Listen to the thunder: Did Sonics leaving doom Nickels?

In a recent colunm this is the question sports columnist Art Thiel explores: did the Sonics leaving Seattle doom incumbent mayor Nickels reelection bid?

First, a little context. Seattle’s incumbent mayor, eight years in office, Greg Nickels, just got beat in the primary by two guys w/ very little to no political leadership experience: one guy says he’s going to fix Seattle w/ managerial skills he learned as a top executive in the wireless industry and the other guy is running on a platform to kill the tunnel project and have the City takeover the public schools. (Writing this, it occurs to me that some might think I’m making this stuff up. I’m not.)

(And let’s also remember that the 75% who did not support Nickels in this primary represent ab 10% of the eligible voters in Seattle. I bet he still would have won in a general election and I bet that’s a bitter pill to swallow in the Nickels camp right ab now.)

Couple points ab Thiel’s question: Did Sonics leaving doom Nickels?

Settling for cash, as Nickels did, rather than continuing a case to make the Sonics stay in Seattle until their contract with the Key Arena ended in 2010, a case that most think the law was on the side of the City, was a cowardly nebbish move. No question. Right, anything could have happened in those two years— like an economic meltdown! Maybe Clay Bennett and his Oakies could have been pushed to sell the team to someone local. I don’t know.

But Howard ‘Starbucks’ Schultz-- repeat after me-- sold the Sonics to someone from out of town in the first place, w/out making any public gesture to sell the team to someone who would for certain keep the team in Seattle (there are plenty of people with that kind of money here), thereby flagrantly fucking over Seattle Supersonic basketball fans!

So Schultz is Seattle enemy Number One on losing the Sonics. But Nickels
does at least deserve more blame than Bennett, who I still hear people blaming. B/c, they say, he said he’d try to keep the team in Seattle, are you kidding me?! It is complete idiocy to have expected him to do anything other than what he did.

Commissioner David Stern deserves special mention as a creep here, too, for his patronizing blackmail threats to move the team if the City couldn’t build an arena— unlike The Key, he decreed— up to NBA standards. Standards that have nothing to do with the cost or spectator experience for the average fan, by the way.

Thiel also throws some shame on Seattleites for not supporting large public subsidies for sports franchises. I’m of two minds on this one. I can sympathize w/ taxpayers. Safeco was built even though the public had just voted down public support for a new stadium b/c of the ecstatic momentum created by the M’s victory over the Yankees in the ’95 playoffs (the peak moment so far in the M’s 30 plus year history). I’m glad we have Safeco but can see how the public might be sore over this. W/ the revenues coming to pro sports it doesn’t make much sense that they receive tax subsidies, or not w/out the public having more of a stake in their connection to the city. Meaning: they can’t be sold to another city w/out the public’s consent. Look at the case of the Sonics, duh! This is where Nickels did have a chance to stand up for the city and he turned the ball over, gave it away, so to speak. Maybe some sonic fans voted in the primary. I did and not for Nickels.

On the other hand, this city does seem to have a problem getting behind big civic projects. It’s astonishing how long it’s taken this city to get a little patch of light rail. Oh, light rail’s a huge developer’s appropriation of public funds that would be better spent on more buses or bicycles on every corner or stand-up scooters for everyone, shouts the opposition. Rail transit seems like a nice feature in Portland and SF and NY and Chicago and D.C. For every big civic project proposed here there is a virulent opposition. Now it’s the tunnel. This guy, Mike McGinn, garnered enough support to oust Nickels b/c he opposed a tunnel project to replace Highway 99 through downtown and open up the waterfront to more touristy foot traffic. Again, the imagined result sounds nice. But it’s a huge misdirection of public funds, so say the opposition.

You might expect this is your typical anti-tax/govt spending stuck-in-the-muds but most those people live outside the city. More likely it's a swelling eco-friendly civic responsibility movement that is popular enough to block such big projects but, for me, hasn’t yet (or can’t?)come up w/ appealing big vision alternatives.

The Amazing Lightening Bolt!

Jamaican Usain Bolt sets new record(9.58)in the 100 meter sprint in Berlin. I cannot recall any sprinter in my lifetime who has so dominated the field in the 100 that he could cruise at the finish line as Bolt did in Beijing. Someone ought to create a superhero comic book about the guy.

Currently playing: Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Apple Pie on Steroids

Bigger, Stronger, Faster is a surprisingly clever, nuanced look at steroids and American culture. The first time director, Chris Bell, comes from a family of short fatties, three brothers, raised on ‘80s action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger and pro-wrestler’s like Hulk Hogan. The brothers funneled feelings of inadequacy into an enthusiasm for bodybuilding and, in the case of his two brothers, habitual use of anabolic steroids. The film is the Michael Moore playbook, w/ a little Morgan Spurlock thrown in, but it’s done w/ a light touch, by turns charming, funny, tirelessly journalistic, searching, poignant, never settling for pat conclusions and, for its expose on a subculture formerly alien to me, totally fascinating. In his first effort, at least, Bell betters Moore or Spurlock at drawing from his interviews, a cast ranging from gym rats to congressman and celebrities, an uncannily guileless candor. You won’t walk away from the film concluding anabolic steroids are a muscle massing wonder drug. Even if there is plenty of evidence to show that the dire health threats posed by steroid use are greatly exaggerated (OMG, my shrunken testicals!). And that’s because there is something unmistakably desperate and unhealthy about most of the users in the film. One guy, known for the biggest biceps in the world, who started taking steroids to achieve the kind of build that appealed to women, confides that he is now viewed by women as monstrous, but won’t quit. It’s who he is: a gnarly little guy with grotesquely big biceps. At another point, talking about the possibility of quitting steroids, the director’s brother, Mark, says “once I’ve benched 800 pounds I can’t go back to 700.” It’s an obsession. Bell’s other brother Mike, who reportedly died this past December from substance abuse complications, less than a year since the movie was released, confides that he was “born for greatness.” Anabolic steroids can be a drug incredibly effective at building muscle or the latest compulsion for the American Dream— muscle cars and lush babes— in pill form. But if using anabolic steroids is cheating then why aren’t other performance enhancers like Tiger Wood’s laser eye surgery, Carl Lewis’ “herbal supplements,” (Dock Ellis on acid!), classical musicians using beta blockers, cortisone shots (another steroid), amphetamines, caffeine, or all those hot dogs Babe Ruth consumed? One answer is because as performance enhancers go steroids are so damn effective. And so in the high money stakes of professional sports (I mean, really, what are the alternative salary prospects for your average pro athlete?) this is why they are such a big deal. The biggest fear behind the steroids menace in baseball would seem to be the pressure their effectiveness as a performance enhancer places on aspiring athletes, young people. In the movie, even a chronic user like Mark Bell, married with kids, coaching at a high school, doesn’t want his players to know he uses because he doesn’t think they should have to make the decision as to whether they want to use steroids until they are adults. It’s not the pro athlete on steroids that frightens or offends so much, but the steroid addicted suicidal teen or the aging gym rat at Gold’s Gym who lives in his van. It's someone you know. For the baseball fan or anyone interested in the steroids issue or American culture over the last few decades Bigger, Stronger, Faster is a must see.

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