Barclays Trying to Class Up The Joint With Announced BAM Integration

 

So I'm pretty sure you all know how I feel about the Barclays Center. Not. A. Fan. I take it that a decent number of you feel the same way. The Arena's baby daddy, Bruce Ratner, announced something last week that he's hoping will assuage all of you brownstone Brooklynites from not totally hating his downtown monstrosity. 

Using the dark arts, Bruce Ratner convinced BAM to curate anywhere from 3-6 shows a year in the arena (I'm thinking Cirque du Sogay will be at least two of them), in an effort to bring some culture to what computer-generated mock-ups promise to be a baller's paradise (their words, not mine).

As cutely quoted in last week's New York Times Ratner said:

I always like to put things that are a little bit ironic together. So here you have a place like BAM, which is a great contemporary-arts cultural institution, and then you have an arena, which, people think about sports and circus and so on. And then you put them together, and then I think you’ve got something special.

Special? Really? As Battle for Brooklyn director, Michael Galinsky pointed out via Curbed, this announcement was a huge PR move for Ratner. And of course our friendly neighborhood developer was quick to say something about that:

Mr. Ratner said the partnership with the Brooklyn Academy was not meant to appease critics. 'I don’t care,'

Refute yourself, then elaborate please:

'We care a tremendous amount about the community, but we don’t do it to get credit,' he said. 'We must do stuff here because we think it’s good to do, not because it just happens to make a splash.'

So basically he feels like he's doing BAM a favor by giving an 18,000 seat event space to performances that otherwise wouldn't fit in BAM's facilities. Awe thanks, Brucey. You're a swell guy, except that you're only giving BAM a curator's fee and not a cut of ticket sales.

Listen, BAM. I salute you for falling on that sword and trying to save this place from completely going down the shitter like every other modern arena seems to do. And maybe it will be a great opportunity to get some bigger performances into our neighborhood. But please Bruce, don't act like you're doing us any favors. Cause no matter how many times you dress this lady up, she's still a ho.