Footie! Footie! Footie!
Not again. You’re an obsequious toad-eater, but you’re not going to fool me. Just chanting the word “footie” doesn’t change the fact that you’re a stuck-up rugger-bugger. Anyway, why so animated about the beautiful game?
New stadium coming, mate. Going be like Wembley in ’66. Going to put Louisville on the sport map. David Beckham will be here in the blink of an eye, just in time for real football to take over this country. You mark my words.
Spoken like the cliché-ridden hack you are. However much I agree about football taking over this country — it’s inevitable, and one of the few bright spots on the horizon — I can’t get quite so enthusiastic about a stadium, especially given our history of making a pig’s ear of public finance. From what I understand, the decision is down to two possible locations, and neither of them makes much sense.
How do you know? Does this inside knowledge come courtesy of your position as a veteran amateur-football gobshite?
Partly. Apparently, it’s coming down to River Road, where the old Louisville Country Club used to be, or someplace just west of Ninth Street. Either could amount to a fatal, last-second own-goal for football in this city.
Not sure I follow you. As LEO’s proprietor pointed out last week, Louisville City’s fans aren’t going to stop coming to games just because a new stadium isn’t on the exact spot they want it to be.
Let me spell it out for you. River Road’s the lamest location for a new stadium imaginable. First, and most important, given where we live and how we solve problems, its residents are Louisville’s most reactionary NIMBYs — and they’ll kick up a right stink. Second, flooding. Third, there’s nothing else to do there except eat expensive-yet-unidentifiable-fried matter at Captain’s Quarters, surrounded by old white men... or professional women looking to pick up old white men. Fans will come, but it’s as conservative as it gets and, as an investment with growth prospects, which is what it has to be, it’s a complete nonstarter in my book. Mustn’t happen.
All right I’ll give you that. But what about a location west of Ninth? Regeneration of The West End, urban renewal and consolidation, economic stimulus. Ticks a lot of investment boxes there. (Not many football boxes, admittedly.)
Look, given the choice, that’s where I’d put it. But a West End location will probably depend on the city being willing to raze Beecher Terrace to the ground. In and of itself, that may not be the world’s worst idea, but forcing people out of their own homes, no matter what those homes may look like, isn’t a great way to make yourself popular if you’re a mayor, or the owner of a football team. Especially when The West End isn’t exactly short on brownfield space to begin with. That said, and given a choice between a sanitised and ultimately-bad-for-business location in The East End and a socially-scary location in The West End — my money’s on the wrong decision.
I’m going with you on the prediction. I agree Portland’s the best bet, too. Downtown enough, regeneration, won’t put middle-class soccer people off going, and it’ll have a more measurable impact economically. I suppose the only defencible cultural downside is that it’s already partly gentrified, which usually means more opportunity for pasty beer snobs, while making it too expensive for everyone else.
Unlike our healthcare, where market forces will result in nobody ever getting sick again. That’s the idea, isn’t it?
Listening to Pence and Bevin on Saturday was enough to make anyone sick. But no surprise that Pence came here to visit Trump Junior: I expect Bevin prostrated himself, begging for it. Kills three birds with one stone — bit of feel-good exposure to fuel our New England Yankee governor’s national political ambitions; a chance to persuade our idiotic electorate that rogering themselves over healthcare is just what Jesus would want; and puts a bit of pressure on the Senate’s No. 1 healthcare obstacle, Baby Rand.
A succinct and, by your standards, almost coherent summary. Made him a Kentucky Colonel too, Heaven forfend. But what the buggering bollocks has Pence done to merit such lofty approbation from our deep-red state... apart from prostitute the Messiah Jesus as an excuse to hate queers and people of other faiths?
Exactly. But on healthcare it bears repeating: Democrats should give the Right everything it wants. Like absolutely everything. It’s the only way to end political stalemate in this country; it’s the only way people might learn that Republican’s don’t give a toss. Call me a Christian, but I don’t think anyone deserves to get sick, or to bankrupt themselves, trying to survive.
My socialist principles conveniently aside, I begrudgingly concur: a big, vengeful Trump-like part of me wants my pound of flesh from the unwashed, white masses who voted the piss-eyed git into office.
Right. I believe those voters deserve to know what kind of people they support — which they obviously don’t. Only way to get them to understand that Democrats weren’t bullshitting them is for there to be a healthcare bloodbath. Pick up the pieces after cynical bastards like McConnell, Ryan and Bevin have been exposed for what they are.
I wish it was going to be as easy as that, me old china. That comical CBO score is going to put the kibosh on a lot of GOP senators voting for it: No way it’ll pass now. So if it doesn’t pass, they won’t learn.
They won’t anyway, not at this time of year. March Madness. Never mind Trump coming to town or footie stadiums — the media’s going to be consumed with breathless and horribly-written accounts of freakishly-tall children dashing up and down little courts to the shrill screams of Captain’s Quarters patrons. My ears and eyes are already bleeding in anticipation.
