The Roanoke Park Place. Wednesday. Dollar taco night. On one TV, a scoreless Mariner game. On the other, a scoreless Sounders game. Who would score first?
“I’ll take Seattle over the field,” childhood friend Jason said.
We didn’t lay odds, but he was right. The Mariners did score first, on a seventh-inning Bill Hall double. Two more runs in that inning gave them a 3-0 lead, enough for Felix Hernandez’ 14th win.
Meanwhile the Sounders, who’d squandered chance after chance in their U.S. Open Cup final by aiming shots directly at D.C. United goalie Josh Wicks, finally broke through when Fredy Montero sent a rebound home in the 67th minute.
The goal was not as memorable as its aftermath: Goalie Wicks expressed his frustration by stomping Montero’s chest. When the ref ejected Wicks, he had the audacity to aggressively argue the call.
“Goalies are psychopaths,” Jason said. Right again. The Sounders soon scored another goal, with former USL Sounder Roger Levesque finishing a gorgeous Seba Le Toux cross. 2-0.
We began discussing whether to launch our agreed upon victory ritual, shots of Dewar’s. Why Dewar’s? Well let me push my glasses up the bridge of my nose and tell you.
In the 1910s, the U.S. Open Cup winner was awarded the Dewar Trophy, in what must be one of the earliest corporate sponsorships in American sports history. At some point Dewar’s redirected its advertising dollar–probably at the behest of that dastardly Pete Campbell–and the cup adopted its current generic name. /endboringhistorylesson.
But just as childhood friend David was about to order the shots, DC upped the drama with a goal of their own off a free kick. 2-1.
The Sounders shifted to defense mode, and Jason, David, and I shifted to stare-at-the-clock-as-if-it-were-2pm-on-the-last-day-of-school mode. Finally, after an excruciating six minutes of extra time, the ref whistled the game over.
We ordered our Dewar’s, against our better judgment, ensuring a tipsy trip home that, for me, would be exacerbated by using it to type this recap on my Blackberry. (Note to SPD: I was on foot.)
By winning the U.S. Open Cup, the Sounders become the first MLS expansion team to win a title since the Chicago Fire won the MLS Cup in their first season. The Sounders still have a chance to exceed the Fire’s feat–they could still qualify for the MLS playoffs and win a rare double championship.
The Sounders’ win also clinches them a berth in the 2010-11 CONCACAF Champions League, a round-robin tournament featuring the top clubs in North and Central America. Draw will be announced next spring.
The TV showed some Sounders players were holding the cup aloft and posing for pictures. Others were signing autographs for the 150 or so fans who’d made a memorable trip to DC.
We finished our Dewar’s, cashed out, and walked into a warm, colorful Seattle sunset under a nearly full moon. A King Felix win, a Sounders championship, and as nice a night as the Northwest has to offer. Life is good.
Category Archives: News
Shots of the new and improved BottleNeck
bottleneck
McGinn Unveils Government 2.0 to General Napping
“Geek engagement!” is a note I underlined. It was hot in the room, and people were talking longingly about APIs and datasets. But outside of the hotbox of new ideas, it was underwhelming for campaign season.
Monday afternoon, August 31, Seattle’s two (yes, just two ) mayoral candidates were in distinctly different places. Joe Mallahan was adding $30,000 of his own money to his campaign fund, and Mike McGinn was standing in front of a motley group at the Northwest Film Forum on Capitol Hill, pitching what he calls “Government 2.0.” The public face of this push is a new website, Ideas for Seattle, which solicits ideas from Seattle citizens for improving the city (leading the list: “open city data” and “build the Green line”).
Called a “policy summit,” the meeting drew an audience consisting of McGinn’s aides, hyperlocal bloggers, Seattle Weekly‘s Damon Agnos, neighborhood planning activist Dennis Waxman, and various people who spend their time lobbying city, county, and state governments for information.
The McGinn campaign consistently struggles with framing its message at these public events. At campaign launch, McGinn’s talk was about schools, broadband, and buses. Only later did he decide to make a central issue of opposing “Greg Nickels'” deep-bore tunnel, and begin to gain in the polls.
So too with this event, from its stale “2.0” title to amorphous talking points about “doing more with less,” “democratizing data,” and “revolutionizing community engagement” with the power of Seattle’s “collective IQ.” When the floor opened up up, people suggested ways to make data more accessible (if it’s written in Word, don’t print a document out, then scan it to post on a city website), cool mashups like OneBusAway, and referenced DataSF a lot.
It’s like the joke about socialism, McGinn said early on, describing the Seattle process: the problem is too many evening meetings. (For a panicky moment, I thought I was going to be trapped a meeting about having too many meetings.) But it doesn’t take a policy summit to commit to making city data accessible. And while the new website is fun, it’s not addressing McGinn’s primary handicap at all–that he has little governmental leadership experience.
But to implement a real governmental upgrade, just that kind of firm and steady leadership will be called for. Anyone who has ever participated in the creation of a company’s website is familiar with the emotional conflict involved, once it becomes clear how disruptive the internet is to existing processes. There it is, 24×7, disseminating information and accepting data packets, and installing an Always-Updating Now into the public consciousness: “I sent you an email at 2 a.m., where’s your response?”
The internet itself is a Trojan horse; once you let it in, things are never the same. McGinn did not take responsibility for that potential transformation, as he could have as a known crusader. (Cool new ways to look at data? Fine–I’ll read about it on the blogs later.) But you don’t have to look too long at governmental structure to realize how inimical it is to the internet paradigm. If you want to reinvent government for the internet age, say so. If not, it’s campaign season, and the clock is ticking.