Activity 8(part 2)

Activity 8(Yankee Stadium)
Rosedelle A chery
For the second part of this activity, Group 7 decided to take us to the New Yankee stadium. I was excited to go, in part because I love the Yankees and I never got a chance to visit the old stadium, but also because I went to the Bronx for activity 2, I accidentally ended up there after getting lost. But in getting lost I found a faster way to the Bronx and I was excited to try it out. When I got there I was surprised to see the progress that had been made in the demolition of the old stadium. When I went there in February for activity 2, the building had been stripped down, but most of the actual structure was still up. However, now the building is half way gone. It’s crazy to see that a building that had so much history can be reduced to rumble too quickly. On the brighter side, the new stadium is really pretty. It’s like looking a brand new pair of earrings; it’s very new and very shiny, so to speak.
When I say I love the Yankees, I mean I’m more of a passive fan. For me, it’s nice to know when they win, if I happen to hear about it on the news or something. So going to the stadium wasn’t really that exciting, but it’s nice for me to know that I actually went to the new stadium and in the future I can say that I was there. Jennifer, my group member, pointed out that the majority of the people there were white and she found that really strange because the neighborhood where the stadium was located was an African American and Spanish neighborhood. It didn’t really shock me because when I think about baseball and this is going to sound very stereotypical, I think of it as a white sport. However, I do know that there are many Spanish and black fans of the baseball, but along with the highly expensive prices of a game, I can’t say that seeing so many white people surprised me. Baseball, like mostly everything in this world, is a money making business and in order to make top dollar, people are going to charge that much. Granted I think that it’s unfair and the team would make more money if they lessen their prices, but I also think that they keep it so high so that not just everyone can come in. I’m sure that whoever makes the prices took into consideration the income and the people that lived around there and made the prices high purposely. This is just my opinion, but I’m very pessimistic about the world and people, so I could be very wrong. Sadly, we do live in the kind of world that will set up any kind of barriers to keep out “undesirables”.
I don’t think that Yankee stadium fell into the category of a good public place according to the standards that William Whtye set up in his observations. The stadium does provide an open place and lots of sun (p46), but at the same time it doesn’t provide any shade or a minimal amount or anything else that Whyte describes. The stadium was just a stadium, compared to the places Whtye talks about. The stadium, to me, was an artificial outdoor space. It’s like being in building without a roof; essentially it’s still a building. Either way I did have fun during this activity and I hope to explore more places in the city, even after the class ends.