Tip Your 40 (Years) to the Sonics' Memory

• MarkS--We have deal. No welfare for private arts and no welfare for pro-sports businesses. Gee, see a little dialog brings consensus. BTW I\'m not a troll simply because I express a view in conflict with yours. You, however are an asshole, for calling me names. OOPS! Now I\'m a troll. PS Fuck the Sonics and Fuck their whiny ass fans. Pay your own way thru life like the rest of us.

• An open letter to our Governor: Dearest Governor, Please consider that a sports team is not essential to the continued functioning of Washington and King County. Calling a special session to make such a decision is a hugh waste and expense of taxpayers money and legislators time; and if it isn\'t, it should probabaly be illegal to call a special session for such an inane reason. How about we concentrate that time and money on helping squash drug abuse, homelessness, and supporting small businesses; not creating a new home for a spoiled ball team. Thanks for your time. Sincerely, Mark P.

• Got a deal for you troll. The Sonics fans will stop asking for a public contribution the day the faux arts community gives up their\'s. You know the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Seattle Opera (Checked out ticket prices for this bunch? The least expensive is $40. Cheap family entertainment?) Seattle Rep and others. And don\'t get me started about so called private donations to these groups. If these donations were not tax deductable they wouldn\'t exist.

• It\'s true, isn\'t it Steve? Pro-sports, like your President Bush, have brought the communtiy together . Youycan\'t figure out what the previous post has to do with the Sonics? Did you read it? If so, you are not a very attentive reader. Probably too much time in front of the boob tube, and not enough time with the written word. Oh, and I think these obstructionists get it. They understand how capitalism is supposed to work. You sell your entertainment for a price that allows you to meet your payroll and other expenses. The problem for the Sonics is that their fans are unwilling to pay a ticket price large enough to cover The Sonics\' payroll. Fucking parasites want to tax the very food people eat in restaurants to subsidize their ticket purchases. What\'s next? A tax on Baby food?

• Hey Seely. Welcome to the terrordome of uninformed mouth-frothing ignoramuses that we\'ve been dealing with all season long. Don\'t both replying to the obstructionists ... they don\'t get it and never will. These are the same idiots who proudly displayed their \"Go Seahawks - And Take the Mariners With You!\" bumper stickers back in 1994 ... and are the same loudmouths you see in line at SafeCo Field saying how they\'ve been a fan of the Ms since Rupe, but they can\'t name any players pre-95. \"The county is still paying off millions owed on the Kingdome which was torn down eight years ago. It was a perfectly good functioning facility with a new $70,000,000 roof, but it wasn\'t good enough for the Mariners and Seahawks.\" A) What does that have to do with the Sonics? B) Anyone who thinks the Kingdome was a decent facility for either baseball or football has clearly never been to a real park for either. I guess this Chris Van Dyk-inspired ass clown never got that memo.

• A copy of a letter to Oklahoma City\'s mayor and council. Greetings from Seattle. And congratulations! Soon you\'ll have the Sonics moving to your town. And be ready. They will have their hand out. I heard that your basketball arena is a few years old; that just won\'t do for the, well let\'s call your new team the Okies. The Okies will be looking for at least $500,000,000 in subsidies. And when they demand the money, they will do two things. One, they will tell you how much your community will gain from hosting an NBA team. It will make your town a big league city! It will bring the community together! They will take some economic studies that show the city will lose money on the investment and spin it into a pot of gold for the city. By the way: last fall 74% of the voters in Seattle, tired of being ripped off on these stadium subsidies, passed a city initiative requiring a return on a sports arena to equal an investment in a Treasury Bond. The Sonics said they couldn\'t do it. Keep that in mind when they promise you the moon. Maybe you should invest in T-bonds? Good luck! Do you know that the total costs to our community for the Seahawks and Mariners stadiums is over a BILLION DOLLARS? And no one can come up with a study showing we profited from that investment. And those two teams are already lobbying for more money to maintain and upgrade their less than ten year old facilities. The county is still paying off millions owed on the Kingdome which was torn down eight years ago. It was a perfectly good functioning facility with a new $70,000,000 roof, but it wasn\'t good enough for the Mariners and Seahawks. Good luck! You are soon to be a MAJOR LEAGUE CITY!

