Bring something back for Saints fans to consume too

My favorite Trend-bucking newspaper is on to something serious as we head into the NFL's opening weekend.

Dome foam gets pricier
by Richard A. Webster Staff Writer


When the Saints' 2009 season kicks off Sunday thirsty fans may notice a slight change in the price of their favorite beverage.

Instead of paying $7 for a 16-ounce bottle of beer, they're going to have to shell out an extra 50 cents.

And if they're in the mood for something stronger, maybe a Grey Goose vodka, it will cost them an additional $1 as cocktails have increased from $8 compared with $7 last year.

But other than that, all other alcohol prices remain the same. The only other item to go up in price is the hot dog, which rises from $3.50 to $4.

"With the recession we're trying to hold the line," said Jeff Tandberg, general manager of Centerplate, the exclusive concessions provider to the Louisiana Superdome and New Orleans Arena. "And as a small-market team, we can't get the pricing that large-market teams with higher per-capita incomes can get."

So Tandberg is telling us that if our local economy hadn't "bucked the trend" so much we might have gotten in on a bigger recession discount or something like that I guess.

I've highlighted the $8 cocktails because this includes the famous Superdome Bloody Marys which were recently named by Gambit readers as among the Best of New Orleans. But this rating is based solely on reputation since, last season, the NFL instructed Superdome concessionaires that they were no longer allowed to sell their "double" sized drinks (which were actually equivalent to a "single" in civilized society). In their heyday (two years ago), the Dome Bloody Doubles were, in fact, among the best available anywhere and were priced at $9. Today Saints fans are paying $8 for a greatly diminished micro-sized imitation of the drink that was once an indispensable element of the Saints gameday experience.

The worst of this is that most of the revenue generated from this fleecing of the football fan bypasses the coffers of the State whose people paid to make its generation possible (not to mention the pockets of the contract employees who dispense the sad watery swill), and goes directly to Tom Benson.

What would Huey say?