I drove to the New York Hall of Science with my children and
found the usual driveway to the parking lot barricaded. A woman wearing the
uniform of a U.S. Open worker stood there. There was no reason for her to be
there. The Hall of Science has no tennis courts.
She quickly waved through a hotel shuttle bus but then blocked
our van.
“Do you have a membership here, sir?” she asked me. I
informed her that I did.
“Then you’re technically behind this guy,” she motioned to a
man with car by the curb. “We’re waiting for spaces to open up. We only have 25
spots today.” I’m not sure who the ‘we’ was in this equation. “You can wait
behind this gentleman or you can try street parking.” She offered to hold my
place in line if I wanted to try driving around to find street parking first.
Knowing the area, I could tell that was a lost cause.
The woman was exceedingly polite, as polite as one can be
while telling someone that you’re getting paid to help screw people out of a
trip to the science museum so pampered jerks can pay to watch tennis. I told
her we would be moving on and drove away, having to explain to my kids that the U.S. Open had just cost us a
trip to the science museum.
I sent an inquiry to the Hall of Science asking how this
could happen, but have so far received no response. The administration there
may not have had a choice and had its hand forced by the city. Last year we
discovered the city using public park land as paid parking lots for the
tournament.
No New Yorker who comes in contact with the U.S. Open or its
fans needs another reason to hate the U.S. open. Sure, it brings in lots of
money to the city, but so does selling heroin. At least heroin eventually kills
the people stupid enough to use it; U.S. Open fans don’t die off at a fast
enough rate.
For 7 train commuters or neighbors of
the Billie Jean King Tennis Center, the Open is the most miserable time of the
year. The train is filled with tennis fans that are clueless, without any sense
of their being among others. Oblivious to the basic courtesies required of city
dwellers, the subway is a big joke to them, other passengers who need the train
to get home from work are lucky to be witness to their charming afternoon of
slumming.
The tennis fans that clog our city are Exhibit A of the
decline of Western civilization, the well-heeled and soft-minded excreta of a
decadent and depraved society. These obnoxious Eloi offer nothing redeeming beyond
commerce, and exude only ignorance and weakness in everything that they do.
Perhaps I am painting the Open and its fans with too broad a
brush. I know several people who are great human beings who are true tennis
fans and make it a tradition to attend the Open. The tennis center’s centerpiece
stadium is named for Arthur Ashe, who set the gold standard for how
professional athletes ought to be.
But most of the tennis fans who come to the open are not
like the few good eggs that I know. It’s a time of year where rich jerks come
to town and the city is more than happy to extend a big middle finger to the
working people who actually live here. In short: the U.S. Open represents the
antithesis of all that is good about our city and is potent refinement of the
worst contemporary society has to offer.
Perhaps the answer is some good old fashion capitalism, such
as selling tennis fans tickets to the VIP 7 train cars that don’t exist. I
would like to adopt a temperamental Rottweiler so I can name it “Serena
Williams” and charge people $100 dollars for a special VIP lounge meet and
greet (the VIP lounge will be a cardboard box behind a White Castle—I shall
feast like a king).
If the powers that be want to flood our city with the dregs
of the pampered class, the rest of us can make a quick buck sheering these sheep.
Improvise, adapt, and overcome. Either way, it will be over soon, but not soon
enough.
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