All Purpose Shea II, A Work In Progress...

[stevejrogers]

And So It Begins...

[stevejrogers]

Thats Sunday, 7/2 before the Yankee-Met Sunday night game, they apparantly first moved in during that series

[Guest KC]

Steve, assho, er, I mean buddy .... let's keep the width of pictures at about
500 pixels. That one's like 1500.

[stevejrogers]

Yeah, I just tried resizing on Photobucket. I worked on the Met Offense Starters after like 5 minutes it reset itself. I'll take it down and re tried.

Photobucket images and tables do not like me on this board

[stevejrogers]

Looks like a Triage site set up just beyond Chop Shop City

[stevejrogers]

[stevejrogers]

According to a blurb in the latest Mets program, Groundbreaking is scheduled "sometime this year" So far the lot behind CF has been blocked off in huge sections.

[nymr83]

parking was a bitch the other night and only looks to get worse. they are pushing the public transportation option hard and io hope all the fuckers who live along the train lines do the right thing and take the train, but i live in SI and public trans to Shea is a mess. (train or bus to the staten island ferry, number 4 train to 42nd street, 7 train to shea- travel time 2 hours compared to a 1 hour drive, and its worse coming home because the ferry runs less frequently at night)

[stevejrogers]

I've been parking right around College Point Blvd or underneath the parkway on Roosevelt Ave. Wouldn't be surprised if the Mets started getting into the latter's action during the heavy construction periods

[Frayed Knot]

Last thing I heard was that the first order of business in the construction time-line is going to be a multi-level parking garage. They'll need that completed first as the stadium construction is going to eat up most of the existing parking.
It's still going to be a bitch for much of the next 3 years and then beyond until they old joint is dynamited and cleaned up - but that'll help the drivers at least a bit. The garage then remains for the new place.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

On one of my two visits to Yankee Stadium I parked in their garage and getting out of there was a nightmare. I doubt I'll ever drive into the Mets garage.

Last time I went to Shea, earlier this year, I parked in Manhattan (on First Avenue) and took the 7 train to Flushing.

[metirish]

This thread will last for years.....

[stevejrogers]

metirish wrote: This thread will last for years.....

One would hope

[duan]

if you've got ANY kind of access to the subway you'd be mad to travel any other way.

Ah, taking the subway. oh the memories ...

(although for the last 4 1/2 months I've been staying in Milltown in Dublin and getting the

LUAS

[MFS62]

duan wrote: if you've got ANY kind of access to the subway you'd be mad to travel any other way.

And if you have to drive to Shea from far away, check out the public parking a within a few blocks from the Main Street Flushing station. Then, you are only one subway stop from Shea. And after the game when you return to Flushing, try one of the excellent and varied Oriental restaurants near Main Street.

Later

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

I considered that, too, but I've become unfamiliar with Main Street in Flushing and don't know how safe it is at night. (I was with my nine-year-old son, so I really do have to consider such things.)

What's Main Street like these days?

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

Very lively -- like I imagine Bejing or something! Really, it's a fun place to take a walk and shop, fascinating grocery stores with all kinds of weird fresh fish and rubber shower slippers. There's a Starbuxx, some department stores, and a nice large library too. It doesn't seem unsafe to me, just ... different.

Northwest of Main Street, as I've said before I really dig the Assi Plaza grocery store just over the Roosevelt Ave. bridge (it's next to U-Haul building you can see from Shea). They have everything from gigantic sacks of rice and drums of Kimchee to rice cookers and woks and bamboo floormats. Not just Korean food but Chinese and Japanese too. They also have stations giving away free samples of food and tea, like Costco, prepared foods, a cafe, and a huge produce section.

[soupcan]

="duan"]if you've got ANY kind of access to the subway you'd be mad to travel any other way.

Wellll, there is another way.

I played hooky yesterday and went to the game.

3 friends and I planned this at the beginning of the summer and yesterday we did it.

One of our friends has a 26' foot boat in South Norwalk CT. Yesterday we sailed it down from there and docked it at the World's Fair Marina which is across the street from Shea. The trip was about 30 miles and took us about an hour and a half.

After the game we sailed back home. It was an excellent day all around.

The cost and usage of gas makes this only a once a season excursion but still we enjoyed ourselves so much that I think we're going to try and make it an annual thing.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Sounds pretty cool, Johnny. Maybe I'll try that next time I go to a ball game. But given the direction I come from, parking in Manhattan might still be easier.

