sit near me? Did I meet her at the backstage ramp after one of the shows, waiting for the band to come out and sign? Wish I did remember that part of it.
I absolutely love finding this now. And now I have to find the shows in my collection, and listen and compare and figure out if I agree with my 1985 assessment.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS:
- I hear a sax in my head instead of Nils in the intro. (Is it Nils? I don’t know. WOULD LOVE SOME ACTUAL CREDITS, so I knew who was playing what. Big downside to downloading. We’ll have them in the morning.
- I almost wish it was less pop and more of a barn burner with more electric guitar and less strings, but obviously we have no idea what this will sound like live.
- I like the piano, a lot. I like the other textural effects a lot less.
- I get the “angry” part – he’s saying, “this is what’s supposed to happen, and isn’t happening”
- This is going to be an interesting record to hear on tour in Europe.
- The bridge is absolutely killer and redeems any shortfalls I think I hear right now.
- This will be the most misappropriated/misinterpreted song he’s released since BITUSA. (Please leave your flags at home on tour, or at least don’t stand in front of me if you feel the need to wave them during this song.)
- Overall, I like it, am less worried about the record as a whole, and far less worried about the fact that I’d already bought tickets to 7 shows without having heard one note of the album.
More later.
Where’s the eyes, the eyes with the will to see
Where’s the hearts that run over with mercy
Where’s the love that has not forsaken me
Where’s the work that’ll set my hands, my soul free
Where’s the spirit that’ll rain rain over me
where’s the promise from sea to shining sea
where’s the promise from sea to shining sea
I traveled to Hartford last weekend to see Patti Smith’s first museum photography exhibit, titled Camera Solo at the Wadsworth Atheneum. It’s a small but dense exhibit, three rooms of photographs and artifacts. It took about an hour and a half to go through everything, which included time to watch a 7-minute 35mm short that was part of the exhibit, and to revisit favorites at the end.
The exhibit is accompanied by an audio tour that you can access from your cellphone, by dialing an 800 number and punching in an exhibit number. Patti herself recorded the narration, which was just fantastic. It definitely added another dimension to my experience of the exhibit, and I appreciated the low-tech but extremely effective method. (You can hear the narration in the museum’s account on Soundcloud!) If you had the narration and the exhibit catalog (which I had received as part of a charity grab bag I purchased during the New Year’s Eve shows, you would be able to experience about 50% of the exhibit.
Of course, seeing everything in person is always so different than leafing through a book, as any art history student knows. The light in the room, your physical proximity, distance, space, all of this combines to make the experience of being there with the art so very worthwhile. Various artifacts from Patti’s collection, some of which were photographed in the exhibit, appeared in vitrines throughout, accompanied by handwritten cards explaining the items.
I appreciated the natural but also thoughtful grouping of items, and was most touched by the space dedicated to her thoughts and photographs and work about Rimbaud. That room also featured one of her three-dimensional pieces, a version of the litter that carried the injured Rimbaud through the Ethiopian desert. You saw an initial sketch of the litter, a miniature prototype, and then the fully realized piece. There were also items from her trip to the Rimbaud Museum in Ardennes (which readers of Just Kids will remember).
As a fan I am continually inspired by her hard work and dedication, and how she never pretends that anything just happens (although she makes a fair allowance for magic or the divine, which is different) and never hides her process and the sweat and effort it takes to produce it. The exhibit is in Hartford until mid-February; combine your trip there with a visit and tour of the Mark Twain House (which was absolutely amazing, and well worth the time) and you have a nice day trip.
Definitely did not see this one coming last night!
I am so divided on this cover of the song. I think she starts off strong and think the initial attitude and perspective work, but then feel like the performance loses its way a little bit–and not just because of the lyric changes, or that she forgets the words at one point. I think it’s that I just want it to work so incredibly badly that I will forgive it a million sins, which robs me of true objectivity.
More on the show later.
Even I am not immune to the year-end listing process. Here’s my list of favorite/best shows of 2011. It’s so skewed as to representative of nothing except my particular universe – but it’s not like I’m pretending that 2012 isn’t going to be a laundry list of Springsteen and Afghan Whigs shows.
1. Twilight Singers, San Francisco
2. Wild Flag, Bell House
3. U2, Montreal night 1
4. Big Audio Dynamite, Roseland
5. Horrible Crowes, Bowery Ballroom
6. Twilight Singers, Webster Hall
7. Gaslight Anthem, Asbury Park Convention Hall [I feel the need to footnote this show by pointing out that it was amazing before Bruce showed up.]
