Rant #2,780: More, More, More (How Do You Like It?)

 

I welcome myself back to my regular perch after a needed day off.
 
I simply came home too early from where I was, and I overslept as badly as I have in a long, long time.
 
Where was I?
 
I, and my son, were at the brand new UBS Arena in Elmont, New York, to see the WWE Raw show live and in person.

(As an aside, I now hold the distinction, if that is what you want to call it, as being one of the few people that attended the first wrestling show at the Nassau Coliseum back in 1972, I believe, and the first wrestling show at the new UBS Arena.)
 
The show was what it was, the modern equivalent of what the circus used to be, with the wrestlers taking over for the elephants and the clowns and the high-wire performers.
 
The crowd—not nearly capacity, maybe two-thirds full, so about 8,000 to 9,000 spectators—was loud and at times raunchy (one time I had to tell some drunks to stop with the language, because it had gotten excessive, and they were so inebriated—a man AND a woman, with a kid, by the way—that they burned themselves out pretty early and were quiet afterwards), and was made up of more kids than adults.
 
So, my son and I had a good time during the four-hour show, which ended at about 11:30 p.m.
 
But this column today is not about the WWE show—I have pretty much reported on that numerous times in the past, so another review would be the same old, same old—it is about the brand new arena, which has been open for about a week or 10 days and delivers exactly what was promised, in my opinion.
 
I am going to tell you right at the get go that I had my doubts about this place. The location, the talk I heard about getting there, the parking, and getting out, were just about all unfounded, and the arena itself is a beautiful piece of work, a real paean to the vision of what Charles Wang, the former owner of the NHL’s New York Islanders, wanted to bring to the Nassau Coliseum, the old barn which has been made pretty much dispensable with this new arena just 10 miles away from it.
 
Anyway, my son and I left for the venue at a little after 4 p.m. or when he got out of work. The reason we left during this rush hour time was that I wanted to make sure that I knew where I was going during a least some daylight hours, I wanted to know where I was parking, and I wanted to know where we were in relation to the arena.
 
I had heard so many early horror stories that I felt it was the right thing to do, and it ended up being just that.
 
I paid for my parking pass prior to the event—everything at the arena is electronic, including the parking passes, yoiur tickets and the food—so I went to the entrance I was told to go to—one of the problems that people encountered was that they were entering at the incorrect entrance for their parking, and couldn’t navigate where they had to go to get there—and the place was pretty empty because it was early, so I was able to stop my car and ask an attendant where I had to go.
 
So we showed our parking ticket, I asked the attendant where to park, and she told me right ahead, which I did, face out so I could get out without any problems.
 
I wanted to take a photo of where I parked, but the section we parked in—the Emerald section—did not have any signs as part of the section, no numbers, so that was out.
 
We parked the car, got out of the car, and walked to where we saw buses lined up, to take the shuttle to the arena.

 
Now, if it was the summer, I might just be able to make the eight-minute walk to the arena by foot—my son certainly could—but in 30 degree temperature, the shuttle was the only way to go, so we took one of the buses to the arena.
 
The bus lets you off at the side of the arena, and not in front, because that is the way the structure is configured, so after you get off the bus, you have to make an extra walk to the front, which takes about five minutes or so.
 
We got to the destination, and waited for the doors to open. We were told to form lines, and since my son and I got there early, we were in the front of one line.
 
Finally, the doors opened about an hour or so before show time, and we entered.
 
And we were not checked for our coronavirus shot cards, we were just let in, when through the detectors, and showed our tickets on our phone to get in.
 
(I have since learned that although the arena says right on its website that no one will be let in without showing their inoculation proof or proof of a negative test, that some people, like us, got in without having to show anything, but others were checked. Perhaps it had to do with us being among the first attendees let in, but with the virus policy being what it is, why were we not checked?

 
When we went to the Paramount to see the Monkees concert a few weeks back, each and every person was checked for their cards, and we actually saw people being turned away because they had absolutely no proof of anything.
 
