#waitingforfrancis

Eight Hours at the Garden

The Forward just posted a new essay I wrote about waiting to see Pope Francis at Madison Square Garden. Here's a bit from near the top:

It seemed a shame that, of all the halls and stadiums in New York City, His Holiness had picked the Garden. That Madison Square Garden is a despicable blight is perhaps the most widely held architectural opinion in the five boroughs, matched only by the notion that the new Freedom Tower looks more like a fire hydrant than a skyscraper should. I wait gleefully for that day in 2023 when the Garden’s lease expires, and the city is freed to wreak brutal aesthetic retribution on the brown wastebasket of an arena, blasting it off the roof of Penn Station and burning away the poison fog of misery it exudes into Herald Square.

The notion that a 19,000-person religious service, fronted by the Supreme Pontiff of the church that produced the Sistine Chapel and the Sagrada Familia, should be held at the Garden was a little depressing. That’s not to say that pleasant things don’t happen at the Garden: I’ve seen the Knicks play there, even seen the Knicks win there — though it’s been a while. I saw Roger Waters do all of “Dark Side” there in 2007, which was fun, both for me and for the middle-aged dudes snorting something a couple of seats over. Still, a post-Pink Floyd “Dark Side,” with a flying inflatable pig and a few tracks from “The Wall” for old times’ sake, seems to call for a different sort of atmosphere than a holy ritual culminating in the consumption of the body of Christ.

You can read the rest here. Let me know what you think, and please pass along to anyone you think might enjoy.

Thanks,

Josh