8. U2, Giants Stadium
9. Bryan Ferry, Beacon Theater
10. Patti Smith & Lenny Kaye, St. Mark’s Church
I care a lot about visiting the various sites of rock and roll history, whether it’s the former site of the Cavern Club or the Finsbury Park Astoria or the Palladium or 213 Bowery or the bank that used to be the Fillmore East. But clearly I am close to something very much resembling insane to wake up at 6 a.m. in Las Vegas, rent a car, and head four hours into the desert to look for a dead tree.
Yes. We went looking for The Joshua Tree.
This all started a few years ago, when I brought up a Bono quote from a Rolling Stone interview back in the day, about how they didn’t remember where the Joshua Tree that was photographed on the album was. Bono thought it was a good thing, because otherwise some fan would turn up at a concert with it: “Bono! I’ve got the tree!”
“That’s not true,” the boyfriend said. “They found the tree. It died a while ago, but the fans know where the tree is.”
Now, contrary to popular belief, the tree is not in Joshua Tree, or even in the Mojave Desert. It’s not even technically in Death Valley National Park, but rather just outside its boundaries. Thanks to the internet and the industriousness of the U2 community, within a few hours we had photographs, Google Earth screen captures and GPS coordinates at our fingertips. We just had to wait until a trip to LA or Las Vegas gave us enough time to make the trip ourselves – and this year was the year.
We watched videos and talked to people who had gone and planned and planned and planned some more. We rented a car with a GPS and satellite radio, stopped at a Starbucks on Windmill Lane (not kidding), and headed up into the mountains.
This would have been an excellent plan had the satellite radio worked, and had the GPS accepted longitude and latitude coordinates. This is a dead plant in the desert, it wasn’t like we could just enter “the Joshua tree” into the GPS and it would take us to where we wanted to go (although we ended up having data signal–of all things–and it’s now on Foursquare). So much for being sure we were absolutely in possession of the exact coordinates.
But we are not stupid. We were smart enough to have brought a RCA plug for our iPhones and the SO had even burned some emergency CD’s of a 1987 Chicago radio broadcast, just in case. He plugged the last intersection before the location of the tree into the GPS and we figured out how to reset the trip odometer on the car so we could find the location by watching mileage. We had printed out maps, we had screenshots of Google Maps on the phones.
Off into the desert we drove.
The Oceans 11 quote about still being in the middle of the fucking desert once you get out of Las Vegas becomes relevant about 15 minutes outside of town, as you head up and over actual mountains and into the middle of nowhere. Pahrump, the only town of any substance between LV and Death Valley was a blip of casinos and strip malls, and 10 minutes later we made a left turn towards Death Valley and two stop signs later had left all of that behind.
We saw wild horses. We saw a coyote crossing the road. When civilization of any size approached, you could see it miles ahead in the distance, because there was nothing else out there. We had brought water and snacks–and if I had to do it again I would have doubled the water and the snacks and brought more warm clothing, because if the car had broken down we would have been waiting a very long time for help. We never passed one law enforcement or official vehicle, and for the entire four hour drive, I never had a car in front of me. We would see cars pulled over on the side of the road and I would mentally prepare to stop and ask if they were okay, but in every single case, there was someone with a huge camera on a tripod taking advantage of the winter morning desert light.
We made a few stops to take photos and one to pay our national park admission fee, but mostly, we kept driving. I was worried about finding the tree and losing the light and so we would do any extra sightseeing on the way back. We talked about U2 driving around between Death Valley and the Mojave for three weeks 25 years ago (25 years ago the week we were there, just by coincidence), and how overwhelming all of this must have been for four guys from Ireland, where there was nothing at all like the wilderness surrounding us on all four sides.
For me, the desert is all about the silence. I guess it’s the thing that stands out for a city girl, more than anything else. And then the light, that amazing desert light, especially in the winter. The air, even when there’s dust blowing it’s cleaner than an average city street corner. The stars at night, the true, deep black, the absence of ambient city light. The colors are muted, the horizon stretches so far ahead you have to strain to see it, no dead-ending in New Jersey at the edge of the island.
I took the wheel for the drive out and am almost sorry that I did because I couldn’t take any photographs. I kept telling the SO to take his camera out and take pictures of the things I couldn’t. I would set up the shot in my head and tell him, “Take a photo of that. Now, take a photo of that. Wait, that. Did you get that?” He set up a tiny tripod on the dashboard and filmed movies of us driving through the desert. The scenery is unbelievable, awe-inspiring, purple mountains majesty and all of that. You feel tiny and insignificant and wonder about the people crazy enough to walk through this place on foot hundreds of year ago.
