Bigger, bolder, brighter. But is it something to love?

Photo by Stan Rolfsrud

With its angular prow and severe lines, the new football stadium looks more like an overblown billion dollar pup tent than a graceful Viking ship, but form follows function and there's no doubt that this will get the job done.

Checking the wifi. Perfect.
No login or password needed.

Today two local taxpayers downloaded free open house tickets and boarded the light rail ($3 lets two seniors ride around all day) to see what their money had done. Jobs, jobs, jobs, the governor likes to say, and it was apparent from the sidewalk outside the open house that somebody's been very busy.
It is hard to relate to the scale of such a huge assemblage. Everything is oversized -- wide corridors, big windows, massive monolithic concrete pourings -- way too much of everything to try to count it, though the PR folks did their usual best to do so, adding up the hours worked and materials used to wow the public with fun facts to know and tell.
Some very impressive engineering --even the seats felt at least a quarter of an inch wider than the previous model at the Metrodome. More comfortable too, made of a cheesy-feeling purple plastic, they surrender a bit when sat upon and form an agreeable pocket against the backside.

Little effort was made architecturally to bring things down to a more human level, which is fine, but designers somehow were able to achieve that end in a friendlier, more relatable space just across town at the baseball park.

A concert stage was being set up on the
50 yard line, opposite, way beneath a
vestigial proscenium arch, with catwalks.

Satisfied with what they had seen, the taxpayers eventually departed the massive edifice, but left without much love or attachment, just a sense of spectacle. But then, football is heavy metal and baseball is classical music, the taxpayers decided. As they chatted about it under one of the massive tv screens, a human face, over 100 feet tall, bigger than Mt. Rushmore, appeared overhead, being interviewed about how much they like the new place. Remarkably, at least for the moment, not one of these huge figures used the term "awesome."
It was all a bit overwhelming.
The taxpayers retreated outdoors where a festive Ferris wheel had been erected for the day on the new mall that approaches the stadium. It was turning merrily, marking the grand opening . . . and looked absolutely tiny and forlorn.

A most dreadful aspect of the modern stadium experience is using the little boys room at halftime.
There's been a clear effort to clean this up. Gone are the troughs, replaced with respectable urinals. The
corridors are painted a sanitary white, suggesting that cleanliness is valued. Will this good intention survive the drunken onslaught of painted Vikings driven to madness by loud noises and $8 beer?
Time will tell.