Puppy Politico

@dilanesper Philly does this right. The venues are relatively close to the center city, easily connected by multiple highways; the parking can be shared by each venue; and there’s a subway stop in the middle of it all. It’s actually a pretty efficient setup altogether.

Which is actually a perfectly good place to put sports arenas and stadiums.

@2024dion It’s a little hard to compare STL to the rest of these because despite its problems, it still has a fairly robust regional economy and the largest metro population. Honestly if you just remove STL city from the equation the rest compares pretty favorably to KC, Indy, and Columbus

Columbus, Indianapolis, and Kansas City all similarly are late bloomer major metros in states with significant rust belt issues (St Louis, Gary/South Bend/Fort Wayne, Cleveland/Cincinnati). They mostly avoided the heavy industry economy collapse and are for the region disproportionately surrounded by rings of sunbelt style suburbia. That they and not their more beautiful in-state cousins (sorry KC folks but St Louis outclasses us with ease) are booming is a sign that people like us have relatively niche preferences. People in general seem to be strongly attracted to a narrative of progress. It creates a self-reinforcing cycle.

@humantransit ATL and DFW are huge and somehow manage to allow you to walk between all the gates post-security. I’m surprised how many airports don’t.

US airport executives are finally discovering that many people like to walk. Transit should be there for those who can't or don't want to walk that distance. But walking must always be an option.

@the_transit_guy Minneapolis. If it were in the sunbelt, it would be much larger. It has a lot of corporate hqs; strong job market; well educated work force; and hasn’t suffered the same rust belt dynamics as the rest of the Midwest. Only hindered by the fact that it’s a tundra half the year.

What city or metropolitan area in the world is most hampered by its weather and climate? In other words, what city would be exponentially better if it had the weather of Southern California?

@xwanyex STL would make a lot more sense if people would more or less treat Clayton as the CBD as opposed downtown. It’s far more central to the actually metropolitan area and is probably closer to more of the important power centers of the region.

@jbarro I don’t know where all the demand is supposedly coming from to justify such a large expansion. The airport is already underutilized for the footprint and terminal size as is. It’s only marginally busier than DCA (Reagan) , which is slot and perimeter restricted.

The new Dulles Airport plan is way too expensive to work without huge federal subsidies — if you tried to finance it with fees on the carriers and tickets, few would find it economical to operate there. viewfromthewing.com/dulles-airport…

@nocapcal @theepicmap Yeah I agree. Pittsburgh is probably the closest big American city to being built “on”/“in” the mountains, not just on flat basins at the base of mountains.

@PuppyPolitico @theepicmap Yeah but what I was getting at is that ppl talk about how Denver isn’t in the mountains. But it would be insane to try to put Denver over the Rockies. Big cities need flat land for roads, sewers, freeways. 99% of the Phoenix area is in valleys.

Today I learned that Denver is a Great Plains city.

@nocapcal @theepicmap I mean phoenix has mountains in the city. It’s just not the type of mountains most people think of

@theepicmap There’s no major city that’s truly mountainous. It wouldn’t make sense from an infrastructure standpoint.

@mattyglesias I mean I think most people just call it downtown in D.C. and refer to specific neighborhood names if they mean a smaller area.

@ZaneTaylor33 @supermonangai Saints/Falcons has that great rivalry quality where it feels like any given game between the two can become completely unhinged regardless of how good or bad either team is. Unfortunately it doesn’t have a much national relevance because the teams are rarely good at the same time

@supermonangai I’d argue 5. Bears/Packers Cowboys/Eagles Steelers/Ravens Are all what I would consider “locks” The other two I’d consider would be Cowboys/Commanders Saints/Falcons

There’s only three REAL rivalries in the nfl

@ChatGPDawson @esidery @PardonMyTake It’s happened before in college football. Alabama used to play some games at legion field in Birmingham, and Arkansas will play some in Little Rock.

@esidery @PardonMyTake Honestly, for states that just have one team this isn’t the worst idea ever. Like imagine if the hornets went and played up in Raleigh or Columbia. Could be a cool concept.

Adam Silver said on @PardonMyTake he would like to eventually see the Grizzlies play a few home games each season in Nashville instead of all 41 in Memphis: “If it were up to me, I’d love for them to play a few games a year and sorta be Tennessee’s team to the extent they can.”

@chrisalbon It’s common in Canada and the Caribbean too, but kind of wild there are enough American tourists in Ireland to justify it as opposed to other European countries.

It is wild there is an entire US terminal in Dublin airport where you pass through US customs *before* boarding the flight to the US.