I heard a story on NPR a few weeks ago about an Iranian neighborhood in Los Angeles that sounds like your description of Main Street. All the stores and people are Iranian, most of them speak the language (Farsi, I think) and there's even an Iranian hotel. The neighborhood is called Tehrangeles and if I'm ever in LA again I'll try to check it out.

(The article I linked to doesn't make it seem like it's a distinct neighborhood, but the story on NPR did. Hmmmm.)

[MFS62]

Yancy, those names may be changing shortly.
I used to work with someone who's family came here from Iran. She told me that when the US was pals with the Shah, they were proud to be called Iranians. Then the Ayatollah Kumeini took power and there was the hostage incident, Iranians started to refer to themselves as "Persian" to avoid any stigma.
When animosity toward Iran moved to the back burner, they started using Iranian again.
Now, with the :Axis of evil" speech, recent developments in the Middle East and nuclear arms threats, they may start using Persian again.

Later

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Interesting.

Maybe when we conquer Iran and make it the 51st state we can call it "Persia."

I kind of think of Persia along the lines of Prussia. Besides the similar sounds, they're both place names that were on the map relatively recently, but now are gone.

Constantinople, too.

[Frayed Knot]

The only public parking I ever checked out in/off Main St. in Flushing was what looked like a shoppers lot charging 1.00/hr (25 cts for each 15 minutes) but the problem was the meters only take quarters! So unless you're carrying about 20-some quarters w/you it's not the place to use for a ball game.
There might be some other lots besides that one but I'm not all that familiar w/the area.

[MFS62]

Just noticed this on the Mets' site:

]Pitcher Friendly: Distinctive asymmetrical outfield walls, along with generous dimensions (LF - 335'; LC - 379'; CF - 408'; RC - 391'; RF - 330') make for a traditional pitcher's park.

Since they're starting from scratch, I wonder why the lf/rf dimensions aren't the same. Anybody know? Is it because of the shape of the building lot?

Later

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Because they want to be "Distinctively asymmetrical"

More of the Disneyfication of ballparks. In the old days there was a reason for the asymmetrical dimensions. Now it's done simply to make a new park remind us of the old ones.

[Guest ScarletKnight41]

The worst example of that is the stupid hill in centerfield in Houston's new stadium. One day someone is going to get hurt on that thing, and there's absolutely no reason for it to be there.

[MFS62]

ScarletKnight41 wrote: The worst example of that is the stupid hill in centerfield in Houston's new stadium. One day someone is going to get hurt on that thing, and there's absolutely no reason for it to be there.

And it isn't even traditional for Houston. The famous old centerfield hill was in Crosley Field in Cincy.

Later

[Gwreck]

="Yancy Street Gang"]More of the Disneyfication of ballparks. In the old days there was a reason for the asymmetrical dimensions. Now it's done simply to make a new park remind us of the old ones.

Do you think it's better for a game to be played in a park with symmetrical or asymmetrical dimensions, and why?

I agree as to why parks are built with asymmetrical dimensions these days, but my opinion is also that it's more fun to have games played in such parks. No sense building symmetrical dimensions just because. Unique parks create homefield advantanges, make plays more interesting, etc.

[Willets Point]

I think whether the dimensions are symmetrical or asymmetrical are irrelevant. I just think that the reasons why old ballparks were asymmetrical is that they were built on oddly shaped parcels of lands, whereas building ballparks with asymmetrical dimensions for a stadium in the middle of a parking lot or other open space is artificial. Actually, I just don't like stadiums that are not built into the fabric of the city as much, one of Shea's great failings that will be continued in the new venue. In Baltimore and San Francisco they built ballparks into the neighborhoods and things like the warehouse and McCovey Cove affect the symmetry but it works because it is both natural and aesthetically pleasing.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

It doesn't really mean that much to me.

Looking at those dimensions, it looks lefty hitters will be better off pulling the ball (for a home run, anyway) than righties will. Right field will be closer at the corner and deeper in the alley than left field will.

I think it would have bugged me if Shea in the 1980's favored right handed sluggers while the Mets had Darryl Strawberry. And if it was the opposite, it would bother me that it was hampering David Wright.

All things considered, I think I'd prefer a balanced park. The pleasure of the game doesn't derive (for me anyway) from ballpark quirks.

[stevejrogers]

MFS62 wrote: ="ScarletKnight41"]The worst example of that is the stupid hill in centerfield in Houston's new stadium. One day someone is going to get hurt on that thing, and there's absolutely no reason for it to be there. And it isn't even traditional for Houston. The famous old centerfield hill was in Crosley Field in Cincy. Later

Thats the comical thing about both the Astros and Rangers home. Since there wasn't much big league history in Texas they both took just about every old idea and meshed it into their ballparks.