Mulling around in my mind are the medium-term impacts of COVID-19 and the changes of people's behavior that will stick with us, even if COVID-19 fatality tapers off.
I am thinking here not of the next month or two, but of the next year or two, i.e. until there is a widespread, effective vaccine.
What am I missing?
(In no particular order)
Tourism/Hospitality - Probably the worst hit industry, especially for international travel.
Airlines - See above.
Retail - So much shopping is moving online, how will that affect retail in general? Probably quite a lot. Hopefully, smaller local shops can remain afloat.
Transit - It's so important that people take transit again, but how will people feel comfortable sitting a foot from a stranger? It should be possible, but I don't see it happening easily. I'm very worried.
Theater/Music - For live performance, it sort of depends. Theater might be OK, but many theaters or concert venues rely on older audiences. OTOH, places like First Avenue or any venue that is not seated is going to create a ton of anxiety for people, packed onto a dance floor for example.
Restaurants/Bars - Short-term, these are hurt a lot. But I actually think restaurants and bars can come back fairly quickly with some changes put in place. OTOH the business is so marginal already...
Food Trucks - They are events-driven. Without events, many can't survive.
Universities - Enrollment will be down a lot, especially for international students. This was already happening to some degree, but expect hiring freezes and for schools that were already struggling to get be worse off.
Catering/Events/Weddings/Funerals - I don't see how big events continue, especially multi-generational events with lots of folks traveling. They'll have to get smaller and change.
Festivals/Fairs - See above.
Night Clubs/Dancing - Seems bad, but at least young people are relatively invulnerable, I guess. Say goodbye to square dancing at the Eagles Club or Tapestry Folk Dance center, especially since their patrons are often older. When will it feel OK again to hold hands with dozens of strangers?
Seniors in Groups - Places that have moved past the epidemic stage seem to be maintaining restrictions and extreme caution for older people, who are by far the most vulnerable. Any kind of group activity for older people is going to be severely impacted.
Museums - If older people stop going to events, that would be bad for museums. So many museums rely on seniors, and seem to have doubled-down on events as a key part of their business model.
Sports: Spectator and Participation - I think it won't be too long before TV-only spectator sports return. They'll figure this out. That said, some sports are better than others. Crowds at stadiums, though? When will that happen again? Years from now?
Political Organizing - How do you door knock or hold rallies? Yet, people want to talk on the phone and have plenty of time to write emails to elected officials.
Located on the edge of the Torre de San Miguel Homes on Saint Paul's West Side, a 60s-era public housing project run by a non-profit, there's basketball court in a hollow along Wabasha Street. The court and the grassy spaces surrounding are a great example of a quasi-public space. It is not not an official city park, but nor is private space fenced off or reserved for specific property owners. Instead, it’s somewhere in between: open to anyone, not really accountable, vaguely regulated. Like many such spaces that are all around our cities, it serves a crucial function without much formal control. In the underserved, working class West Side, it is a rare place for young people to gather and play games with each other, most especially (but not limited to) the hugely popular sport of basketball.
Yet for over two years, when I used to pass by this court area on my way through the neighborhood, there were never hoops attached to the poles. On either end of the basketball court stood unadorned metal poles. It was a sad symbol of neglect of the poor and neglect of children. I would usually look over at the court on my way past the housing project and sigh.
One afternoon, in the summertime, I was heading down the sidewalk next to the court. I looked over and sighed again.
Then for some reason I paused and watched the six or so kids playing. I realized they were playing basketball.
Despite the fact that the hoops themselves were missing, the kids on the court had a basketball, dribbled it around the pole, and shot it ten feet into the air. They were playing offence and defense with imaginary baskets.
“She shoots, she scores!” I almost heard the young girl thinking, as the ball arced through imaginary hoop hanging in mid-air.
I’m often amazed at the creativity of the young, the ability to make their world fit their dreams. At the same time, the imaginary basketball hoop was a dismaying condemnation of our institutions -- in this case the housing non-profit -- to invest, maintain, and support our children.
[For a little while, someone rigged up a temporary hack, bringing in a store-bought basketball hoop and wedging it under the existing pole.]
Over a year later, real basketball hoops and backboards were finally installed on the court. Today, kids from all over the neighborhood use the court for all year long, stuff from basketball to bicycling to just hanging out.
In many public spaces, especially the informal and unguided ones, kids are always using their imagination to entertain themselves and create new worlds. The power of imagination is inspiring, but there’s no substitute for actual infrastructure, a legitimate place to play or a real basketball hoop.
