First Seattle Storm Game

This is how I feel about free stuff:

"Because only one thing counts in this life! Get them to sign on the line, which is dotted! You hear me, you f****** f******? A-B-C. A—Always. B—Be. C—Closing. Always. Be. Closing. Always be closing!"

I spotted some sign at the Kirkland library about free WNBA Seattle Storm tickets and I got enough of them that we could bring Lydia's dad and brother with us too.

This was my first WNBA game, so that was exciting. It was also fun because it was toward the end of Sue Bird's final season. "She spent 20 years in the pros and has many accolades to her credit. Bird was a two-time national champion at UConn before becoming a four-time WNBA champion and five-time Olympic gold medalist."

Some differences between other sporting events I've been to: there was a dance team but it was comprised of little girls. There was also a kiss cam type thing but instead of kissed it was like high fives or something. My theory is that there were so many same sex couples at the game that they wouldn't be able to tell who was together, so they just sidestepped the issue entirely.

The half time show was taiko drummers which was very cultural of them. I don't like to brag but I have a bit of taiko instruction under my belt.

Evan and Sam were wowed by the Amazon One technology at the concession stands, where you can just wave your palm to get in, pick up whatever you want, and leave. The magic cameras will know what you took and email you the bill. Big Chicken is Shaq's chicken chain, so that's fun too.

Ben Gibbard, lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie, was in attendance. I have actually recently seen the Bellingham, Washington originated band when they opened for the Foo Fighters.

I think it's cool that since the arena is Amazon sponsored that they advertise tv shows.. not the usual beer or whatever sports arena ads.

Storm Wins!

Got Paid to See the Foo Fighters

My recollection is that the first actual event at the brand newly (brandly new?) renovated Climate Pledge Arena was Coldplay. I'd already seen them live so I bailed on that one. This isn't so much a job for me as a way to see shows.

I feel like they just assumed that I knew how parking/transportation worked, and I'm new around these parts so I in fact did not know. I ended up parking really far away and doing a lot of walking to get to the arena. The only suitable pair of black shoes I had were some dress shoes with a wooden sole I bought for someone's wedding. So by the end of the night my feet were pretty close to needing to be amputated.

At the very least, I knew I was going to walk away from this experience with a new word under my belt. I was stationed in the area between the seats and the hallway, apparently called the "vom". I had to look this word up and it's hilariously short for "vomitorium". Wikipedia: "In ancient Roman architecture, vomitoria were designed to provide rapid egress for large crowds at amphitheatres and stadia." So both vom and vomit share the same root Latin word meaning to "spew". I didn't end up getting puked on today so that was good.

I was pretty excited to see the Foo Fighters, and I was hoping that I would get plenty of time with them and not have to work in an area where I couldn't see the show. Death Cab for Cutie I've heard of but couldn't tell you any of their songs. One cool things with both bands was their local connections. Cutie was founded in Bellingham, Washington, situated about 3/4 of the way from Seattle to Canada. Foo Fighters are from Seattle and frontman Dave Grohl was previously a big deal for being the drummer for Nirvana, another famous Seattle act. I was excited to get some local culture to better understand and integrate into the area.

So our area was so fancy that guests had to use their ticket to get in the front door like everyone else, but then they also had to use it again to open the door to their private suite. All of the tickets were digital but some of these skeleton key tickets were printed for the staff. With this baby I could get into every suite door.

The place was a hot mess. It being a newish building with a new layout, no one knew where the heck they were going and hounded me with questions. In the depths where I work the damn hallways are black and there's not any signage, so that was difficult to say the least. I heard on the walkie that Jerry Bruckheimer was in the building. In hindsight I'm sure that I saw him, maybe even briefly spoke to him, but at the time I had no idea what he looked like so I was unable to pitch my blog as his next major motion picture.

In the suite's private bathrooms water was coming up from the drains every time someone flushed the toilet. There was also water coming up near some of the bartender's areas. We were having issues with the suite tvs as well. 

Guess what?

There were a few rows of temporary seating up against where the wall would be for a hockey game. An unfortunate aspect of these chairs was that they were all hooked together. So when one drunken idiot leaned back too far, 15 chairs would fall over at once, spilling drinks and sometimes people. There was an altercation when someone in the pit area kept jumping over the hockey wall into my rich people area. He ended up getting in a fight with one of the rich people and we had to have the police escort him out of the building.

At one point Grohl and drummer Taylor Hawkins switched places. Hawkins cajoled Grohl into playing the drum intro for Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". It would have been killer if they'd played the whole song. Instead they insisted on playing some Queen nonsense. In Seattle. You're killing me.

Hearing “Monkey Wrench” really took me back. I think that this was one of the first songs that I ever downloaded from the internet onto my giant desktop computer as a youth. I probably saw the music video on MTV.

The arena is also home to the WNBA's Seattle Storm. 

One of my coworkers showed me how to take the monorail back to my car. It was quite a night.