New Tactic in Fight Against Publicly Financed Stadiums: Humor

The issue of publicly-financed stadiums has been a hot-button topic for years. There are books about the perils of public financing. There are documentaries about the wake of squabbles over public financing. And now there’s “Stadium Status,“ a semi-satirical look at the new mecca for billionaires who want publicly financed stadiums: New York City.

“Stadium Status” is the brainchild of bloggers Dallas Penn and Rafi Kam, who together with director Casimir Nozkowski are the Internets Celebrities. (They’re now NYT-famous, too.) In it, they bring their lenses and pens to bear on the changes wrought in the Big Apple by Citi Field, the new Yankee Stadium, and the Atlantic Yards project that will include the future home of the Brooklyn Nets.

They capture anger, in protesters chanting “Brook-lyn is not for sale!” They get laughs, from Mets fans conceding that a day at Citi costs hundreds of dollars and from public financing watchdog Neil deMause, author of Field of Schemes and the blog of the same name, as he considers how much everything cost. And they hit a lot of the necessary melancholy notes, talking to fans who saw Babe Ruth in his coffin and telling their own stories about hearing roars after Darryl Strawberry moon shots.

They’ve already been fact-checked and criticized, too, mostly for joking about a church being knocked down with a congregation inside and the lack of screen time for the state and local officials’ perspective. But “Stadium Status” isn’t about telling the entirety of the story of New York’s new stadiums, just a piece of it, and it does that well and with wit. (One of the small triumphs of the film: Mets and Nets jokes sounding fresh!)

We’ve parked “Stadium Status” below the jump (some NSFW language) for you to watch. It’s worth the twenty minutes you’ll need to carve out of your day.

Stadium Status from Internets Celebrities on Vimeo.

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