We reached our first official stopping place, Panamint Springs, a little before noon. Gas was $5.38 and we were at half a tank. We got out of the car and stretched, put $20 worth of gas in the tank, used the bathroom and their wifi, and bought some drinks before getting back on the road for what would end up being the worst part of the drive. The mountain pass before the valley before Panamint Springs was a steep grade and twisty and windy but the road was wide and felt reasonably safe. The road out of Panamint Springs felt tiny and the absence of guard rails less than comforting. (It got to the point that when we did see guard rails, we really worried.)
I started to get excited. It was close, or at least soon, and we would be there. The odometer clicked slowly towards the magic 107 mile mark. I didn’t know what it would be like to stand there and see those mountains. I saw clouds in the distance and scowled at them, mentally telling them to get lost, that they were ruining my photographs even as I was on my way there.
And then we came around a curve and sloped downward and the odometer crawled toward the 107 mile mark and I looked to my left at the mountain range shrouded in clouds and tapped the window gently saying, “There. There it is. Look. We’re here.” The SO glanced up, but back at the map, telling me to watch for the curve to the right and that there would be a dirt road on the left and I should pull over there.
And then there was a curve to the right and the dirt road fading into the distance on the left and with a pro forma glance back and forth to make sure there was no oncoming or following traffic, I pulled off the road, stopped the car and opened the door.
“KEYS,” said the boyfriend.
We always do this when we rent a car but the special emphasis was not lost on me. We would be SOL for a very long time if we locked the keys in the car. I held them up in the air.
“NO REALLY, KEYS,” he said.
I held them up and waved them vigorously.
We assembled everything we thought we needed, went through “KEYS” one more time, shut the door and headed into the desert .
The SO took out a map and some printouts of photographs and squinted into the distance. “There,” he said, pointing at a solo, non-branched Joshua Tree plant in the distance. He held up a photo printout to get my assessment. “We start walking towards that.”
But as we reached where we were heading, we realized quickly that it was not the right place. We studied the terrain and the maps and the printouts again. (Astonishingly, I had data coverage–I couldn’t pull up Facebook on the Strip, but in the middle of nowhere Google Maps was working.) I entered the GPS coordinates, it pinpointed the location of the car. I entered another set of GPS coordinates, it pinpointed the car again.
We looked at the map one more time. The boyfriend walked over to a concrete block in the middle of nowhere but it was a sea level marker. We looked at a solo tree in the distance but it seemed too far away to be the location of the photo. They stopped at this one location because there was a tree that stood out alone and wasn’t surrounded by other ones. We considered that the solo tree in the photograph we had, adjacent to the now-dead tree, had also died. That would make things difficult without a compass or a hand-held GPS.
I started to consider the futility of this effort. I started to consider that we might not find the damn thing, after all of this. I wondered how long we would have to walk through this particular stretch of desert before the boyfriend would be willing to give up. I wondered how stubborn I myself would be about all of this. There was no way I was going to give up after coming this far. I reminded myself that we were within sight of the main road, that it was still daylight, that it wasn’t the middle of the summer, and we were not going to get lost like those Dutch tourists. The boyfriend did insist that I be within his range of sight at all times, however, and I wished I had worn my cowboy boots and not sneakers.
After a few more minutes of walking and looking at pictures and more walking, the boyfriend stopped, and pointed to two trees in the distance, down the road away from the car.
“I think we should walk this way.”
I looked in the direction he pointed in, and agreed, with the provision that there was a small rise just ahead. I wanted to get to the top of the rise, and then discuss how we would split up and do a grid search, like I was in a CSI episode, or something.
No sooner did I get to the top of the rise than I saw something, something in a color not native to the desert. It was bright green.
“Honey…” I said.
“Yeah, I see it,” he said.
We started walking briskly in that direction, and then all of a sudden, we were there.
The green box was a plastic crate that has replaced the former “U Tube,” the PVC pipe that held the logbook for people who visited the tree. The box was full of messages and mementos and had been signed by people–some very recently–from everywhere on the planet. I was slightly humbled to see signatures from Poland and Serbia, that these people from the other side of the world would make their way out to this godforsaken place in the literal middle of nowhere.
Speaking of dedicated, whoever created this plaque wins the ‘dedicated’ title. It wasn’t just that they made a bronze plaque for the location of the tree, it was that they had to truck out cement, a cement mixer, water, and shovels, and a couple of people to help dig the hole, form the frame, pour the cement, and then wait around for it to cure. Did they drive an ATV into the desert? Did they push a wheelbarrow in from the road? It would have taken several trips to figure the whole thing out, and even if you ‘lived nearby’ you’re still talking about 8 hour round-trips at a minimum.
