I was at Madison Square Garden to see the Knicks tonight. I enjoy watching great basketball players occasionally make great plays. But for years I’ve hated the entertainment bubble the Garden blows up around you. Relentless noise and flashing lights, it was an embarrassment.
They remodeled the Garden in the past year and it is a different place. The architecture is better, though the $95 seats are crammed together in humiliatingly long rows, so if you’re in the middle you have to climb over 20 people to get out. And without clear rows to walk in the arena you have drop under the seats to move around the auditorium. Every once in a while some guy climbs over you, steps on your toes (because there’s no knee or leg room) to get to the next aisle over. It is a design of density, with little care for customer comfort. As sucky as that is, everything is nicer, plainer, less like some pervert’s basement and more like the Barclay Center.
In any case, I’m not here to analyze, but only to say that it was not awful enduring the interstitial schtick that takes up so much time during any sporting event. One of those highlights was music mixes during the game that skewed hip hop, but grabbed snippets of new and old, catchy and hard, mixed with soul and rock so that one was never ground down by relentless ugliness. In fact, most of it was pretty nice (helped by an excellent sound system).
And after the local community dance troop finished their set on the floor at half time, we had a some good tunes. One of which was Love is the Drug. Nice.
And the Knicks won.