Admittedly, there are some things that anger me disproportionately. I'm not sure why that is, but seemingly odd things sometimes send my blood pressure into the stratosphere. I've always had a bad taste for the local arena, and things related to it aren't often in my good book.
When it was first proposed that an arena be built here, the local politicos deemed that Luzerne County would build it and run it. There followed a battle of mammoth proportion. There was no promise by the county commissioners that taxes wouldn't go up to construct it. Even worse, there was the threat that a yearly fee collected from the citizenry would keep the place going. (Um, why shouldn't the fees charged to the acts that perform there do that?) It was a heated contest when the question was put to the public as a question on the ballot basically asking if it was okay for the county to build the arena with taxpayers' money. The vote came in - a resounding NO!
State Representative Kevin Blaum was the major public figure behind the push to build the place and when the county basically kicked him in the butt with their NO, he turned to then Governor Bob Casey to fund what had become his pet project. He got the money. The arena now sits on "Casey Plaza."
My dander was up again yesterday about the bloody place when I read in the local paper, The Citizens' Voice, "The county's arena needs a new name..." No, Ms. Allabaugh, (the staff writer who penned the article), it does NOT! It doesn't need a name at all.
For a number of years we've been stuck with the very ugly sounding "Wachovia" name attached to the building. To me Wachovia sounds like some kind of horrendous foot disease. (Oh, Ruthie! Did you hear? Bertha came down with the wachovia! She can barely walk, and oh! The smell!) I'll never understand why the local media insist on calling the stinking place by its full name, "Wachovia Arena at Casey Plaza", as if it were some kind of little rich kid with a pretentious moniker like "Cornelius Percival Hammond the Third." When Philly called Veterans' Stadium "The Vet" it was sufficient. Everybody knew what it was. They could have called this place "The Wack." It would have sounded much more suitable for da valley than Wachovia Arena at Casey Plaza which rolls off the tongue like a thick piece of phlegm and tastes about as good.
It's ludicrous to name a building for a company simply for advertising purposes. It would be like naming a line of scooters after my Aunt Martha whom I'm sure has never been on one. This arena doesn't need a proper noun name. It's the arena in Wilkes-Barre Township. Period.
1 comment:
I have always found it odd that sports teams demand homage from local communities threatening to take their teams away if a stadium isn't built to their specifications at public expense. Socialism is always for the rich at the expense of the masses so i say if the team needs a stadium let them build it themsleves like any other business location.
Then of course we have to hear the mantra that there is no money for anything remotely useful to ordinary people. It seems to be happening everywhere.
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