There were some people who had made signs out of wood or metal and brought them along, but aside from writing in the logbook or on the box, the popular way of marking your presence was to create something out of rocks. There was a peace sign; there were U2 logos; there was the heart-in-a-suitcase from a previous tour. I didn’t bring anything to put into the box because I disliked the idea of adding refuse to the desert, but it might have been smart if one of us had considered bringing a pen to write in the logbook (luckily there was a working pen inside the two ziplock bags holding the very wet logbook).
The boyfriend started picking up rocks. “So, ‘dream out loud,’ or something else?”
“Dream out loud.”
“We’re going to take a picture of this and send it to our friend, and she’s going to respond, ‘You know, they’re still not going to play ‘Acrobat’.”
We laughed hard, considered that no one who wasn’t a U2 fan would find that remotely amusing, and went back to picking up rocks and positioning them in the hard winter desert ground. No soft sand in the winter.
I am amazed that the now-dead tree is still there. I am amazed that no one has stolen it or sawn pieces off to sell on eBay or even taken a leaf or a branch. Trust me, U2 fans (just like intense fans of any band, to be fair) can be a brand of crazy I don’t even want to stand near, but yet, this site was left to exist in peace without being selfishly scavenged limb from limb. Sometimes people manage to rise to their expectations.
We were starting to lose the light, and the clouds blew away from the mountains but were now over the sky as a whole, and it was getting to be time to start heading back. I took as many photographs as I could think of, although I now look at them and wonder why I dismissed certain angles, or why I didn’t walk back far enough to get the tree location properly positioned against the mountains. We took pictures of each other, we did the goofy thing where you hold up the iPhone with the tree and the mountains in the background. I thought about bringing a tripod but it was okay that I didn’t, because no photograph will ever show what it was like to stand there, to be there with someone who wanted to be there as much as I did, who didn’t think that it was dumb or stupid or idiotic to make this trip, to stand in the middle of the desert in December because 25 years ago, a Dutch photographer and four guys from Ireland decided they would shoot photos for their next album cover here.
And then, almost at the same time, we decided that we were ready to leave.
The walk back to the road from the tree was infinitely easier than our walk to it (If you park at the turnout, walk back to the drainage culvert and head in from there.) and then we were back at the car and heading back towards civilization. We stopped back at Panamint Springs for lunch (recommended, mostly because there ain’t much else, folks) and use of their free wifi, and drove back over the mountains and through the desert once again. We stopped one more time, at Zabriskie Point, the site of the album cover proper, but it was almost 4:30 by then and getting dark so any hiking around in imitation of the band had to be shelved because we still had a long way to go.
It got dark quicker than we had ever imagined and it even started snowing as we were heading over the last mountain pass between Pahrump and Las Vegas, making the drive difficult and nerve-wracking at the very end, before we descended into the bright light city again.
It was about pilgrimage, even if you look askance at assigning such a word of weight and import to a journey that seems trivial on the surface. But we go to these places because we are seeking connection, because we are looking for something divine, magical, at least other, seeking meaning or significance above and beyond what’s on the surface. I look at the vast enormity and wild beauty of the desert and wonder how it felt to four young men from Ireland. I listen to the silence and wonder what it does to the imagination of someone who constructs sound for a living. I look at a place and see it through my eyes and the eyes of everyone else who has seen that place. I stand there and try to figure out what I feel and wonder if it is what others felt standing in the same place.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Lots of amazing things going on:
- Three Imaginary Girls list B-sides in their Imaginary Gift Guide – Books for Movie and Music Fans
- There’s an interview with me on Another Rainy Saturday
- Great review of the book in The Big Takeover (print only)
- And many more, which you can read about on the book’s website.
I’ll also be appearing at the reading series at Pete’s Candy Store (along with Rosie Schaap) on January 26, 2012.
This week over at Fuck Yeah, Setlists I’ve donated five setlists from my collection: Afghan Whigs, Twilight Singers, R.E.M., Springsteen and the New York Dolls. If you like setlists, it’s an amazing site. If you’ve got your own setlists, he’s always looking for submissions!
I reminisce about rock and roll tourism, U2 style, in ye olde pre-internet days over at Scatter o’ light.
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E Street stalwart Eddie Manion and first time tour member Jake Clemons will share the saxophone role.
SHARE. it says SHARE. There are TWO saxophones. Not one. This is pretty clear and deliberate to me, that the reason there are two is so that no one can start with “SO AND SO REPLACES THE BIG MAN” but yet that’s what everyone is busy running around saying.
Let’s not act like Jake has some kind of huge legacy he’s carrying or that Eddie Manion has an insignificant history with the E Street band.
Why are you all in such a hurry to replace Clarence Clemons?
