"Baseball's Last Dive Bar" prepares for last call as A's time in Oakland nears end
As the A's make their apparent final stand at the Oakland Coliseum, it looks like the sun is finally setting on the relic of a stadium. Once a gleaming vision of the future, it is now drifting into the past.
"Well, this vibe is so dope," said A's fan Robert Mikinka. "I've been to so many stadiums. There's not another vibe like Oakland. There's not. I've seen this place packed. With [Mount] Davis packed. Just fans. 'Oakland! Let's go Oakland!'"
Mikinka and Jason Dana have come for the long goodbye, soaking in a few last memories in a building packed with them.
"Every day, walking through seeing Rickey [Henderson]," Mikinka added. "Denis Eckersley. Hanging out over there with Dave Stewart."
Now approaching 60 years old, the Coliseum has been described in terms of "obsolescence" for decades now. And a lot of fans love it.
"We were just talking, before you sat down, they haven't really done much remodeling," Dana said. "But the fans love the stadium the way it is."
"It was built with a rawness, a simplicity, and real elegance," said Craig Hartman, Senior Design Partner with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architectural firm that designed the Coliseum in the early 1960s.
"Very very innovative structure," Hartman explained. "And the architect, Myron Goldsmith, was a genius, both with the land and geometry. These buildings were nestled down into the land. Very kind of California in that regard. Sort of the relationship between the architecture, the land, the climate being so beautiful. It has a real sort of California vibe about it."
And the Coliseum reflects even broader vibes of the times.
"It was part of the American ethos at the time; the idea of making things flexible, transformable, serving multiple uses," Hartman added.
Americans were also on the move, out of the cities, and into the suburbs. A Coliseum surrounded by a vast parking lot fit squarely in that vision of the future. Something else that can be said about this complex: it was an absolute steal, even in 1960 dollars. $25 million then would be just $260 million today.
The Raiders new home in Vegas cost $2 billion. The Coliseum is from an almost unimaginably different time. And time has not been forgiving to this stadium.
"I don't like it," a fan said of the changes in 1996 when "Mount Davis" was installed. "Used to be able to see the Oakland hills and now it looks like a mess. And I don't think it's going to look good when they finish it either."
Many still decry Mount Davis. And conditions inside the building have become the stuff of sports legend. And every single one of the Coliseum's conversion-design contemporaries are long gone. But this, for a few more days, is still home to the Oakland Athletics and A's fans.
"Thursday's going to be a really hard day," Mikinka said.
So the long goodbye is heading towards an end. Last call at Baseball's Last Dive Bar.
"Yeah, it's Oakland," Dana said. "That sums it up, man. That Oakland feel is going to be gone. It's weird."