[CM Gordon is now the oldest elected person at City Hall.]
Four years ago, after the Minneapolis City Election dust had settled, I did a quick analysis of the results and pointed out how there had been a big generational shift at City Hall. With a big influx of under-40 Council Members taking over for older folks, the "average age" of the fourteen elected officials went down that year from 54 to 42, a drop of twelve years. That's about as big a "generational shift" as you can get, especially if you are keeping half the incumbents around.
Here's what I wrote at the time:
Age isn't everything, of course, any many of the incumbents are "young at heart." But sometimes age is important. As everyone who has ever had parents knows, there are big generational differences about the importance of computers, cars, "quality of life", etc. It'll be interesting to see how and if Minneapolis starts to "act younger" with its decision-making as the new council takes the reins.
Well, despite everyone being four years older than they were four years ago, this year's results only continued that trend. Two new council members are under 30, the new mayor is under 40, and here's the updated chart:
(Note: I do not have Jeremy Schoeder's age in here yet. I have reached out to him and will add it when I can.)
That's only part of the picture. The other, much bigger deal, is that the City Council has become more diverse. On one hand, the city's gender parity is gone, and that's disappointing.
On the other hand, there is a big increase in people of color and non-cisgender representation. That is huge.
Here's David Brauer's summary:
Especially when compared to eight years ago, there's been a visible change in the political and power dynamics in Minneapolis City Hall. In an era when cities are under attack on all sides from other levels of government, engaging younger people and historically disenfranchised groups in local politics is a great sign.
[7-yr-old and 91-yr-old, hit by cars on the same day this month.]
I have been driving more often lately, borrowing my girlfriends' car to run errands. As I’ve described on this blog before, whenever I'm driving in a city, I try to actually drive at-or-below the
speed limit.
(Yes, you read that right.That means, that I drive 30-35 miles per hour on Cretin Avenue or West 7th
Street, for example. Or below 30 on my own George Street.)
As you can imagine, thanks to our too-wide and too-forgiving
city streets, I almost always find someone riding my bumper.
The other day, driving around the West 7th Street area it
happened again.I’ve gotten kind of used
to tailgating at this point, and I ignore the social pressure of the car behind me. (Or "the flow", as LarsChristiensen once called it.) It’s rather a mild
annoyance, less annoying than when you’re bicycling down Rice Street and
someone throws their garbage at you, but about equally annoying as the construction signsplaced in the middle of the bike lane on the Wabasha Bridge.
At any rate, I was surprised the other day on West 7th
Street when I caught a glimpse of the tailgating driver: it was a the
proverbial little old lady, peeking over the steering wheel, hair as pure white
as an audience at a Trump rally.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, I suppose, but I found the
sight depressing. In Saint Paul, even the little old ladies are speeding as fast as
possible through the neighborhoods.
8-80 Cities and Driving Culture
One of the best bandwagons that Saint Paul ever jumped upon
was the Gil Peñalosa “8-80 movement”, a call-to-action for cities to take
street design seriously, and to focus attention on people at the youngest and
oldest parts of the aging and mobility spectrum. Peñalosa’s key argument is
that, if we design streets where 8-year-olds and 80-year-olds can safely walk,
bike, and get around, then we have a city that will work for everyone.
That’s why it’s frustrating to see the proverbial octogenarian speeding, driving dangerously, and riding my ass. We’ve created roads and an entire urban landscape that revolves around driving, all throughout one's life from 16 up to age 80. But I worry about a future
that combines aging, diminished perception, and our
drive-everywhere culture with attempts to promote active living.
Designing streets that allow people with a wide range of capacities to drive everywhere comes at a cost. If we make it easy for a distracted
teenager or mostly-deaf grandfather to speed around, it makes it
impossible for your 10-year-old kid or your great aunt to walk to the store.
The same wide streets, big parking lots, and turn lanes designed for tailgating make it all-but-impossible to cross the street. In short, streets that are forgiving for “16-to-80 drivers”
come at the expense of “8-80 cities.”
To make matters worse, often during street design debates, the proverbial “little old lady” is raised up as an excuse for not building safer
crosswalks or keeping parking spots. This happened during the Ramsey County debate around a 4-3 road diet on Dale Street, for example. From what I heard about the conversation, the "little old ladies" going to church needed once-a-week parking, so the
county didn’t improve a deadly 4-lane death road through a walkable neighborhood.