The way some people talk about contraception, you get the strong impression that they think you pick it up at Victoria’s Secret.
Although there was a small mod revival in the U.S., the kids who discovered Quadrophenia as a midnight movie were just as likely to be rockers, theater kids or punk-rock skateboarders. Reagan-era suburban downtowns were deserted, as the centers of commerce shifted from local shops to malls, mirroring the desolate decay of boarded-up city centers leftover from the urban riots of the late ’60s. Street kids and weirdoes flocked to old movie theaters, hung out at makeshift all-ages show spaces and dug through the cultural trash of the ’60s and ’70s that filled thrift stores, searching for both cheap entertainment and larger meaning. In this pre-internet era, this was the only way for curious youth to map out a chronology of pop-culture history — as if connecting the dots would lead to some hidden treasure. Along with the DIY ethic of hardcore, this rummaging inspired kids to create their own youth culture, defining themselves through music and style. As one of these kids, Quadrophenia captured my imagination.
In some ways in fact what we loved most about the book might be another book all together or even an alternate one, as we see all this through the protagonist’s eyes and needs and not that of the band itself. It’s her story, not theirs, but their story slayed us and her love for all it meant to them and her. We want that too, some of it, any of it, something of it, and rarely have we read something that so well captures that kind of want.
Ben Tanzer -
This Book Will Change Your Life - B-Sides and Broken Hearts by Caryn Rose.
> Things you shouldn’t compare to the Holocaust: things that aren’t the Holocaust.
> Things you shouldn’t compare to rape: things that aren’t rape.
> Things you shouldn’t compare to slavery: things that aren’t slavery.
> Things you shouldn’t compare to homophobia or transphobia: things that aren’t homophobia or transphobia.
It’s that simple.
I saw abortion compared to both the Holocaust and slavery in a single Facebook thread once.
I say we get out of The Pretending To Be Moral game altogether and use the Internet for important things like posting pictures of cats looking at croissants and PDFs of sensitive government documents.
M.I.A. Shouldn’t Have Apologized
back to work. it’s always fun to have a reason to go back to some of the early shows.
The minute I hear the whisperings of “how dare she,” I’m interested. I don’t have to like it, it doesn’t have to be worthy.
Caryn Rose is one of those awesomely prolific Brooklynites who seem to be living about five different lives. Not only is she a published novelist, she’s also a director of product development at Billboard.com, a music writer, a photographer, AND the founder of a popular blog about….the Mets. (It’s called Metsgrrl.com, because, as she notes on the site, “I’m a cranky punk rock feminist.”) But let’s get back to B-Sides and Broken Hearts. The story concerns Lisa, a woman whose life takes a dramatic turn the day Joey Ramone dies. After a fight with her fiance, Lisa finds herself driving from Seattle to LA to reconnect with friends from the punk rock music scene of her youth. She also meets up with an old crush, a sexy musician who may make it tough to go home again.
Caryn’s always a delight to chat with, and I knew she’d have some great stories from her numerous events. Read on to learn about her brush with stage fright, the most common question she gets asked, and the poetry reading that marked her triumphant return to NYC.
MUST READ.
There isn’t a lot left that leaves me outraged, but I find myself outraged by the total cluster that is Komen pulling funding from Planned Parenthood.
I grew up to an activist, but after managing a sexual assault and child abuse prevention hotline… I gave up. When the cops let a rapist go…
WHAT TIME IS IT? Time to go watch Stevie act in a Scandinavian crime drama.
(I tried to make a SVZ with the Dragon Tattoo joke but they all fell down flat)
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Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR. Yeah, I got nothing to say. But I do have 6 years of photographs.
I was contacted first thing this morning by Mets VP of Ticket Sales Leigh Castergine. We finally spoke this afternoon, and Ms. Castergine apologized for yesterday’s incident, and addressed my concerns. I told her I would be posting this update on the site, and she was fine with that. I look forward to speaking to a ticket office representative in a few weeks when the information regarding partial plans is available.
If you’ve just arrived, please see the Update to this post. The phone rings. I don’t recognize the number, I Google it and see it’s from the Mets. I answer. “Hi, Caryn, this is Josh from the New York Mets. I wanted to see if you’d heard about some of the changes we’ve made to ticketing plans, and see if you had any questions.” “Why, yes, I do have a question.” “Great!” “Are the Mets going to re-sign Jose Reyes?” “Well (laughing), you know, I don’t control that, we certainly do want him back…” “Right, but that’s what I want to know, and I don’t think we’re going to commit to a ticket plan yet without knowing that.” “So you don’t think that the Mets can win without Jose Reyes?” “That’s not the point.” “So if we don’t sign Jose Reyes, you’re not going to be here. I get it. Goodbye.” *click* He hung up on me. HE HUNG UP. A representative of the Mets organization hung up on me. In a million, trillion years, I did not expect that reaction.