I am not trying to make a political statement here, but why are they so haphazardly checking people for proof? As you might know, the home team Islanders have had a major, well publicized, coronavirus onslaught, with at least eight players getting the virus, and the NHL actually had to cancel a few games in the new arena to try to get that I check, so you would think that this safety protocol would be followed, but it obviously wasn’t.)
 
So we got through the first checkpoint, and saw how cavernous the new arena was, how airy, and how new the place was and felt to us.
 
We moved to the next checkpoint, where we had to show our tickets. So I got out my phone, was told to scan the tickets myself, but lo and behold, the tickets would not scan.
 
The attendant took my phone from me, tried to do it herself, but to no avail.
 
She called over a supervisor, who also tried to scan the tickets, but it simply would not work.
 
We were told that we were holding up the line, and we were directed to a booth on the right side to take this problem up with them. We proceeded to the booth, and I gave my phone to them to try to figure out what to do.
 
They wrote a lot of things down non old fashioned paper, diddled around for a while, and when I asked what was going on, they told me that our seats had been upgraded—that is why it did not scan—and that we had been moved from the 300 section to the 100 section, which is akin to moving from the back of the bus in coach to first class.
 
(This has happened to us before, in Madison Square Garden, of all places, and it happens when there is a televised WWE show and there are a lot of open seats in the way of the cameras. They fill up the seats so it appears on TV as if the arena is full, which it wasn’t then and wasn’t on Monday night.)

 
They proceeded to give us paper tickets (!) and we asked around to find out where we had to go, and we found our seats pretty promptly, even though the usher had no idea where they were—and they were rally good, in the regular, permanent seats in the arena with excellent sight lines, as the ring was pretty much right in front of us—and with me retaining my aisle seat that I had with the original seats!
 
My son brought a T-short as we proceeded to the seats. Once settled, I went to get food, and it is pretty much all self service, where you took your food from whatever stand you went to, and also got your drinks from a self serve kiosk featuring lots of beer for those who wanted to drink that.
 
I got my son water, and I went to the self serve soda machine to get what I wanted and brought the whole thing to the checkout, where I had to use my card to pay for everything, and what I paid wasn’t cheap for chicken fingers, a hamburger, fries and two drinks—nearly $65!, which I guess was to be expected.
 
The walkways to the food areas are spacious, you don’t have to walk into anybody when moving back and forth, and you can actually put your arms up and stretch without poking anyone’s eyes out.
 
I got back to the seats, and then I could actually view the arena and where we were.
 
It was literally shaped as a bowl. Think of a cereal bowl, and you will understand how the arena is constructed.
 
There are high seats and low seats, but unlike Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, you do not have to scale Mount Everest to get to the upper seats.
 
The sight lines are quite good, and there is room to breathe, with walking area in front of and on the stairs leading to the seats.
 
As I said earlier, I had to tell some drunks to pipe down—with a kid yet, and they all reeked of alcohol so badly that I could smell it though my mask, which I wore throughout the show except when eating.
 
The show was what it was, and when we left, there was a lot of signage pointing to us where the shuttle was. We took the bus back to the area where we parked the car, my son actually found our car, and we got in for what I thought was going to be a long way out of there and a long way home.
 
Well, usually I am a person that does not follow the crowd, figuratively or literally, but I told my son that since I had no idea where to go to exit, I would do just that.
 
And that was the smart thing to do, as we had to go back from where we came, with signage pointing us onto the decrepit Cross Island Parkway South, which we got onto within minutes and which we took home via the connection to the Southern State Parkway—we got home in about 25 minutes, versus 45 minutes getting there during rush hour.
 
So that is my review of the new arena. I was pleasantly surprised that just about all the rumors that we had heard about the inaccessibility of the place were wrong, if you followed the proper driving procedure, like going directly to the lot you were supposed to go to.
 
The place itself is incredible, and I cannot believe that so much money was wasted to make the Nassau Coliseum into, unfortunately, the fourth-rate venue that it is now, a minor-league arena at best, in particular compared with its neighbor to the west.
 
And the best thing was that we had a lot of fun that night, and that is all that really counts.