TACOMA, Wash. – I didn’t blog yesterday for two reasons. First, I spent most of the day fixing incorrect timestamps on the photos I took in Chicago, because I forgot to reset the time zone. It may seem trivial, but you’ll notice that the photoset of the trip is presented in chronological order. Since I’m using my camera and my BlackBerry, which sets its time automatically, the photos were mixed up.
Also, by the time I got to where I stayed last night, a house in the Seattle suburb of Lake City, it was 11:30 at night. I had been up since 5:30, and you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t gotten that much sleep on the trip. So I decided to take the time I had to rest up.
So here’s how my time in Seattle went. After walking around downtown during the afternoon, I spent the evening at the event around which I planned my entire trip.
Famed Spanish soccer team FC Barcelona, the reigning European Cup holders and pretty much the best club in the world right now, visited the Seattle Sounders for an exhibition match at Qwest Field.
Although the tickets were quite expensive, there was a lot of value for the money – not just seeing Barca and its many stars, but also the chance to experience perhaps the best stadium atmosphere in American soccer.
The Sounders are averaging nearly 30,000 fans a game, and have turned their already-cozy home into a raucous sea of green and blue. They would draw more, but for league games the upper deck is closed off. It was open last night, though, and a stadium record 66,848 fans came through the turnstiles.
The match was about as expected: a 4-0 Barça rout, with superstar Lionel Messi scoring the first two. But when I look back on this trip, I’ll remember what happened before the game much more than I will what happened during it.
Before every match, the Sounders hold a rally at a park a few blocks away from Qwest Field and march to the stadium with a band leading the way.
Pioneer Square was pretty full when I got there and was jam-packed when we left. Of course the glamorous opposition was a factor, but most of the people I talked to told me the crowd was that big for most games.
Just as importantly, it felt authentic. It would be easy for a team to organize a rally and draw people, but it could very easily feel canned. This wasn’t at all. I’ve never seen anything like it in American soccer.
To accompany the photos above, here’s a video I found on YouTube of the rally.
It’s all a testament to what you can do when you put a stadium in an urban setting. Qwest Field is on the edge of downtown, and I saw people walking to the match from office buildings a few blocks away throughout the afternoon.
A number of stadiums in Major League Soccer, including the one that will host Philadelphia’s team next year, are built on suburban parking lots. It might not be a coincidence that the teams that play in such facilities don’t draw as well – including Chicago, where the atmosphere in Bridgeview is far tamer than what it was at Soldier Field.
I’m now on the Coast Starlight train headed for Los Angeles, and I’ll be back later in the morning with photos of the rolling stock. It’s different from any of the trains I’ve been on so far, and I’ll show you when I have a better wireless signal than exists in the Cascade Mountains.
I leave you with picture of the two other places I visited yesterday: Pike Place Market and the Seattle Public Library. The library is spectacular, and would be worthy of its own blog post were it not for the soccer.
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