I think it’s kind of insane that in my quietest blogging year ever, I get nominated as one of the blogs in the Shape Magazine Best Sports Blogger contest, but - I am nominated, and if elected, I will serve, as they say. Vote for me, so that the Yankees and Red Sox blogs don’t win (and thanks to Matt Cerrone’s retweet earlier today, I’m beating both of them right now). You do NOT have to register to vote! Vote early, vote often, and thank you!
Tuesday night, I sat in the first row of the promenade reserved infield, leaned over the railing, held my breath and watched Jose Reyes on third base, a base he had obtained by getting a single and then strolling over to second on a throwing error and then, of course, stealing third base. This was after watching Jose Reyes make the Home Run Apple light up not once but twice, improbably, impossibly, twice - once was amazing but twice just felt supersonic. And now he was doing what he does best, which is annoy pitchers as he dances while taking a healthy lead down the baseline. He is dancing down the third base line like he is going to steal home and he totally unnerves Aroldis Chapman, flame throwing Aroldis Chapman, and the fans who are in the ballpark erupt in a cheer without aid of scoreboard idiocy and I murmur, wouldn’t that be something? In this 3/4 empty ballpark on the second to last night of the season, wouldn’t that be something? Wouldn’t that be something, indeed.
The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball Allan H. (Bud) Selig, Commissioner 245 Park Avenue, 31st Floor New York, NY 10167 Dear Commissioner Selig: Your actions at last night’s Mets-Cubs game at Citi Field on 9/11/11 were reprehensible. Not allowing the Mets players to wear the NYPD and other First Responder hats - at a meaningless game you co-opted as a platform to grandstand MLB’s relevancy - was inexcusable. Learning that you not only denied the Mets’ official request to wear the hats, but that a MLB representative went the extra yard to confiscate them from the team at the conclusion of the pre-game ceremonies, so that no one could defy your order and do the right thing and wear them anyway, makes me ashamed to be a fan of Major League Baseball. As a result, I will not purchase one new item of MLB clothing, whether a New Era hat, a Majestic Athletic shirt or jersey, or any other officially sanctioned MLB item, for the duration of 2011 and for the entire 2012 season, and very likely beyond that. My household could previously be counted on spending significant dollars in MLB merchandise every year; I can assure you that will no longer be the case. Sincerely, Caryn Rose == NOW WRITE YOUR OWN LETTER. You have the address. Don’t email, don’t tweet, don’t just blog about it, don’t comment, don’t sign a petition - write your own letter and put it in the mail. That will count. That will make a difference.
I will be participating in A Night of Baseball Stories on Wednesday, September 14. WORD, Largehearted Boy, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn are pleased to present a night of baseball storytelling (and free beer provided by our pals at Six Points brewery) featuring readers Jens Carstensen, Jason Diamond, David Gutowski, Sean Manning (Top of the Order, Things That Need Doing), Howard Megdal (Taking the Field), Caryn Rose (B-Sides and Broken Hearts). Attendees may be required to sit according to team affiliations. Details here. Hope to see you there.
We knew it was bad. We knew there were rumblings. I had people coming to this site and posting comment after comment insisting that the Wilpons had no money problems, that to say otherwise was bullshit (and worse). We heard the rumors that the Mets were wholesale dumping blocks of tickets with ticket brokers at deeply discounted prices, who were then recycling them through StubHub and the other broker sites, which was why there were so many cheap tickets out there for so long. And now, this. This is just about as far rock bottom as you can get. (I was originally going to say “Even the Astros aren’t selling tickets on Groupon” but oh, yes, they are.) As someone who still holds tickets to six games this year, it’s infuriating. Friday night against the Braves is a discount ticket? When I paid full price (at the season ticket holder discount) earlier in the year? Do you know how much it upsets me to think about the obnoxious calls to and from the Mets ticket office earlier this season, with their arrogant attitude, about why aren’t I renewing my ticket plan? Everything I want to say isn’t nice, isn’t polite, isn’t anything except the result of a world of anger and disappointment and misery - the same world that you are all living in. It’s not new. It’s just the bottom of the hole. Last night I said that I was looking forward to see how the Mets were going to some how spin, obfuscate or otherwise justify the ticket price increase next year. TBF insists they wouldn’t dare. I say, just wait and see. Six more games. I suppose we will still go, because we bought the tickets, we spent the money, and when baseball is gone for the year, I will miss baseball. But they’re not making it easy on the fans to show up or give a damn.
