Ask Dr. Downtown: Sporting Edition
Monday, January 12, 2015
Dear Dr. Downtown: Before the glow fades from the Patriots’ thrilling win over the Ravens, will the doctor please predict who will win the Super Bowl? - In a Tizzy in Tiverton
Please. The doctor does not handicap sporting events. Go out on your own limb, thank you very much. Still, the recent flood of sports news that sloshes over into the doctor’s bailiwick of architecture has forced him into this sports edition. To dispose of your awkward question and get down to brass tacks, Dr. Downtown will condescend to creep out onto a very thick limb and pick the Pats to prevail.
Dear Dr. Downtown: Prevail!? You prevaricator! That limb is thick because you feel safe picking the Pats. What a coward. Give us a score, or at least a high-low! Then you can go ahead and bloviate about your precious sports architecture! - J’Accuse in Jerusalem
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAllow the doctor to repeat: he does not handicap sporting events. He does not even know what a “high-low” is. Must he put a question into his accuser’s mouth? Why not ask the doctor whether Boston will host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games?
Dear Dr. Downtown: Will the doctor please tell us whether Boston will host the 2024 Olympics? - His Master’s Voice in Vernon
The doctor does not have an opinion on whether Boston will host the Olympics in 2024, but on whether it should host the Olympics in 2024 he has no shortage of opinions. The Olympics have become the venue for a quadrennial test of the host nation’s will to ugliness. Remember starchitect Zaha “Ha-Ha” Hadid’s aquatic center cum bubble-wrap mattress at the Beijing Olympics? Boston’s pitch that it already has stadia in plenty of its many university campuses - requiring no new plug uglies - is countered by Mayor Marty Walsh’s challenge to local developers to be “bold” in architecture. Bold is the profession’s favorite euphemism for ugly.
Walsh will find that difficult to resist. If he wanted to embrace genuine boldness of design spirit instead of establishment orthodoxy, he would urge that a Boston or suburban neighborhood bid for an Olympic Village of townhouses in the style of the Back Bay or Beacon Hill. The doctor will not be holding his breath.
If Boston wants to weigh jobs versus white elephants, and wager whether the upshot will be a net gain or loss for the metropolitan area, Dr. Downtown can point his fickle finger of fate at his shelf of studies arguing for a ten-foot pole - a pole not for vaulting but for distancing Boston from a gold in garish Olympian error.
Dear Dr. Downtown: Do you think the Pawtucket Red Sox will absquatulate from McCoy Stadium? - In Anticipatory Agony in Annaquatucket
The doctor is deeply impressed at your using a word meaning to depart with one’s tail between one’s legs. Leaving Pawtucket and the legacy of Ben Mondor in the lurch would be the dictionary definition of the word. And how much worse if the team were to leave the Ocean State altogether for the Bay State, snuggling up to the Patriots sports empire in Foxboro and turning the PawSox into the FoxSox.
Dear Dr. Downtown: Why have you been silent about GoLocalProv’s editorial calling for a soccer stadium in Kennedy Plaza? - Instigator in Island Park
The doctor was merely awaiting the opportunity offered by the intersection of several sporting-news topics to end his silence on that idea. He looks forward to seeing the Revolution, who are owned by Pats honcho Robert Kraft, move from Foxboro to where some believe the PawSox should move, if such a travesty is in the cards. Not to Kennedy Plaza, which is far too small for any kind of stadium, but to land near the park planned for the Route 195 development on the west side of the Providence River.
That possibility gives Dr. Downtown an opportunity to dredge up one of his most progressive ideas. Where would soccer fans park? Why, they would park at the Port of Providence and get on ferries for a cruise to the stadium. The ferries could dock just south of Point Street Bridge and fans could stroll to the stadium on the land just north of South Street Landing. That is where the state is converting an old power plant into a nursing school. Revolution in the Knowledge District - now there’s a sporting idea, quoth the doctor!
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