Instead of a safer road that
would have had slower speeds and fewer conflict points, we kept the one
without safer intersections and without shorter crossing distances.
I am really interested in hearing from older Saint Paul folk about whether they see this as a problem, and what the solution might be. In Saint Paul’s ongoing comprehensive planning process, there are a
bunch of ideas for how to adapt the city over the next decade to be a better
fit for older people.
Note: I learned that “aging in place” is no longer the best
way to phrase this; “aging in community” is better, because it gets at a more
active, social, and vital sense of what it means to be aging.
Here are a few slides from a recent presentation to the
Planning Commission with some of the idea from the draft chapters of the
upcoming Comprehensive Plan. (See also, a recent Saint Paul study entitled "Reframing Aging: Opportunities for Aging in Community" that covers all of this!)
To me, the transportation components are
particularly important. Can Saint Paul figure out a way to create streets that
allow people to walk safely, no matter their age? Can we change our assumptions
about driving at the same time? Or is there no way to reconcile “8-80 cities”
with “16-80 drivers”?
[This is in response to a letter to the editor in the most recent Villager, pictured at right.]
Dear Charles:
We've never met, but I read with a mix of interest and anxiety your recent letter in the Highland Villager. In it, you castigate a "small group" of younger people who "jeered" at "what these old people built" during a recent meeting on the Ford site.
As a obsessive student of Saint Paul history, I was initially put off by your condescending tone. As I have done many times during the Ford site debate, I rolled my eyes and looked away.
Yet later I realized we might have something in common. Despite the fact that we disagree on the merit of the city's plans for the Ford Site -- I have called them "the best thing I've ever seen Saint Paul propose, anywhere" -- I see common ground.
In your letter, you describe the rich social connections that people have built over the years. You list things like PTA meetings, coaching baseball, gardening, attending funerals, and donating used clothing to frame what you see as a lack respect for older folks living in Saint Paul.
I, too, value of these kinds of social connections. When I think of the word "community", it is precisely these sorts of relationships that spring to mind. I love the weak ties of recognition that come from knowing one's neighbor, and I value the strong ties of kinship that come from sharing institutions like schools, churches, libraries, or even the neighborhood bar. (There are too few of these in Highland, by the way, but that's another story!)
However, I think there's something important that you might not yet recognize. I'm guessing you're in my parents' generation, born sometime in the mid-1950s, give or take a few years. That was right in the midst of the post-war baby boom generation when Saint Paul, and indeed all US cities, experienced rapid change.
Memories are a fickle thing, but in my research over the years, I am always amazed when I'm reminded how much denser and more populated Saint Paul used to be. In the 50s and 60s, our city was much more full of people. Streets were narrower. Higher percentages of folks took transit every day. People walked a lot more! And on average, every house in Highland -- and all through the city -- housed more people than they do today. Instead of 1, 2, or 3 people living in a single-family home, when you were born, there might have been 2, 4, or 6 people sharing the same space.
Just like you, I look back on those times (weirdly, before I was born) and think fond thoughts. I like to imagine Cleveland Avenue, Saint Clair Avenue, or a dozen other streets when there were a hundred local shops, foot traffic all day, and a rich world of street life. That seems wonderful to me!
The problem is that, since the 60s, public space in our cities has eroded. Instead of homes and shops, we have parking lots. Instead of big families, we have houses with only one or two people (and their pets, of course). Much of the time, instead of connecting, people watch TV, or stare at their phones. (See? I sound like an old crank!) The point is that the social propinquity that we both value has been changing for a long time.
What do we do?
On this we likely won't agree, but for me, a big culprit of this change is urban design.
I've talked about this before, but when we're swallowed up by private homes or driving around in our private cars, stuck in traffic or speeding past, we become the least common denominator of our social selves. In our cars, we have little way of communicating apart from a honking horn, a revved engine, or a turn signal. In our disconnected homes, with their quiet front yards, we have little way to engage apart from lawn signs. (Witness Highland these days!)
Instead, we spend our time inside private bubbles, driving or holed up in dens. We listen to private soundtracks or (worse) some idiot ranting about "garage logic." Meanwhile, Saint Paul's sidewalks, shops, and public spaces are frayed by vast parking lots, speeding cars, and the march of privatization. Meanwhile, Saint Paul continues to lose the density and social connection that made it a vital place.
