UTMC

Anyone going to the Gran Prix this weekend? I'd like to hear some screaming engines and smell race gas and tire smoke. However, it looks like all the reserved seating is sold out or way too expensive. Not sure I want to go down there to stand in a crowd and watch the back of someone's head.

Was thinking someone may have a secret vantage point or have a better idea of logistics and viewing areas.

Lemme know,

Mike

Interested as well.

If you want to ditch the city for say, the upper half of PA, let me know. It's a long weekend.

Was there yesterday. Some nice lady gave my wife and myself tickets as we stood outside the fence...they are giving away a lot of tickets. Very, very, very, very noisy: if you go, wearing ear protection is a must. Then you can watch cars whiz by for a quarter of a second each. Your view of the track is extremely limited (they have enormous TVs set up so that you can watch the race, which spend the rest of the time showing non-stop commercials with occasional breaks for talking heads), and they have people shooing you back away from the fencing into the stands. I thought it might be fun, but I gotta tell you, if there was ever a chance I'd become a fan this nixed it. Loud, obnoxious, and no view.

In the meantime, the traffic problems are beyond belief. My aikido school had to cancel classes for the weekend because no one can get into our end of Baltimore without an enormous detour (mind you, I think our students just need a little more dedication). Many businesses had to close for the same reason. Surprisingly, parking is not a big problem in my neighborhood, but given the numbers of people who left town to avoid the race, maybe it's not so surprising after all.

On the one hand, I hope my city makes a fortune off this thing and lowers my taxes, or just fixes the streets that need it more urgently than the area the race is run on, or does something constructive with the money. On the other hand, I am kind of praying that the whole thing is a bust and they bow out of the 5 year contract the city signed for this thing. I can walk from my house to the race in around 7 minutes: it ain't fun. So far as I can tell, the whole thing is just ugly unless you're a big fan of Grand Prix racing (at which point, I guess it is an ecstatic experience).

Gotcha. Figured it'd be a crapshoot. Turns out i'm gonna hit brunch in NJ w/ Rock, Shifty and That 1 girl. The latter two are heading out on their move back to Denver.

Good luck on getting some revenue for Baltimore w/ the race. From what I"ve read about building stadiums and such, it rarely, if ever, works in the taxpayer's favor. Maybe races are different? I guess you could check into the history for Long Beach and Cleveland GPs. Not sure what other cities hold GPs....

I suppose if you counted the profits from graft...