I am outdone with the way that Saints fans are selling their tickets to visiting fans. At the last home game, there were almost as many Denver fans at the dome as Saints fans. The same thing happened at the Seattle game. This means that we are not showing support for our team.Yeah we've noticed this too. It's been especially bad during the last two games, but it's also been a problem all year. It's part and parcel with the city's transition away from its former status as a place where people live, work, and participate in community events such as rooting for the home sports team and toward its new status as resort town full of transients, tourists, and part-time residents.
We typically take the streetcar to and from the games from Uptown. It used to be the visiting fans would join in around Jackson Avenue when the route started picking up hotel guests. But now the visitors outnumber you all the way there and back. When they get off at your stop and walk right past your front door too, it becomes intrusive. These are different people from us. They have more money, they are entitled and they act like they own the place. After the Seattle game, the ride home was literally nothing but Seahawks fans talking to each other about their Airbnbs. On the way in to the Denver game, just a few days after the election, one of the Broncos fans made a point of antagonizing us over our obligation to stand for the national anthem. It got a little tense.
There used to be a time when we looked forward to meeting visiting fans at Saints games. It's fun to meet people from other places, talk about what to do in town, and such. But now that these encounters are tinted with the existential threat to one's own neighborhood, it's not the same. They aren't just here to take in a game and go to dinner anymore. They are here to make your rent too damn high and kick you out of your apartment. That they're starting to outnumber us in our home stadium too just adds insult to the injury.
No comments:
Post a Comment