If you don't believe me on this last point, I'd urge you to check out the sociologist Robert Putnam's book "Bowling Alone", about the what he calls "the decline of social capital." Putnam's social capital is precisely the kinds of relationships you describe in your letter. He shows that, since the World War Two generation (your parents), it's been disappearing. And one of the main culprits is our driving habit.
Putnam summarizes the causes for the decline like this [emphasis mine]:
First, pressures of time and money, including the special pressures on two-career families, contributed measurably to the diminution of our social and community involvement... Second, suburbanization, commuting, and sprawl also played a supporting role... Third, the effect of electronic entertainment - above all, television - in privatizing our leisure time has been substantial... Fourth and most important, generational change - the slow steady, and ineluctable replacement of the long civic generation by their less involved children and grandchildren - has been a very powerful factor.
I encourage you to read the whole thing, or at least skim through the charts about picnics and Shriners' clubs. And by the way, it might surprise you to read some of the data on the Millennial generation. They are more interested in civic engagement and social connection than anyone has been in a long time.
The point is that I believe the city's plan for the Ford site matches our future needs and will strengthen the social fabric in Saint Paul. If Putnam is right, we need less "privatized space" and more everyday public space in which people can connect. If we want to keep the kinds of social ties and connections that you and I both value, we need less orientation toward cars and more social forms of transit and transportation. We need opportunities to walk around and encounter the diversity that Saint Paul has to offer. And most importantly, we need better housing accommodation for smaller households. Only then will we welcome the people who will become the next generation of PTO members, community gardeners, soccer coaches, and urban stewards.
In short, Saint Paul needs density. Building a neighborhood for the future can help Highland return to to the rich and dynamic social fabric that it had back when you were growing up.
Given how poisonous the debate has been over the Ford site plans so far -- I had to walk out of the recent church meeting because I could not tolerate the hostility coming from many of the "Say No" people -- I don't expect you to agree. I only hope others might read this with open minds and hearts. I hope Saint Paul might see a possible future for people of all backgrounds. I hope we can value what walkable streets, fewer cars, and more diverse kinds of homes might offer for our community.
I want to see our cities change, but I'm not trying to erase the past. On the contrary, in many ways, I want to return to it. I want those relationships we both value to thrive. I want a city where gardening, volunteerism, civic involvement, and small businesses flourish. I want a city where traditions are both honored and created anew, transformed for a future that includes the full diversity of Saint Paul's children. In the city to come, they will accomplish things greater than either of us can imagine.
[Paint on the street showing where you can ride a bicycle.]
In the abstract, the new Cleveland Avenue bike lanes are straightforward. Just 6’ of paint on the road where you can ride a bicycle. Such a thing is laughably simple, so it shouldn’t seem like a big deal.
But in experienced fact, the new lanes are amazing. Even though I was intimately involved in the planning of the project, the actual fact on the ground really surprised me. I never realized how close and connected all these parts of Saint Paul really were!
Nearness and Farness is All About Experience
[What it feels like to walk around half the time.]
Believe it or not, distance is a funny thing. Geographic distance, emotional distance, and temporal distance are almost never the same.
For one thing, in a car, there can be massive difference between the “as the crow flies” distance and the experienced distance. For drivers, where the car's capacities greatly exceed their utility, most of distance difference is caused by traffic. When a 20 minute trip turns into an hour because of construction or a crash (or because you live in a dense city), the mall can seem very far away!
The same thing happens with bicycling and walking, but in a very different way. The difference between geographic distance (measured in in feet or miles) and experienced distance isn’t really about time. Even in crowds, people go pretty much the same speeds on bicycles (10 - 15 mph) or on foot (2-4 mph).
Instead, the big gap between cognitive and geographic distance has to do with the physical feelings that streets can create at different times. There are massive differences in the amount of danger, pressure, or insecurity that streets generate, depending on a few different variables. Two blocks walking through a dark alley at night feels a hell of a lot more longer than two blocks down Main Street at midday.
For bicyclists and pedestrians, depending on street design, one mile can pass in the blink of an eye or stretch into an eternity. Urban designers and small business architects are keenly aware that there’s a huge difference between a good and bad sidewalk!
[A mile on the left does not equal a mile on the right.]
Not Feeling Like You Are About To Die Should be Normal
[Objects In Distance Are Closer Than They Appear.]
