Friday, March 09, 2007

This Is a Sports Town For Sure!


Photo & Text Copyright 2007 Seattle Daily Photo. All rights reserved, including reproduction or republishing.

(Best Viewed Large: click photo, click All Sizes, click large.) Across a large parking lot to the south of King Street Station is Qwest Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks (American-style) football team. I took this photo from the top of the Smith Tower. Just beyond this stadium you can glimpse Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners baseball team. It is a noted architectural wonder with its silent retractable roof that moves into place if foul weather threatens games and opens for sun breaks.
Thanks to everyone who supported Seattle Daily Photo through four rounds to the semifinals in Metroblogging Seattle's "Blarch Badness" poll of best blogs of Seattle. It was very kind of you to vote through all those rounds, and fun to be included at all. The two finalists after all that are baseball-related blogs. How appropo for a city that loves its great sports teams. Congrats.

This just in, 12:45 PM: Well folks, "It ain't over 'til it's over." ~ Yogi Berra. Metroblogging Seattle has put us back in a run-off vote for esteemed third place against the other semi-final candidate that got slammed by one of the baseball blogs, West Seattle Blog, one of my faves that made it through to the end (see its sidebar link and those of some of the other wonderful local blogs I've come to love). . .but, go ahead and vote for Seattle Daily Photo by clicking here if you would care to ;-) "It's deja vu all over again!" ~YB

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I see photographs like this one (which is very good, by the way), I wonder where in the world do all of the thousands of people who attend these games, park? I see the blimp shots of live action football, for example, and see sixty, eighty, one hundred thousand screaming fans and only 500 automobiles in the parking lot. It doesn't make sense to me that people suffer the expense of a ticket, the reality of paying for parking and the nightmares of getting as far away from the place, after the game, as possible.

Kim said...

Well Abraham, since these stadiums are located very close to downtown, public transit to the games is a cinch and is well used. It's right next to the train station, buses abound, a freeway and major highway run on opposite sides of the these structures. Each fan has a fave secret street or commercial parking lot (these are all around the light industry area where the stadiums stand and are within a few minutes walk of the fields if they don't park at the field's garages which hold thousands of cars). Somehow it works.
-Kim

Kate said...

Since I grew up in Green Bay, WI, football is part of the blood in my veins. This stadium cannot, of course, compete with the "Shrine" in Green Bay, altho it certainly looks wonderful, Kim!! I watch the Seahawks and Holmgren whenever they play. As a matter of fact, I watch ALL the NFL games. The Pack will be back!!

Olivier said...

Waouhh. ce stade est magnifique. belle architecture.
Je te souhaite un bon weekend


Waouhh. this stage is splendid. beautiful architecture. I wish you a good weekend

Anonymous said...

Kim,
It never occured to me that it might be located next to train stations or bus stops. Still, 60 to 100 thousand people (I don't know how big this one is) is a lot to pack on public transportation at any one time. I still look down at these places from the blimp shots and wonder where these people all came from and how long it takes them to all disappear.

I hope you have time to take a look at the 1954 picture I took of a boat at Shiogama, Japan.

Kodak had just came out with color film and this is one of the first images I took with that film. It was all new to me then and I was only 20 years old.

Go to http://www.oldmanlincoln.com/ and scroll down to the last picture.

Thanks for the explanation.

Felicia said...

What a great view! I never realized how close they are to each other.n Do they share the parking lot? I'm always astounded by the amount of money put into building stadiums. A silly question, but how come they couldn't just share one?

Anonymous said...

Great shot! Where were you perched when you took this picture?

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Catriona MacGregor said...

When I click on the photo, the larger view option isn't available. :-(

Kim said...

Sorry Catriona, back at the time I posted this shot I wasn't using larger images yet, like I do now. Because of the path I use to upload photos, the common phenomenon on Blogger of being able to click the shot for an enlargement has just never worked. There are newer shots of this stadium on the blog in larger format. Hope that helps.