With Thanksgiving looming it’s time this weekend for me to create a list of those things for which I give thanks.
Ideally the inventory of gratitude will be whittled down to two or three mentions when it’s time to talk turkey. But this weekend the list will be long and in need of paring.
I’m still glad the Chargers are not in town anymore. I know there are plenty of Bolts fans who miss having a local NFL team to cheer for on Sundays (or Mondays or Thursdays) but what they forget is that every year the team put them through excruciating psychic agony.
The team played well enough to get into the playoffs only to flame out in the first round or they performed so abysmally that fans would stay away from the stadium in droves. It wasn’t uncommon to find offices and classrooms filled with sad faces and broken hearts the day after a Chargers game.
Compound that misery with the team’s excruciatingly tedious drama of a search for a new subsidized stadium and you can see why I’m grateful the team and the bag of frowns and headaches is gone.
I’m also glad the battle for Soccer City and SDSU West is finally over.
The election didn’t end the way I ultimately hoped it would. I wasn’t attached firmly to either proposal to build a stadium in Mission Valley, but I leaned toward the Measure E proposal because initially the proposal came wrapped in the idea that San Diego would get a professional soccer team. SDSU’s counterpoint felt like futbol was merely an afterthought. Frankly any reasonable voter knew that each proposal was an attempt by one set of developers to grab valuable property and make lots of money.
But now that the issue is settled and San Diego in all likelihood will not get an MLS franchise we — the seven of us in this county — can go back to focussing on the third and fourth division soccer teams playing in this town. No stadium leases, environmental reports or 24-hour propaganda promising soccer fans crumbs in return for a meaty, taxpayer subsidized meal.
(Besides, those of us who want professional futbol merely have to brave the challenge of crossing the border into Tijuana to watch the Xolos, where they play in their own stadium next to a hotel and casino.)
I’m glad the elections are over, though the vote tallying and the uncertainty has not come to an end. And while nationally there appears to be tremendous shifts and new faces in power, at the local level there are still the faces that keep National City politics amusing and Chula Vista power sharing as familiar as a high school reunion.
Most of all — and I think most anyone reading this will concur — I’m thankful we’re around another year to make up a list.