While there are lots of variables that come together to create this cognitive, emotionally felt distance, the #1 factor for bicycling is speeding cars. Almost anytime you’re bicycling near speeding cars, it feels stressful. This is doubly the case if you don’t have your own lane, if you’re forced to interact with drivers who may honk, swerve, and/or pass you closely. And for a long time, that has been the case for traveling North-to-South from Highland up to Saint Anthony Park. Because you’re continually in “harassment mode”, biking on Cleveland Avenue used to feel like a long way.
That's why the change is so magical. The first time I rode it, I was a bit baffled. Where am I? What city is this?
It turns out, it's not far at all!
Re-Weaving the City
I've done it a few times now, and I'm still amazed at how connected these two neighborhoods, Highland and Merriam Park, are to each other. You can ride that whole distance in ten minutes!
Bike lanes are not rocket science. A little bit of paint, and a few feet of space so that you don't feel like you're about to die... that's a pretty simple thing. It's not much to ask, and shouldn't be a big deal. In a year, nobody will remember that they were "controversial."
It’s nice to know that students enrolling at Saint Kate’s or Saint Thomas this fall, the two colleges on Cleveland, will never know a world without bike lanes connecting them to their city. This small change makes Saint Paul feel a little less daunting, a bit more intimate, a bit more of a coherent place. Welcome to the new normal, Saint Paul, where bike lanes bring us all a little bit closer together.
The Big 10 Bar and Sandwich Shop in Stadium Village closed for good last week, and I consider it a personal loss because I loved their pastrami sub. Not just the sandwich, of course, but the whole experience of the sandwich. The the way that the old wooden walls held traces of generations of Gophers, the laid-back attentive staff, the clean unfancy atmosphere.
The pastrami itself was a living sandwich tradition, an old-school creation: toasted bun with a huge heap of lettuce atop the cheese on the quality pastrami, all doused in a light oil. Nobody makes them like that any more, and it had a unique flavor and texture that I can taste with the slightest mention.
Yet right now, the entire two-story building is covered in “auction" signs, as one of the last historic brick buildings on Washington Avenue, is coming down for a new 26-story mixed-use apartment tower.
[The pastrami.]
[The bar.]
It’s tempting to be sad about the loss of a building like the one at Washington and Harvard, especially when it houses tenants that have been around for decades, especially when its the last in a long line of buildings that have bitten the dust on an old commercial street. But in this case, I’m not that upset. There should be word for this feeling, loss combined with the knowledge of a bright future. Let’s call it “buildingsroman freudenschade": the bittersweet taste of the loss of innocence that accompanies the coming-of-age of a neighborhood.
Outside of a few truly irreplaceable historic sites, when faced with a preservation decision, the key question that I ask myself: What is the proposed alternative? The context is critical, and the question “should we save this building” has to be accompanied with the answer to the other question: “what are we replacing it with?”
Back in the post-war building boom, the majority of redevelopment and preservation debates involved tearing down buildings for roads, parking lots, and less-dense auto-centric development like strip malls or industrial parks. But in today’s development context, the question of preservation is completely different because it often sits in a context of transit-oriented mixed-use density. Now the Nye’s Polonaise block, mostly surface parking, becomes a 22-story apartment tower, the shoddy Totino's building becomes seven-story apartments, or the old three-story high school building in Dinkytown becomes a six-story apartment building with a Target store. Or here, where a two-story mixed-use building increases in density by over an order of magnitude. The question of preservation looks a lot different in that light, and as CM Cam Gorden explained in the Star Tribune piece on the building’s history, you feel sad but you move on because these are the kinds of changes you need to make to create a sustainable city.
[All the old wooden booth joints are disappearing.]
Commercial and retail environments are constantly changing, and neither sub sandwiches nor Chinese food carry the same meaning today as they did a generation or two ago. I’m not sure how many sandwich shops thrived in Stadium Village the 70s, but I’d bet that there were fewer than today, when a half-dozen places will make or deliver affordable sandwiches for the campus hungry. Admittedly, they're all chains these days — Erbert and Gerbert, Subway (of course), Jimmy Johns, Potbelly, Davanni’s — and to me, they all seem kinda the same next to the Big 10 sub. But regardless of taste, the world of quickly made sandwiches is still thriving, even without Banh Mi and Big 10.
