What We Talk About When We Talk About Barclays
photo credit: Aaron Showalter/NYDN
After years of anticipation/dread, depending on how into basketball/monolithic arenas you are, Barclays Center opens next Friday, and everybody is brimming with very strong feelings about it. Here is what we know:
1. Barclays Center opens September 28th, with Jay-Z performing a run of eight sold-out concerts. Things Jay-Z represents: “it,” “us,” and “hope for Brooklyn.”
2. Atlantic Yards developer/Nets minority-owner/supervillain Bruce Ratner doesn’t actually like basketball. What he likes is Barbra Streisand. Also Bob Dylan. He doesn’t have strong feelings yet about Justin Beiber.
3. According to Brooklyn Nets/Barclays Center CEO Brett Yormark, “Barclays Center is bigger than basketball.” Definitely true: that place is 675,000 artfully (?) rust-covered square feet. For reference, a professional basketball court is 4,700 square feet. An actual basketball is 0.411 square feet.
4. If you are a very important person, you can booze it up till 1am, or one hour post-event, whichever comes first. If somehow you are not among Jay-Z’s 1,800 BFFs, you’ll have to curb your drinking by the end of the third quarter. If you’re there for the Beibz, it’s probably all moot because you’re 12.
5. Once and for all: the rust is on purpose.
6. Despite the Barclays name, you will not actually be able to do any Barclays banking at the arena, causing heartbreak for LIBOR-loving Anglophiles and confusion for at least one New York Post reporter.
7. But Barclays is a great namesake for the arena anyway, because “it’s a great cultural fit.” What culture exactly Brett Yormark means (the culture of corruption?) is a little bit unclear.
8. There will be free ATMs! On the downside, you will have to watch commercials. On the plus side, free ATMs.
9. Thanks to Barclays, Manhattan bullies will finally stop teasing Marty Markowitz! “This is redemption. This is Brooklyn getting its respect back.” Also: “it will bring us the respect that’s overdue.” Also: it will fill “an emptiness that has never been filled.”
10. The new Barclays subway exit apparently allows emerging patrons to “see the rusted metal oculus of Barclays Center spread before them like a moment in a science-fiction film.” Less poetically but arguably more usefully, it also has two escalators, an elevator, five staircases, and a whole bunch of new turnstiles.