You know, I adore R.A. Dickey just like everyone else. I think it’s a gift from the heavens that he’s on Twitter, and know that every fan from every other team is miserably jealous. But after a miserable, swift, embarrassing 10-0 shutout in Philadelphia, I do not want to see him yukking it up on social media. I just don’t. Especially not so close to the end of the game (given, that end came VERY EARLY LAST NIGHT, but still). Is it just me? Probably.
Call me cynical, but it’s hard for me to read about this and not think, “We just don’t have enough group sales to fill those crappy Big Apple seats so we’ll cave and do one of those social media nights that the kids are into these days.” For $41: Seating in the exclusive Big Apple Reserved section $18 food and beverage credit [so essentially your ticket is $23, which is about what the Big Apple seats are worth in my opinion] “Connect” T-Shirt and name tag sticker [Generic MLB shirt with Mets branding] Automatically eligible for in-game Twitter giveaways during each inning I hate the Big Apple seats and find them to be very, very overpriced, even with a $18 food and beverage credit (because they only do that because they hope that most people won’t use all $18 of theirs) and the rest of me says, “NO ONE ON AT&T WILL HAVE SIGNAL ANYWAY.” Let’s take a look at what other teams are doing for Social Media Night.
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The final destination for this summer’s roadtrip was the most eagerly anticipated one: Dodger Stadium. In so many ways, it lived up to expectations – but in so many, very critical, other aspects, it was a tremendous letdown.
The miles of highway and acres of parking lot you will need to traipse through just to reach the ballpark will disorient you something fierce if you are a true city person, who likes walking and public transportation. There are people who park at the bottom of the hill and walk up, and I saw buses queued up, but the reality of a California ballpark is that people are going to drive. If you are not one of the beautiful people, however, you are going to walk a very, very long way – by any standard – before you get to the ballpark structure proper. Dodger Stadium is a curiosity, in that there is less actual ballpark structure than you are accustomed to.
Unlike almost every other ballpark in the country where you enter the ballpark almost anywhere and make your way up to your seat, at Dodger Stadium, you enter at your level. There are stairs and elevators and escalators connecting the levels, but it’s set up so that you walk around the ballpark to the entrance to your level, and you go in there. Think the old bleachers at Yankee Stadium, or the Green Monster in Boston. The upper deck is very, very, very high, and very steep; however, despite all of that, the Dodgers were selling season ticket packages in the upper deck, and sold them out.
It is an absolutely beautiful physical structure. As the child of a Brooklyn Dodger fan, I hate to say anything nice about Walter O’Malley, but he built a beautiful park. The seats were meant to mimic the ocean, starting at the sand, and edging up to the blue of the deep water. The shelter above the outfield bleachers is meant to mimic the waves. When you look out at the Dodger Stadium outfield, there is nowhere else in the world you could be. Combine all of that with the perfect California weather and almost perennial blue sky, it could almost be baseball paradise.
That “almost” is because Dodger Stadium is in LA, and because people don’t show up until the third inning, and when they do, the baseball is incidental to why they are there. It is because BP is even more restricted than Yankee Stadium in many ways. It is because security walks around with headsets and has the demeanor of bouncers at an exclusive nightclub where they’re the ones holding the velvet rope to keep you out. It is because while the field level at Dodger Stadium is about as renovated as a ballpark could possibly be, the upstairs looks like it hasn’t been touched since 1962. It is because of beach balls, and “Don’t Stop Believin’” as the 8th inning singalong. It is because of fans who screamed at everything, whether it was scream-worthy or not, or because of vendors who blocked aisles during the middle of innings with absolute impunity. The palace of baseball has become a place where baseball is the absolute second thought.
In all of these ways, Dodger Stadium broke my heart.
I know that I need to come back, and sit somewhere besides the field level. We spent a considerable amount of money to have wonderful seats, and while they were wonderful, part of me wonders if we had sat somewhere a little less wonderful, maybe people wouldn’t have looked at my companion sideways because he was keeping score. Maybe we would have sat next to the kind of people we met on the ballpark tour, who talked to us thoughtfully about Robert Moses, who had nothing but the utmost respect for the fact that we came to visit from the place that their team came from, that my father’s heartbreak at losing his team was the direct cause of so much joy for them. The disconnect between those people, and the ones we sat with, could not have been more black and white. Those are the people we need to sit with next time.