And despite the new buildings with less affordable rents, the same goes for the diversity of Washingtion Avenue in general. Stadium Village has dozens of independent, unique restaurants, many of which are in buildings that have been built in the last ten years. Beginning at University Avenue, you have Blaze Pizza (don’t know, don’t care), Hong Kong Noodle (last of the old school), Kowloon (generic chinese), Burger King (been there for a long time now)… But then there are a whole bunch of small and/or local places including Haiku Japanese, Little Szechuan (amazing place!), the Kitty Corner Café (don't want to know), Punch, a newer Vietnamese restaurant, Tea Garden, SenCha, Bar Luchador, and more, along with the usual suspect chain restaurants like Noodles, Bruegger's, Dairy Queen, or Dino’s Gyros. Even with the loss of the old building, Stadium Village has more restaurants in fewer blocks than just about any street in Minneapolis, up to and including Nicollet!
More than most places, a large college campus reflects rapidly changing tastes. (Heck, even the "Big 10" itself has like 12 or 13 teams now...) Stadium Village, named after a stadium that existed, then didn't exist, and now sort of exists again, has always been a place where the bulk of the population changes completely over all the time. Few people have institutional memories past a five-year horizon, so it’s no surprise when older places succumb to the new — for example, on today’s campus there are thousands of young Chinese students, actually from China, who have little interest in eating bastardized 80s-era “American Chinese” food.
One one hand, it's sad that the loss of an old building means the loss of the cheap rents that allowed a place like the Big 10 to hang on for so long. If they had wanted to stay in business, they’d likely have had to invested quite a bit of money and take a substantial risk, like Sally’s Bar did down the street when their building was knocked down, and given the volatile unromantic nature of the student body, it’s likely the owners decided to take the money and retire.
So much worse for the nostalgic, but the loss of Big 10 and the building that housed it comes at the gain of a new homes for a thousand young people who will start their own traditions at the heart of campus. If any place should reflect the optimism of Minneapolis's urban future, it is here at the heart of campus, next to a light rail line, in a place where (finally!) walking has become the default way of getting around. I guess I’ll have to bike to Hopkins for my pastrami sub now, but in the meantime, we’re one step closer to creating a dense, walkable, urban city. Buildingsroman freudenschade indeed.
Saint Paul isn’t known for much. Blank walls. Garrison Keillor. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Coney island dogs with grilled buns. Hockey. Amazing Asian food. Drunken Irish Death Roads.
OK, Saint Paul is pretty cool. (Except for that last one.)
But to add another one to the list, there’s the Saint Paul Saints, the local city’s famously obscure independent “minor league” baseball team co-owned by Mike Veeck, he of the Disco Demolition Derby riot, and Bill Murray. There are many reasons that the Saints are awesome, not least of which is their great new stadium in Lowertown, but it’s easily my best-recommended baseball experience for people who don’t like baseball. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true. It’s a thing. There’s so much good stuff in the “fan experience” category at a Saints games that it almost doesn’t matter if you can’t name any of the players, don’t know what the score is, or don't even know the rules of baseball in the first place.
(On the other hand, it’s also legitimate baseball, with quality players. And if you’re into it, the game is worth watching. So it’s like the best of both worlds.)
The entertainment factor is so high that the Saints actually hire people to be what they call “ushertainers.”
What’s an ushertainer?
[Seigo Masabushi, Mudonna, and a (retired ushertainer) lumberjack.]
No, it’s not the same thing as a mascot. The Saints have a mascot, defined as a person wearing a furry suit. It’s Mudonna, a giant female pink pig, and she’s OK as far as mascots go.
But on top of that, there are the ushertainers: people who are dressed up and (presumably) paid to hang out on the top of the dugout or in the concourse, mingling with kids and fans, and raising fan spirits in support of the home team. They’re like cheerleaders combined with vaudeville actors, and they come in all shapes and sizes. Each year, the Saints add one or two to the stable, and if you go to a game you might see a couple of the ushertainers hanging out in your section. Unless you’re a misanthrope, they’re a lot of fun.
But how much fun?
[Ushertainers waiting in the wings.]
There are a few keys to evaluating an ushertainer, little things that separate the good ones from the great. I’d say there are three categories, each ranked from 1 to 10:
Visual Appeal - how they look from a distance Inter-personal Appeal - how they interact with the crowd Je Ne Sais Quoi - I don't know what
Together, you get the overall cumulative score, with 30 being the theoretically perfect ushertainer.
