The Minnesota Vikings’ new stadium, which will forever be known as the Hormel Chili Dome around here, is just about complete. And if you thought this was going to be some marvel of architectural genius, you were wrong.
It is a hideous monstrosity.
Perhaps they built it to closely resemble their football team?
I don’t know, but just look at that thing.
Looks real inviting and not at all like a blight on the already crappy Minneapolis skyline.
It looks more like a shitty high school art installation than it does a place where people play football.
We wouldn’t have even noticed this — I mean, the Vikings are completely inconsequential to those of us with refined tastes like you and I — except for the fact that someone passed this Pioneer Press column onto us. What did that have to say?
Laughably, that this shiny new stadium was ugly.
That stadium gives off a dark vibe. Sheathed in black. Knife-edged. Towering.
Ugly.
No, ugly is too quick to the keyboard. Not charming. That’s it. It is not charming. It looks like a hangar for the bat-winged flying machines of evil alien forces. It was supposed to resemble a Viking ship, I thought, but the only vessel shape that comes to mind is a bloated Noah’s Ark, and I am sure the architects and the Wilfs didn’t imagine that.
While that’s a pretty damning (and accurate) description from one of the locals, this was the part I enjoyed the most.
But this place says nothing about Minnesota. This monstrosity could be anywhere, including the surface of Mars. I guess this is what you get when you get an out-of-town guy to hornswoggle us out of a billion dollars.
Or, that’s what you get when you’re a second-rate organization with a second-rate owner. A second-rate stadium.
It’s amazing how the Vikings always manage to live down to expectations, isn’t it?