Happy Fourth of July from Seattlest
Seattlest Pix: 09Jul04
Seattlest Pix: 09Jul05
Seattle Int'l Beer Festival Ends at 7 p.m.
Starbucks CEO and former Sonics owner Howard Schultz is memorandizing about "the watering down of the Starbucks experience." We'd like to hear what he has to say about the bigoting up of the Seattle experience.
He and his ownership group refused to accept the responsibility of owning a municipal institution like the Sonics and Storm. Instead of ponying up money for the arena he said he needed, Schultz sold the basketball team of the city where he made his considerable fortune to out-of-state owners who--we now learn--are anti-gay bigots who bankrolled a "defense of marriage" group.
Because of Schultz and his group, the $30 we already paid to attend tonight's Sonics/Blazers game will go right into the pockets of modern-day George Wallaces. That's icky enough.
But what's worse is the unconscionable betrayal of thousands of gay basketball fans--and especially gay Storm fans, who attended games in droves, organized events in the gay community, helped propel the team toward a championship. Schultz took their money, then turned around and sold the team they'd cheered to a group of people who consider homosexuality grounds for sub-citizenship.
To explain it to you coffee-folks, it's like selling Starbucks to Folgers. If Folgers was owned by Nazis.
Josh Feit broke this story on Slog, he's all over it. The Seattle Times' David Postman picked up on it, and points out that the NBA fired a spokesperson last week for making anti-gay comments.
Whatever the NBA's response, the response of the Democratic state legislators whose votes the Sonics need to get a new arena isn't going to be friendly. If "will the Sonics stay in Seattle" was a Vegas proposition, they'd have just taken it off the board.
Oh, and no, we're not bitter at all. Go Blazers.
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Well I thought the "Pork for Sonics" proposal was crap before and it is even more crap now. I am going to write my legislators and tell them politely to tell the Sonics owners to "Fuck off".
1. Most of old Howie's fortune was made outside of Seattle (how many of those 7000 Starbucks locations -- or 10,000 or whatever it is by now -- are in Seattle?) I don't really see how his supposed debt to the city works (Seattle gets quite a bit of free PR as the source of American coffee culture, afterall).
2. Look at this as a double-burn on those homophobic new owners: they paid too much money for the team and they also bought themselves an unexpected education in blue state attitudes. Maybe their little minds will broaden just a bit (unlikely, I know). Somebody should introduce them to the Storm fans (too bad their aren't enough of them to matter to the owners financially). Lesbians take their kids to Storm games. Where do they think future WNBA fans come from?
3. You're drifting into Godwin's Law territory: the new owners aren't nazis, not even by analogy. They're not killing people. Making that kind of comparison both diminishes your own argument through excessive hyperbole, and diminishes the memory and legacy of all the gays who really did die at the hands of the nazis. This is a minor point, I'll grant, and I can understand the urge to state your disgust in the strongest possible terms, but the valid objection to their attitudes and behavior can be made without resorting to excessive and ahistoric comparisons.
4. I hope they do take Sonics and the Storm out of town and completely out of the region (though I feel a little bad for the Storm, who aren't much more than an afterthought in all of this despite winning Seattle's only pro sports championship in over 20 years, and I suspect they wouldn't survive as a franchise in OK). We can turn to getting rid of the Seahawks and the Mariners next. But hey, that's just me.
To my mind, it's just indicative of the problem of pro-sports these days--most of the teams are filled with over-paid players and have virtually no relationship with the city that hosts them, except when they come begging for government hand-outs and start making appeals to "civic pride" and talking about the role they play in the community. The team sucks, the owners suck, and this is precisely the reason people don't want to support them. I think the NBA needs to wake up and realize the good old days when people really cared about the team are long gone, and maybe they should try to rectify that divorce if they want to remain relevant in the 21st century.
Schultz either wouldn't or didn't realize that owning a pro sports team isn't like owning a shoe store--people live and die with a team for their whole lives, and when you take over that team, you are taking part of their lives in your hands. Schultz could've been a civic hero, grown old basking in the glory of a grateful citizenry as he watched the Sonics 50th, 60th, and 70th anniversaries in the Howard Schultz Arena. Instead, because he didn't want to give up part of his billion dollar fortune, he sold the team to a group that will probably move it out of town and, worse, is polluted with anti-gay nitwits. It's going to be hard for them to play a role in the community when they want to deny civil rights to the community.
And yet, and yet... have we ever been to a King County Royals game? ABA players aren't "overpaid" and they play at the community college, but we don't go to their games. We change our allegiance from Seattle to Portland before we'll switch to something less flashy. So what do we really want? I'm not using the royal/Seattlest "we" here--I mean I agree with everything Seth and Jeremy are saying (about the Sonics...heh heh), and castigate myself for not wanting to step down a level or 6 to the ABA.
David's got a point, sort of...I don't know of many big cities that rally behind a minor league team. When I was in Eugene, the minor league baseball team had a pretty strong following, but that's the most I can say. What I take issue with is the whiny, hippy left who tend to disparage sports, as though a team doesn't actually play a role in its community. I have to absolutely agree with Seth--sports isn't just entertainment, it's a frickin' lifestyle. You stick it with it, and I kinda think it's sad that pro-sports is so trashy and money-grubbing these days. The NBA's popularity has increased at the expense of the teams' connection to their hometowns. And it seems like it's a lot less about the teams than the players and the personalities. Players get traded, but they all have a brand, and that brand keeps the sport in the public's eye. But on the local level, I don't think people care very much. Admittedly, a couple winning seasons could do wonders for that. And then again, I'm sure everyone's been bemoaning the death of pro-sports for generations...
It's weird that the team that probably has a larger percentage of lifestyle fans at this point is the Storm. Yeah, from a buyer's perspective they're a barely-noticeable add-on to the Sonics purchase, but they have the fan base that seems more engaged with the team. They're the model of how a professional sports franchise interacts with the community, if all this stuff I hear about the Storm being involved with gay and lesbian groups in Seattle is to be believed, whereas the Sonics proper can just take fans for granted.
I think we should ask these Oklahomans whether they are steers or queers.
Gay marraige is already illegal in Washington by the legislature so it is funny the author of the article is upset about a new business owner in Washington instead of his own states politicians who passed the bill.
@5 - The money-grubbing and personality cults that define most major league sports--and the NBA in particular--is one of the reasons that I appreciate hockey. While not perfect, it seems to me that it is one of the least corrupted sports. Watch national hockey night in canada sometime and compare player interviews to what you see in the NBA or NFL and you'll really realize how lame the self-centered athlete phenomena is.
As for communities rallying around minor league teams, go catch a silver tips game in everett sometime. I've been to a few the past month and it's been great. the *only* reason I would *kinda* like to see a new arena in renton is because I not-so-secretl hope that we could snag an nhl team.
To explain it to you coffee-folks, it's like selling Starbucks to Folgers. If Folgers was owned by Nazis.
Off to Analogy 101 with you to learn how to make a fitting and understandable quip.
Who's the Seattlest?
Contrary to what you might imagine - and what may seem normal to some these days - sodomy is not co-equivalent with Seattle, or for that matter, with Sonics fans. It may be a rage these days, but it wasn't to native American or by those --including my ancestors-- who pioneered Seattle nearly one hundred thirty years ago, or to the majority of Seattlites since then. And it won't be in future days with my children's children. Its just not a productive idea.