One final note concerns gender. As it turns out, a great deal of ushertainment depends on playing with a cultural repertoire of visual cliché, easily recognizable roles or figures. And as it turns out, many of these roles stem from professional images that wouldn't be out of place an any children’s book. (Think of doctors or nurses, fire fighters, or a Richard Scarry's Busytown.) The problem is that, most of the previous generation’s public roles were male roles, and for that reason, I suspect it’s a lot easier to become a male ushertainer than a female one. In an era when most working women had to choose between becoming a nurse, a teacher, or a secretary, there are simply fewer iconic female archetypes. And so much the worse for the modern day ushertainment industry.
So without further ado, here are the playful rankings. The stable of ushertainers changes every year, so I reached out to the Saints to find a definitive list of this year’s crop of eleven candidates.
#10 [Tied]: Belle of the Ballpark and Miss Adventure
These two are tied because I don’t know who they are. I have been to about five Saints games this year, and I think I might have spotted an ushertainer I didn’t know on the far side of the field. There used to be a “Stepford Wife” ushertainer, and she wore fabulous skirts, all of which reinforces my gender role hypothesis. Sorry ladies!
Visual Appeal: n/a Inter-personal Appeal: n/a Je Ne Sais Quoi: n/a Total Score: n/a
#9: Pig’s Eye Pete
[A glimpse of Pig's Eye Pete.]
This is the guy who dresses like a pirate who has to hang out on the pirate ship for underwriting reasons having to do with Treasure Island Casino. Props for the name, though an actual eye patch would really tie the look together. I never go over to the pirate ship so I have no idea what's going on over there. I assume it’s not that great, because to me it seems like people who are into casinos aren’t interested the kind of people that would be interested in ushertainment in the first place.
But on the other hand, I bet he gets to do a fun pirate accent the whole night if he wants to!
Visual Appeal: 7 Inter-personal Appeal: 3 Je Ne Sais Quoi: 4 Total Score: 14
#8: The Chef
This is the guy int he chef suit and chef hat with the thin black mustache painted on his lip. Maybe it’s just me, but I never really get why a chef with a wooden spoon would be that entertaining. I guess it dates back to the Muppet Show or maybe some sort of cartoon like Rattatoille (underrated, IMO!)
Chef doesn’t speak much, in my experience, but when he does, he uses an outrageous French accent. But what would a chef have to say about baseball? He could comment on hot dogs being consumed?
But you recognize the Chef and it's nice to see him I guess.
Visual Appeal: 7 Inter-personal Appeal: 3 Je Ne Sais Quoi: 5 Total Score: 15
[Pretty sure this is the "dancing homer."]
#7: Al Aboard
[Al Aboard and Sir Homer watching a double-header.]
This is the railroad engineer guy in the overalls and the engineer hat. He has a hankie hanging out his back pocket, so that’s a nice touch. But his greatest asset is the wooden railroad horn whistle that he blows. It’s great!
Plus while the concept of railroad engineers might be lost on most kids, Al Aboard's dance moves are certaintly not.
Visual Appeal: 6 Inter-personal Appeal: 5 Je Ne Sais Quoi: 5 Total Score: 16
#6: Sir Homer
An up-and-comer in the ushertainment industry, Sir Homer is the guy with the cape and the sword dressed as a knight. He strides back and forth atop the dugout rallying the fans like Henry V, kneels before young ladies bequeathing their charity, and when he speaks he does so using flowery rhetoric. Sir Homer is basically one of the Monty Python knights, which for me is great fun. A relative newcomer to the Saints ushertainment world, I think the character works in ways that fit perfectly with the crowd and atmosphere, especially for kids.
Visual Appeal: 6 Inter-personal Appeal: 6 Je Ne Sais Quoi: 5 Total Score: 17
[Sir Homer leading a charge.]
#5: Seigo Masabushi
[Seigo singing karaoke while a Saints guy holds up the words.]
While there might be something unsettlingly Orientalist about Seigo Masabushi's place at a Saints game, what with all the white people gawking and/or chuckling at an Asian man's funny clothes and accent, probably ignorant of most of the cultural references at work, Seigo does bring something no other ushertainer has to the ballpark. Despite or perhaps because of the white tuxedo coat and cowboy hat, Seigo Masabushi is the most authentic of the ushertainers. After all, he's the only one that uses his real name as an identity, and is playing "a Japanese guy who likes karaoke" which, I can only assume, he is and he does.