• Seems to me that Seattle passed an ordinance allowing money to be spent on a new (or upgraded) arena as long as the sonics paid \"interest\" on the public funding. That interest was approximately the T-bill rate, say 5%. So, if Bennett doesn\'t want to pay the whole tab, he still has an option. He had askec for $300M of public funds; at 5% that\'s $15M a year, decreasing as the tab gets paid off. In fact, it could be even better: suppose he \"borrows\" the whole $500M - then it\'s $25M per year, decreasing. So instead of coughing up the extra $200M up front, he gets 8 years (probably longer) to amortize that. What a deal! I don\'t think we\'ve seen the end of the story yet.

• There\'s a word for the troll that keeps dogging you Mike. A sore winner. I-91 passed. The legislature won\'t vote on the arena bill. The Sonics may well be leaving town and this guy\'s still pissed off.

• I don\'t own a pair of jeans. Seriously. So I guess I\'ll never know my ass from a hole in the ground. Although I prefer a slightly-altered version of this expression which substitutes \"hole in the dark\" for \"hole in the ground.\" Your ass, like a hole in the dark, is actually a dark hole; whereas hole\'s in the ground are not necessarily dark, especially during the daytime -- and especially in a community P-Patch.

• Let me help you out here Seely. Look behind you. See those back pockets on your jeans? Just under them is your ass. Now go outside and find some dirt. Take a tool of some sort-like a spoon and scoop up some dirt and set it aside. Now that is a hole. Now, at long last, you know your ass from a hole in the ground. No need to thank me. Fuck the Sonics. And especially fuck the Sonics fans who want me to subsidize the price of their game tickets.

• I shared season tickets in the upper end zone for years - top row, in fact. They were $7 each at first, and $9 each when I finally gave them up (no time to go to games as the kids got older, and I started coaching little league basketball and baseball.) All these arguments about the NBA and their obscene ticket prices are misinformed at best...

• I\'ll have to second you on the $10 seats Mike. I watched the Sacramento game from there. While the game was a disappointment I was surpirsed how great the view was.

• I don\'t always sit in press row. I\'ve sat in those $10 seats at least a half-dozen times this season, so I know of which I write. And while most of your other points are well-taken, those taxes are never going to go to anything but sports facilities. If the Sonics don\'t get them, no one will. And if the Sonics don\'t get them, neither will arts programs like 4Culture, whose access to such funds is contingent upon their continuing to subsidize sports stadiums.

• my eyesight\'s fine. perhaps you forgot how the other 98% lives after your time on press row. either way, i enjoyed them as a kid, but lost interest after the kemp-for-baker trade, and didn\'t like the terms of the arena proposal. i will grant that it seems more likely to stimulate economic development given that it\'d be built in the middle of nothing--the studies i\'ve read on stadiums (and their relative lack of economic impact) seemed to center on those in urban areas. if they could really fill it up 2/3 of the year, it might actually work. (of course, as you pointed out, their projections are a little hopeful, given the nhl component.) no doubt chopp is an asshole, but this is one instance in which i\'m grateful for his dictator ways. i\'d rather not see tax money spent on that arena. why should the sups get most of the revenue when they\'re not contributing most of the costs to building it?

• You need new glasses. One of the charming things about the supposedly inadequate Key is that there\'s not a bad seat in the cozy, little place.

• i can\'t tell squatch from pau gasol from the end zones--those seats are shit.

• Top row tickets $40? Horseshit. Maybe at center court up high they\'re in that ballpark, but in the \"end zones\" you can get great seats for $10. I\'d argue it\'s the single best sports deal out there. The notion that Sonic games are exclusively for the rich is one of the grandest misnomers out there.

• fuck \'em--let \'em leave. top row seats cost $40 to see a shitty team. i can watch my nba on tnt for free.

• No one\'s put it quite as well as Lister did. When Chopp\'s retired, hitting the ballet and opera will only go so far in blowing his pension, and the calls for another team will grow louder. I feel like Ron Burgundy in my glass case of emotion - can no one hear me?!

• NO NO NO NO NO! I\'ve lived in a city without an NBA basketball team...it\'s like living in the tiny town from Footloose.

• Cantwell has taken on rescuing the sinking Coast Guard cutter, seems reasonable she would also toss a life jacket to the USS UNSUPER SONICS.We need a sobbing John Ellis wannabe(ala Mariners) to right the ship!

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