Note to Minnesota Vikings: Parking Lots aren't Cities

[Hey, let's eat food from off our cars!]

I kinda understand tailgating, I suppose. It's like a picnic, only instead of being in a park under a tree on a blanket in the grass, you're in a parking lot eating out of your trunk on a crappy lawn chair surrounded by tailpipe fumes, and the only way to make it enjoyable is to drink yourself into a stupor. It's got to be some kind of lowpoint for American culture, and that's saying something!

But tailgating is a "time honored" "tradition" and is somehow sacrosanct in places like State College Pennsylvania, Arlington Texas, and elite educational institutions such as Boise State and The University of Southern Mississippi.

The Vikings released a sketch of their proposed Arden Hills urban experience that makes it look like a scene from downtown Brooklyn, as un-stadium-like as possible.

[Team pitchman rendering of the "stadium" emphasizing urban qualities.]

Creating an urban image of the proposed Vikings stadium is a bit like trying to take a flattering photograph of Garrison Keillor, which is only possible from a camera POV 7.4 feet in the air, from an right side 24 degree angle if Garrison is leaning slightly forward and you have a slight chiaroscuro effect. All other photos make Garrison look like a demented slovenly troll.

The same is true for the Vikings Stadium, which will be the state's most expensive mall surrounded by a parking lot at the end of an on-ramp on a superfund site in the middle of nowhere. The phrase lipstick on a pig comes to mind, only here its more like putting lipstick on one of those concrete dinosaur statues at the cheese mart next to the freeway in Janesville, Wisconsin.

The proposed Vikings stadium site will be about as urban as a fake Wal-Mart facade. It'll make Main Street Maple Grove feel like downtown Boston. You'll be in the world's largest parking lot drinking yourself into a stupor, and noone will ever know if you're doing it because of the soul-sucking environment or because of the team lost to the Detroit Lions again.

[Actually accurate rendering of the proposed stadium.]