And he backs it up, too, with honest renditions of pop classics coming from the heart. Seigo has a decent singing voice, though nobody will mistake him for Adele. His nightly rendition of a karaoke song from atop a dugout is a Saints tradition going back around ten years, I'd bet. And, though I might be wrong, it seems like Seigo is just being himself, and he's great. HE wears his cowboy hat in the off-season too, when working with Japanese visiting athletes.
Visual Appeal: 6 Inter-personal Appeal: 4 Je Ne Sais Quoi: 9 Total Score: 19
#3 [Tied]: The Nerd
[The Nerd dancing on the dugout.]
And here’s something for my demo, a retro-call-back to the 80s Revenge of the Nerds films that I grew up with. The nerd nails the look, thick black glasses taped and pushed up on the nose, tight garish shirt tucked beneath suspenders, a pocket protector and a fanny pack, and Martin Short-esque hair. Watching the nerd interact with people on the dugout gives me flashbacks, even more so because he’s been a mainstay of the Saints games for years. And in a way, the nerd represents the promise of the Saints and their philosophy, saying that, yes, everyone is welcome at the ballgame, no matter your athletic prowess or social tastes. Even as baseball becomes a sport where nerds and stat heads with their calculators actually rule the roost (except at the last-place Twins' front office, of course, where the old-boys 90s-era jocks are still scoffing at number crunchers), there’s something almost triumphant about the nerd at the ballgame.
Visual Appeal: 9 Inter-personal Appeal: 6 Je Ne Sais Quoi: 6 Total Score: 21
#3 [Tied]: Nerdette
[Proper nerd smile.]
It might seem a bit cavalier to put these two together, because the Nerd has been around so much longer than the Nerdette (a new addition to the Saints team). And, yes, technically it is highly derivative. But it’s also accurate, not only in real life where girl nerds have carved out massive slices of nerd culture for themselves, but also in the 80s mythic landscape of nerd films, which almost always had a female nerd love-interest. And then there are the aforementioned gender inequalities vis a vis character types and access to agency. So, yes, the Nerdette (unfortunate name) is simply a female version of the male Nerd.
But I’ve been impressed watching Nerdette do her thing, and you walk away thinking about how well the concept works. One key to ushertainment is the ability to communicate visually using body language (yes, like a mime), and the Nerdette adopts a whole persona of moving, standing, walking, talking, and (yes) smiling that allows you to enjoy the ushertainment even from a great distance. (I once had a selfie with taken with the Nerdette where she taught me how to “nerd smile.” Basically, you grimace and squint and push your glasses up your nose.) The Nerdette is great!
As the nerdette would say, “Let’s go sports!”
Visual Appeal: 9 Inter-personal Appeal: 7 Je Ne Sais Quoi: 5 Total Score: 21
[Gert waiting out the rain delay and pulling stuff from her Chuck Taylor purse.]
#2: Gert the Flirt
It might seem like the whole concept here — enthusiastic flirtatious grandma / unrepresed aunt — would get lost on some people, and I don’t know, maybe it does. But watching Gert push her granny shopping cart up the steps of the section aisles feels a bit like the night before Christmas, and when she shakes her not insignificant booty to rev up a crow, the magic only intensifies. When you get a lipstick-laden smooch, it’s like a Christmas present and you proudly wear it like a tin sheriff’s badge for the rest of the night. Gert’s whole persona offers the charm of an old family restaurant, a plate of home-baked cookies, mixed with something slightly naughty like a martini.
And she really works it. Gert even has her own website, and makes sure that people know about it. She bonks kids on the head with an inflatable baseball bat, and is constantly moving around the crowd making friends. A criminally under-rated ushertainer and a solid #2, just behind our winner.
Visual Appeal: 6 Inter-personal Appeal: 10 Je Ne Sais Quoi: 6 Total Score:22
#1: Coach
[Allright, fans. I want to see some cheering!]
You gotta hand it to Coach. Iconic character figure: check. Wonderful cheerleading schtick: check. And the look is perfect: the tube socks, gym shorts, boring grey short-sleeve sweatshirt, sunglasses and mustache. It’s an 80s cliché but as it turns out, the job of a coach is almost exactly like the job of a cheerleader. Getting people revved up, excited, and moving their body. Coach will make you cheer and stay in shape at the same time. When he points at your section, with whistle around his neck, and tells you to shout “Let’s go!” you do it.
Extra points for the calisthenics. Visual Appeal: 10 Inter-personal Appeal: 8 Je Ne Sais Quoi: 6 Total Score: 24
