Holy crap II!

My brother Mike turned 70 on November 1. To all three of us, Mike, Jerry and me, this is a really big deal! When he, my brother Jerry and I were young, none of us thought we would ever see 70, much less 60. Men in the Bougie family passed on young, mostly with issues that probably centered around lifelong smoking. The Bougie women seemed to always live to a ripe old age. Now, all 3 of us, non-smokers, have outlived our Dad and most of our male relatives by a decade and more.

To celebrate the triumph, Mike, the Woman and I toured US Bank Stadium. It really did look massive when we got inside, but then the Metrodome that preceded it was massive as well. However, when we learned that you could actually fit two Metrodomes completely inside the new US Bank Stadium, its massive scale was clear.

However, they didn’t use all that space to increase the seating capacity – the Metrodome held 64,111, while the US Bank Stadium holds only 66,655, less than a 4% increase in seating. What they did manage to do, however, was to increase the revenue from about the same number of seats my many multiples from that of the predecessor.

The Metrodome had one private club in it – the US Bank Stadium has 6, each one larger than the one club that was in the Metrodome. While seating in the clubs come with free food and drink, we’re told that a single game for a routine seat in the club might set you back $800 or $900, after the cost just to get past the entry gate.

In the Metrodome there were a ring of private boxes around the stadium. In US Bank Stadium, there are many levels of different kinds of boxes, some very near the field, some higher up, and some that have corporate entertainment facilities included. The least expensive of the boxes, we’re told, start at $10,000 per season, and require a contractual 10-year minimum commitment. Sheesh!

We got to see everything, touring the Mystic Lake Club, several kinds of boxes and corporate facilities, and even the locker room. Most locker rooms we have seen have the team emblem woven into the carpet in the center of all the lockers. However, virtually all teams consider it bad luck to walk on the emblem, so the center of the locker room becomes no man’s land. The Vikings fixed this problem by affixing an elaborate Viking emblem to the ceiling.

Our final visit was to actually kiss the turf that the Purple People Eaters do some of their best work on. We got to trot out (well, maybe walk) onto the field through the same portal that the team does every Sunday that they play at home. We got to touch and see what the turf was really like, then walked the length of the field to get a real image of just how massive this behemoth stadium is.

We saw all the boxes and clubs from the field, which gives a much different impression than what you get from above. We finished the day by taking in lunch at the Surley Brewing Company near the University of Minnesota campus. Brother Mike got a free Imperial Russian Stout on the house as a birthday present. He tried talking them into 2 because he was 70, but they weren’t biting.

Talk to you soon!