out of town

I spent Labor Day weekend in the car driving through most of the Eastern Seaboard's metropolises. Friday I left D.C. for a not-quite-leisurely drive to Providence, Rhode Island, which was the first time I could use a Rhode Island address as a final destination.

The ride wasn't quite leisurely due to a deadline (my sister and I were headed to Providence to meet our younger cousin, who was flying into Providence that night and moving into her college dorm the next day), Labor Day traffic and a lack of any extra time built into our schedule to compensate for the traffic. A two-hour wait to get across the George Washington Bridge into NYC didn't help. We ended up stuck in traffic for 45 minutes just to get to the exit to drive an extra half-hour or so out of our way to avoid the bridge.

In the end, though, we made it to Providence less than an hour late, forcing cousin to wait just a few minutes (her luggage took some time to appear). We then stayed up far too late (just because) and waking up far too early (for me) to move her in.

The traffic on campus was as bad as the traffic on the roads - she ended up waiting in line to register for her key, to pick up her ID and finally to get up to her room (shared with three others). I was only 10 years out of my depth, but I did get asked if I wanted to open a student checking account, which was a nice gesture.

The moving-in and supply run to Target completed (Rhode Island, to me, consists of the one campus and a strip of big-box stores) we left cousin and headed south to New York City, where another cousin was putting us up for the night. Again, we stayed up too late (a few corner bars and one hookah bar and all of a sudden it's 3:30 a.m.). And again, we woke up too early, to meet a friend of my sister's for brunch. Then a walk through the city, including a Brazilian street fest. Fun times, including the sunburn (who goes to New York and gets a sunburn?)

The weather was perfect, a sunny, crisp late summer day. I started to think back and realized in my mind, New York has the best weather in the country. All my trips to the city have been in the spring or early fall, and every day has been sunny, upper 70s, low humidity. Perfect. Of course, the natives laughed at this slander of their city.

We left NYC late in the afternoon to head back to Baltimore, where we finally got some sleep before helping my sister's boyfriend move into his new house. Then back to D.C., where I stayed up late packing and woke up far, far too early to fly to Missouri, thus ending the tour of the East Coast.

(Oriole Park at) Camden Yards

the Warehouse
Originally uploaded by slack13

The Orioles may have one of the most repugnant owners in baseball (the Washington Post used the great phrase "locally loathed") and a team destined to always fall well behind the Yankees-Red Sox spending war, but their home park is still pretty sweet.

I headed to Camden Yards (officially Oriole Park at Camden Yards) this week to watch the Seattle Mariners, who are geographically much closer to my heart than these East Coast teams. I'd heard people rave about Camden Yards, but to be honest, I expected to be underwhelmed. Camden was the first in the new breed of parks, the stadium to end the ugly concrete era, but 15 years later half the teams in the league play in a stadium designed to rip off Camden's once-unique architecture. I figured this meant it would now inevitably feel somewhat diminished, its unique character absorbed and diluted by too many imitators.

A friend told me, just before I started the drive north, to be sure to get right-field bleacher seats, which he termed "the best seats in baseball." I'm not sure I can completely agree (bleacher seats in Fenway win for atmosphere, behind-home-plate seats just about anywhere win for immediacy, San Francisco's bay view seats win for scenery) but they are pretty damn good. Not only for themselves, but for the area just behind them.

The portion of Eutaw Street adjacent to Camden Yards isn't technically part of the stadium, although it's inside the stadium gates. It has become a pedestrian walkway (open to all when there's not a game going on) bordered on one side by the stadium and on the other by the old Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Warehouse. For games, the street is lined with food and drink stands and merchandise vendors.

The most celebrated of the drink stands is Boog's Barbecue, run by former Oriole Boog Powell. Boog himself was on hand to greet a line of customers and sign autographs. The food proved to be somewhat of a disappointment; $7.25 for a barbecue sandwich is a bit steep (I chose not to shell out an extra 75¢ for the beans and coleslaw sides) especially when the meat is pretty dry. However, it was well within tolerable limits for ballpark food.

Our seats were well above tolerable limits. We walked up and got second-row seats in center field for $15. Unlike some stadiums, the seats ran right up to the outfield wall, putting us right on top of the fielders (an excellent vantage point to watch Ichiro hang out).


The weather walking up to Camden Yards was the same as in a blast furnace; the Orioles announced a gametime temperature of 101 degrees, which was certainly a cheap ploy for sympathy (I'll believe the temperature was that high an hour before first pitch, when we were walking in, but a breeze and the sun going down actually cooled the air off considerable by the time the game started.

The game was marred by some sloppy play early, but the good guys ended up on top (just another disappointment for the home fans). I noticed the Orioles haven't shelled out the money to update the video board or changed the small scoreboards on the facades of the upper deck from lightboards to video screens, as have most other parks. I think that's more a case of cheap ownership rather than hanging onto tradition.

Somehow, Camden Yards manages to capture more of the pure baseball feel than most of the other new stadiums. Perhaps it's the fact it has had a chance to age, but it just feels like there's more character here than in most of the newer ballparks. In Philly and St. Louis, the stadiums are nice, but there's also the feeling that everything is too nice, too shiny, too packaged to really tap into the retro baseball feel the styling is aiming for. Camden Yards, with its warehouse, harsh lines and angles defining the outfield wall and brick-and-steel faces just seems to capture something many stadiums miss.