Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Monday night Bobcats

Last night my wife and I went out with one of her colleagues and husband to a Bobcats game. For anyone who doesn't know; the Charlotte Bobcats is an NBA team now entirely owned by a guy named Michael Jordan. Charlotte used to have the Hornets until the team was moved to New Orleans, I believe.

We started the evening out at a cool little tavern called "Tavern on the Tracks". And one of the best things about the place is that it is SMOKE FREE! We can finally go out to some of these places and not taste cigarette ashes in our food and come home without having to leave our clothes hanging up in another room.

After dinner we headed over to Time Warner Cable Arena, nestled right downtown/uptown. If you haven't been to a game there, I would suggest checking it out. It's a great facility. The interior of the building has many modern touches with other unique characteristics like a huge mosaic representing some of the region's basketball history that almost covers one entire wall near the entrance.

Our friends hadn't mentioned anything about our seats when we got inside. We got into an elevator (which has a human operator--classy.) and went up a couple of flights. I knew we were getting something cool when we stepped out of the elevator and the floors were carpeted. Turning a corner, we finally came to a closed door and I realized we were getting treated to box seats. Never had box seats before. Pretty cool.

We eased into soft faux leather seats and watched the game below. My wife and I have been to 3 events at TWC Arena: 2 Bobcats games and 1 concert. There's not really a bad seat in the place. For a major sports arena the place is actually pretty cozy. The state-of-the-art scoreboard features replay videos and special short films and even holds a model of the city skyline that wraps around the whole thing.


One thing about these games that I find crazy is the amount of audio and visual stimulus that goes on during the night. It's a testament to how short our attention spans are, I guess. You can't just sit back and enjoy the game for what it is. Almost every moment is filled with the announcer hollering, songs being played, the organ pumping or recordings of huge beats to get people to chant "defense". Every time-out features another booty dance by the "Lady Cats" or the firing off of T-shirts into the crowd.* There were a couple of times when it got quiet for about ten seconds, when the Bobcats were behind, and as if the system had sensed a change in the arena noise, a recording kicked in that said,"Everybody clap your hands!" So of course we all felt compelled to like little robots.


The Bobcats lost to the Dallas Mavericks unfortunately, but the game was still a blast to watch and we had a great night out. Not bad for a Monday.

*I'm constantly being amazed by human ingenuity; the fact that someone, somewhere invented a special hand-held "cannon" to fire rolled up T-shirts into the stands of sporting events.

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