Blister in the Sun

Bethlehem was lovely when I moved there, but it gets uglier every day. Every open space is filling with cookie cutter houses and fast food outlets, the traffic is becoming unbearable — and now this abomination:

dome
Yeah, that’s a fugly blot on the landscape.

The local soccer club teamed up with an area company to put up the dome which holds “grass-like playing surfaces to simulate the feel of outdoor play.” None of the grass-like playing surfaces qualify as large enough to a play a high school lacrosse or soccer game, so it seems they are used for practice, clinics or scaled down matches.

Now, here comes the “when I was a kid” part.

When I was a kid, sports had seasons in the Northeast that were enforced by weather. Maybe it varied in other parts of America depending on the weather — or maybe it was just common sense that certain games were played at certain times of the year.

Taking the seasons out of sports is another way adults have taken the play out of play. They’ve created a culture where games are a measure of their child’s worth — and by extension, their own. Don’t buy that it’s damaging? Then look at the rise in the number — and severity — in youth sports injuries.

If kids want to kick a soccer ball around in the winter, maybe they should do it outside. I see people outside all year round at St. Rose’s Christian Plumeri Sports Complex in Albany. Bundle up and deal with it — and take your big ugly bubble out of my town.

One thought on “Blister in the Sun

  1. I agree. Bethlehem is in need of some smart zoning. Every tiny bit of spare property is getting a house. I have a little 1/5th of an acre lot next to my house (in “Olde Delmar”) and I’m just waiting for someone to jam a house onto it… Delmar will soon look like Staten Island and the rest of Bethlehem is going down the Clifton Park road.

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