|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
Cupcakeland Steps Up to the Plate |
Current rating: 0 |
by Chuck Munson
Email: chuck (nospam) mutualaid.org (verified) |
18 Oct 2005
|
|
The proposed downtoen stadium is a bad deal. Local resident Chuck Munson takes on the greedy developers in this first installment of a series. |
Cupcakeland Chronicles
Cupcakeland Steps Up to the Plate
October 15th, 2005
Another Blog is Possible
http://chuck.mahost.org/
There’s trouble here in River City. Trouble spelled with a capital “B” and a capital “S”. No, I’m not talking about trouble called Bull Shit, rather the resurrection of plans for a Baseball Stadium in downtown Kansas City. That’s right, the rich numbskulls and greedy developers have announced a new plan to build a brand new stadium in downtown Kansas City. They are again proposing this hare-brained corporate welfare project, despite the fact that over 80% of Kansas City residents oppose any new stadium for the Royals.
The new plan has already prompted a flood of letters from local smartasses and wiseacres to the Kansas City, including this perfect quip from Chris Harper:
“There’s nothing wrong with the facility they are in [Kauffman Stadium], in the condition it’s in right now. If they don’t like it, maybe they should leave town. I’m sure that all 3,265 fans who were there for the last game will miss them.
If you aren’t a longtime reader of this blog, you may not understand what “Cupcakeland” is or why it’s a special category on this blog. Cupcakeland is the title of an essay about Kansas City written for Harper’s magazine several years ago by local Pulitzer-winning author Richard Rhodes. In the essay, the outlined the very peculiar history of Kansas City, especially the decades-long effort by Johnson Country rich white prudes to “clean up” the city to make it safe for the white middle class who hardly ever visit the city anymore. You can think of this process as being similar to how Rudy Giuliani and Company ruined Times Square and turned it into several blocks of Disneypornification. Here in Kansas City, the police and the developers ran the jazz and gin clubs, along with all the other fun vice out of town. You may have heard of Kansas City jazz? Well, that wonderful musical movement was rooted in the vice that made Kansas City an interesting place in the early to mid-20th century. There is still some live jazz around K.C., but all of that wonderful culture has been petrified and wedged into our jazz museum.
Cupcakeland also goes hand-in-hand with “Babbittry” which can loosely be defined (borrowing from Wikipedia) as being a phenomenon whose “chief virtue is conformity and whose religion is boosterism.” This is taken from Babbitt, the 1922 novel by Sinclair Lewis on the sad realities of conformism in American culture. The politics of Kansas City are best described as being an advance form of “Babbittry”. Many cities feature similar worship of civic boosterism and chamber of commerce visionaries. But in Kansas City, the civic leaders, journalists, and local leaders do this with a big chip on their shoulder. A big cow chip with barbecue sauce on it. The old saying goes that “everything is up-to-date” in Kansas City, but K.C.’s civice leaders secretly fear that our city is inferior to all other American cities, especially St. Louis.
When I first left Kansas City in the 1980s, there was a big inferiority complex directed towards St. Louis, which abated in 1985 after the Royals beat the Cardinal. Lo and behold, I return after 15 years and now Kansas City feels inferior to Omaha and Oklahoma City? Kansas City is really an awesome place to live and I’ve lived in cool places like Madison and Washington, DC.
The comeback of the downtown stadium proposal is Cupcakeland to the max. Other cities have been extorted into building expensive palaces for baseball at a time when most of those cities’ residents don’t have access to affordable housing, good jobs, or healthcare. Kansas City has an opportunity to set an example by remodeling Kauffman Stadium and saying that we have other community priorities that need to be addressed. Yes, we love our baseball team, even if it sucks beyond belief, but “the K” is a pretty cool place. How about we improve the Royals and the lives of working Kansas Citians, instead of giving more welfare money to greedy developers and civic fatcats on the Downtown Council?
One of these days I just know I’ll find that 3-D baseball card depicting the new Royals Stadium that they gave away to us kids on opening night back in 1972. The Royals played the Rangers. The stadium was so new that they hadn’t even sodded the slope next to the water spectacular.
First in a series. Coming up: Pro-downtown stadium arguments refuted. |
This work is in the public domain |
