With a week to go til Sunday's Super Bowl game I figured today would be a good day to check out what's been done to the Dallas Cowboy Stadium zone.
I figured Sunday morning there would be few people, no traffic, easy to find a place to park.
As I am way too often, I was wrong on all counts.
The first bit of Super Bowl signage that you see here is not on the Dallas Cowboy Stadium, it is on the Ballpark in Arlington, facing the Cowboy Stadium.
Last week I'd read a letter to the editor in either the Fort Worth Star-Telegram or Dallas Morning News where the letter writer opined that he was appalled at the effort Arlington had gone to to spruce up the town in anticipation of visitors coming for the Super Bowl, and then to find that effort negated by all the tackiness that the NFL has sprung up around the Cowboy Stadium.
Texas does a good job of tacky at times. I had to see it for myself.
I don't know that I would call what I saw today tacky. But I can say that what is going on around the Cowboy Stadium may be the strangest thing I've seen since I've been in Texas.
And that covers an awful lot of strange things.
That letter writer mentioned the big fence/wall that has been erected on the east end of the stadium. I have no idea what that wall is stopping us from seeing. I thought maybe it was surrounding the $200 a ticket Party Pass Plaza zone, but it was not located directly outside the east end zone, which is where you get to pay $200 to stand out in the cold for 4 or 5 hours.
Speaking of cold. The National Weather Service has just issued a Severe Weather Warning. We are scheduled to get as low as 12 degrees by Wednesday. Five days before the Super Bowl.
See that long line of white? It is stretching across the former parking lot on the east end of the stadium. I had no clue what this was.
And then I met this nice gentleman named Ludlow Ruckmaker (name and gender changed at the gentleman's request).
Ludlow told me that this long white tent line is how Super Bowlers will enter the stadium. It is where they will go through security.
Ludlow told me he'd been following the progress of the stadium all the way back to the initial destruction of dozens of homes and apartment complexes, with the displacement of 1000s, in what many consider to be the
Worst Case of Eminent Domain Abuse in American History.
When I told Ludlow I'd also been following the Dallas Cowboy Stadium progress, eventually he remembered meeting me before. On my website.
I had wondered why the Party Pass Plaza was only at the east end zone, when there are Party Plazas outside both end zones. Today I saw the reason. On the west side of the stadium the parking lots have been covered by the biggest temporary buildings I have ever seen.
HUGE things that look as if they must have multiple levels. In the picture above you can see what looks like a glass barrel roof between two white temporary structures.
Above I am standing across from the stadium, on Collins Street, looking east at those temporary buildings I just showed you. The pictures do not do justice to how big these are.
Now, what I'm thinking is North Texas tends to have rather dramatic weather. I have been involved with 2 balloon festivals that were destroyed by windstorms.
The Dallas Cowboy Stadium sits in the Buckle of the Bible Belt. There are a lot of people who think that the way the land was taken to build this stadium was all sorts of wrong.
I'm not one who believes there is a vengeance seeking God looking to right wrongs and punish evildoers.
But.
If I were, I would be a bit nervous that a weather disaster might make mayhem of all the temporary stuff that has been erected to worship at this particular temple, next Sunday.
God may likely already be a bit cranky with the Super Bowl, due to the fact that one of the churches near the stadium has cancelled next Sunday's services and is, I believe, selling parking spaces.
That football that you see above, with the Dallas Cowboy Stadium behind it, is in the Stadium Wal-Mart Supercenter's parking lot. That Wal-Mart has a lot of footballs and baseballs stuck on it.
A Mexican TV Station was broadcasting from the Wal-Mart parking lot. The broadcast truck that was powering the equipment had Mexican plates. The guy on the left was interviewing the guy on the right. I figured this might be a Univision show.
Some of the locals seemed quite familiar with the guy who was on the right, taking turns having their picture taken with him. I figure he must be a Mexican TV celebrity. Not til I got the picture off the camera did I realize one of the guys in the picture was wearing a cheese hat.
See the elaborate graphics that have been added to the stadium? Again my pictures do not do justice to how big this is. The end zone graphic is equally impressive.
The parking lots on the east end are covered with a lot of media vehicles, sort of like a combination of an RV and a train boxcar. An elevated catwalk has been built for the media, in this area to the east of the Party Pass Plaza. I guess so pictures can be taken of the people freezing, while standing outside the stadium during the Super Bowl.
The north bound lanes on Collins, by the stadium have been closed off. As have the eastbound lanes on Randoll Mill. This is making for some slow traffic. I've no idea if this is a temporary thing while all the stuff on the parking lots is getting worked on. Or what. The road that you can usually drive on at the east end of the stadium is completely blocked off.
Is this all normal for a Super Bowl? Or has Texas gone and done the Everything is Bigger in Texas thing for this particular Super Bowl?
And what takes place in all those temporary buildings on the west parking lots?
It is all very perplexing. And I've still not been invited to any of the dozens upon dozens of Super Bowl Parties.
If you live in the D/FW zone, trust me, it is worth it to venture into the Dallas Cowboy Stadium Zone to see what happens when a Super Bowl comes to a Texas town.