The bullpens are against the left and right field edges; the visitor’s bullpen, like the dugout, is on the first base side at Dodger Stadium, because it is better because of the sun exposure, and because there is a tunnel that connects the Dodgers dugout with the bullpen. You can go to the area between the bleachers during batting practice, and wait for balls or just take photographs. During BP, there is a walkway onto the field for fans to stand on and watch batting practice – however, it is full the second the gates open, and the line stays static for most of BP. It is meant for children, but it is a small area that is crowded with a lot of adults. I did not even try to go there.
The food at Dodger Stadium is nothing special. Nathan’s hot dogs laugh in the face of Dodger Dogs. The concourses are not wide, and there isn’t a lot of room to start putting in premium food concessions. It is probably better that way, because if there was good food, it would only be accessible to a tiny portion of the fans anyway. There is enough of a divide already between the haves and the have nots at this ballpark.
You already know that the scoreboard is not a highlight of this ballpark; I wish they had stayed full-on Wrigley or Fenway with only a tiny scoreboard, because then you would not be continually bombarded with what are in effect commercials for the Dodgers, various celebrities posing to tell you THIS IS MY TOWN. On that note, Randy Newman’s “I Love LA” is the theme song for the Dodgers, played at the start of every game. I cannot argue with the appropriateness of this in any way.
The ballpark tour was fantastic, despite it being more limited in many ways than your average ballpark tour. However, I found the omissions to be positives, and not negatives. The tour starts at the upper deck, then moves down to the press box, and then to the club area and finally into the visitor’s dugout and the warning track. There was no suite visit, nor did we waste a lot of time walking around the ballpark. I have to say that I didn’t miss any of the usual trekking around the ballpark you usually do on a tour. Instead, we had time to sit in the press box and in the dugout without being rushed. I appreciate that instead of saying “There are the retired numbers,” the guide took the time to take us through each one and explain. (It is sad that that is a highlight of a ballpark tour, but so many of them just wave at the retired numbers and consider their job done.)
This was also the first and only tour I have been on where you were specifically told that you could touch the infield grass as much as you wanted to, you could rest your arm on it, you could even take a few blades – you just couldn’t stand on it. If you think people did not do all of those things, you are wrong. It was fantastic.
There is an exhibit of early Dodger memorabilia, except it is only available to you if you are sitting in the same seats that Larry King or Don Johnson sit in – or if you take the tour. It’s located in the club that’s accessible to those premium seats. I did appreciate that the tour guide took us through every single display case and reminded people over and over again that they were free to take as many photographs as they wanted to. (I am proud that I told the joke about Hitler, Stalin and Walter O’Malley to my tour group and it was the first time any of them – except the tour guide – had heard it.)
It’s worth taking the tour because you get to drive all the way in to the upper deck entrance, which is so far from the gate that there’s a long blue line painted on the concrete to guide you. The box office is there, too, and if you’re in town and just want a peek at the ballpark, drive up to Chavez Ravine and tell the guard you’re there to buy tickets or go to the team store. The upper deck was wide open for anyone to walk in and take a look – a positive side of there being only an elevator connection between the different levels.
I will probably be back, because it is Dodger Stadium, after all, but next time I swear that things will be different somehow.
DODGER STADIUM is a post from: All Down The Line
Updates
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@amarie029 it's okay. i had school's out by alice cooper & we're an american band by grand funk railroad, but also some partridge family
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@amarie029 @alisonfaye @YankeeMegInPHL i had a FRANKIE SAYS RELAX t. and was in london the day they filmed the 'wake me up' video.
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@marc_warnest she started to get hit with massive spammers so she just had to give up after a while.
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@marc_warnest SQL/DB Error -- [Unknown column 'fileinfo_templatemap_id' in 'on clause'] is what i get. how about you?
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@marc_warnest i appreciate your helpfulness but none of those links work any more. have you tried? i did. why assume i didn't?
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i wish @TwinsBatgirl would re-publish her rules for the Baseball Boyfriend and the Non-Sexual Man Crush
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@ajcbraves looks like a taller neil young.
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@emmaspan fair that. right now i'm busy voting for all the women.
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@emmaspan "seemingly"
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@CeeAngi it's been a long day :)
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@CeeAngi YAY
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@littlestclouds it's bad documentation. no one except geeks knows what the fuck a subnav is. i don't have an account so i can't see it =(
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@littlestclouds subnav = secondary navigation on a web site. what's up, maybe i can help.
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@matthewcerrone they're completely different presentations/applications/contexts. instagram has no destination. pinterest IS destination.
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@joepawl i figured. it's a good venue. you should go.
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@joepawl yes. unequivocally.
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vote for Lindsay to go to the MLB Fan Cave! it's a stupid idea but let's make it equal opportunity stupid: http://t.co/BtHp8hTk
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@metschick oh already there.
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@metschick seriously fuck @cbssports