@MassJumbo European airlines are subject to the same dynamics, they’re just backstopped by national governments who own stakes in them. There’s a reason luftansa and klm/air France own most of the European market now.

Why are airlines in the U.S. alway losing money on flights and are essentially credit card companies when there’s less completion than Europe (no HSR) and fares are way higher? Are they just run poorly or is there some structural factor?

@mnolangray If they let the exterior weather some, it might take on a more rugged appearance, but as is, it looks terrible in the photos.

As an olive branch in this whole YIMBY-aeathetics debate, I'll just say: yeah, this looks awful, and I'd be pretty bummed if it were being built near me.

@mattyglesias @ajlamesa Technically everything in the river up to the Virginia shoreline is DC, so this is technically dc.

@CydeWeys @deanwball What amenity are you getting in DC that enables car free living that you can’t likewise get in the dense parts of arlington, Bethesda, silver spring, or Alexandria?

@deanwball I think you're underappreciating the desire for car-free living, which cannot be found in the suburbs. Your dig at bike Lanes is evidence of this. Bike lanes are good.

My plan is to leave DC for Virginia before the next mayor is sworn in, or shortly after at the very least. DC is incredibly vulnerable. It has the following major defects: 1. An incompetent and corrupt government that does not provide basic services effectively 2. A government whose cost structure depends on taxing the wealthy at levels that approach NYC, but very very little of the charm, charisma, or pull of a place like NYC; indeed, unlike NYC, the surrounding suburbs of Virginia and Maryland are better in essentially every way, including quality-of-life amenities typically associated with living in a big city. To put it simply, DC doesn’t have the kind of moat that allows a place like NYC to shake its residents down so aggressively. For many, it’s worth being robbed by the government of NYC in exchange for living in NYC because NYC is an amazing city; DC is a deeply mediocre place at its best, so the robbery is more apparent and feels less worthwhile. 3. A metropolitan economy that is probably in recession due to the Trump Admin’s cuts to federal government staffing. This means the fiscal margin for error is shrinking. 4. An upcoming mayoral election that will almost surely see a Mamdani-esque candidate win, but because of DC’s fundamental mediocrity, she will have none of the charm or wit of Mamdani. She will just be a radically progressive moron who makes lots of mistakes, further upsets the polluted business environment, doesn’t do any good things like build housing (one metric along which DC has performed well under the current Mayor), and does nothing to fix corruption or incompetence. This new mayor will do things like build bike lanes, except that they’ll take 3 years, cost vastly more per mile than they do in Northern Europe, etc etc. The progressives will continue their post-Bernie shtick of “a very small and superficial fraction of Northern European governance, but way more expensive and worse.” So basically we are about to elect a Mayor who will performatively annihilate any chance this town had of improving itself, all in service of (1) Orange Man Bad, MSNBC politics and (2) maintaining the illusion that progressives have anything resembling a vision for how to govern that goes beyond “plow even more of the rich people’s money into the Corruption Machine.” The diagnosis below of DC politics is way more charitable to DC than I have been but it is fundamentally accurate. This place is cooked. If you are young and want to move to this area, go for the suburbs. If you currently live here, get the hell out. No renaissance awaits this place; a decade or more of decay looms.

@JillFilipovic This is also the city that has speed and traffic cams all over the place. Who knew you could just evade all traffic laws by driving an unregistered off road vehicle.

So to be transparent I only lived in DC for a short time. But it did not seem at all like the city was trying much of anything, let alone lots of things, to get dirt bikes & ATVs off the streets. And in fact efforts to crack down on them were tarred as discriminatory and unfair.

@ajlamesa Aside from the crime and disorder discourse around buses, bus routes abroad seem to have fewer stops and run much more direct routes than in U.S. This makes them much more functional than stopping at every intersection along some jagged route nobody would ever take in a car.

Are conditions on buses in Copenhagen, London, Rome, Kyoto, and even Mexico City different than in the United States?

@TheNotoriousHRT Tennis might fit.

baseball: more northern sport played by more southern players football: more southern sport played by more southern players ice hockey: more northern sport played by more northern players ????: more southern sport played by more northern players

@feelsdesperate What’s weirder is they adopt an NYC team at all. Most people just retain the teams they grew up with and maybe passively pick up the home teams.

The Mets are the team downwardly mobile mopey Brooklyn wordcels obviously prefer. Why is that? Because the Mets have a working class patina wordcels love? Because they’re ‘lovable losers’ who generate affection despite lack of success? It’s an interesting question.