THE TEMPLE OF PURE COLLEGE BASKETBALL HAS GONE RECONSTRUCTIONIST: That was the reaction of a friend of mine when I shared the news that The Palestra—the 84-year-old University of Pennsylvania gym-slash-sweatshop which has hosted more college basketball games than any other arena—has replaced its fabled fixed-digit, kid-has-to-change-the-letters-manually scoreboard with a modern video display.
In other death-of-Philadelphia-tradition news, farewell to all-rock 94.1 WYSP-FM, and good riddance, Howard Eskin.
My brothers and I exchanged several emails about the loss of YSP. Those of us who left the area in the early 90s also lamented the loss of WPST and WCAU. We just found out.
ReplyDeleteAnd Temple beat 'Nova! Go Owls!
I don't think I could tell you how to distinguish 'YSP from 'MMR over the past several years, at least in terms of their playlists. So while I mourn for the history that has been cast aside, in terms of present day value, I'm not sure how much of a loss it is that I can't hear the same Led Zep song twice within a twenty minute time span on two stations that are basically right next to each other on the FM band. That said, I probably won't listen to YSP at all now, other than for Eagles games.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the Palestra scoreboard change, I'm not sure if my reaction is this, or this.
If you left the area in the early 90s, you didn't really miss anything--they haven't updated their playlist since then. The interesting thing is that this move took out two Eskins.
ReplyDeleteAs to the Palestra, well, that's what happens when your students digitally print their rollouts.
Can Wrigley field be far behind?
ReplyDeleteAll those blowjobs for nothing...
ReplyDeleteI am not sure which item to which this is referring.
ReplyDeleteIMHO, it all went downhill once the NCAA banned streamers.
ReplyDeleteI listen to WIP more than I care to admit to, but I'm looking forward to hearing Michael Barkhann and Ike Reese on Tuesday morning. I think that's a very odd pairing of personalities, but we'll see what happens.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I thought they were going to "flip the switch" on Tuesday, and not on Friday. I guess the management couldn't stomach one more "The Top 500 Led Zeppelin Songs Of All Time...As Voted By You!" one more time.
Was that an intentional RRC reference in the title? If so, you are amazing.
ReplyDeleteIt's a quote from Airheads.
ReplyDelete