A few scattered thoughts on the transgender experience

Let's be clear about something: for being all over the national news, transgender is still a topic very few people (including actual transgender people) actually understand.

Every news interview goes down about the same way. The transgender guest is asked to explain what transgender is, tell some story about being a kid and wanting dolls or dresses and being denied, a sloppy attempt at finding out whether or not the trans person has a pee pee or a hallway, and finish with everyone smiling about how brave the trans person is for existing.

It's a simple attempt at trying to explain a complex thing.

Much of the confusion has to do with trying to conflate two different concepts: transitioning and being transgender. Being transgender is what it says on the tin, it's a state of being. It's one of the reasons why the LGBT acronym keeps expanding. How you choose to identify yourself is an act of self discovery. It can take a long time and be very confusing, and is what most of the talk show interviews try to address.

Then there's transitioning, which is what most of the laws are trying to address. The legal sphere and the talk show sphere don't overlap all that much. Things like bathroom protections and civil rights bills are there to protect those choosing to transition, so that employers can't fire them, so that they aren't thrown out of bathrooms.

This is all to say that being transgender and transitioning are hard to understand things that are very difficult for the individuals going through them.

But there's something else implied in the words beginning in trans-. These are temporary states that are supposed to end.

In the community that's called living "stealth". Pre-transition for me, that was always the goal. I'll reach the point where I've achieved girl and all these icky trans- stuff will just melt away. Except it didn't work like that. Even as I lived the stealth life, I felt super visible in my invisibility. Everyone knows and they just aren't saying anything to be polite but they must have like secret meetings without me to discus what I plague I am and how disgusted they are. I was apparently very important in the play going on in my head.

Which is why I chose to do this:

Fun fact: I'm a transgender soccer writer choosing to come out on Twitter cause I'm bored at Ralph's. Let's see how this goes...

— Josie Becker (@JosieBeckerFC) January 6, 2015

It seemed like a good idea at the time, to just put it out there once to reset the game. To have it be something out there which is a suitable topic for conversation. And it went shockingly well.

What cause me to revisit this moment was this past weekend's episode of This American Life. On it, Lindy West told her story of coming out as fat. She talked about fatness as this state where you feel both invisible and incredibly exposed. This was a state I understood.

In a way, the transgender experience is sort of the inverse of the experience of being fat in current American society. When you're fat, everyone offers unsolicited advice on how to unlock the thin person they believe lives inside you. There are groups of all sorts to help you accomplish this, some are paid for, some are Christian themed, but the message is always the same: your lifestyle is unacceptable and needs to change.

When you come to realize your transgender it's typically the opposite. You've noticed a person inside you dying to get out. And the reaction from many around you is to try and find a way to keep you in your old body. There are negotiations, the people in your immediate circle will suggest alternatives to transitioning (my dad thought I could just take up drag on the weekends and just never mention it to anyone in the family). There are even Christian themed groups to get you to stop.

The second woman on the program talked about her experience with extreme weight loss. Her doctor prescribed her diet pills. Speed. She shed over 100 pounds of weight, and suddenly a new world was opened up to her. People she'd known before wouldn't recognize her. But staying thin became an obsession to the point that she now goes to Mexico to get more pills since her insurance will no longer cover it.

She talks with anger and sadness to her husband about how he never would have talked to the fat version of her. He tries to tell her that the thin her is the real her, that it unlocked a confidence in her. She isn't so sure.

Girl me is 100% the better me. There's a confidence in me that was never there before, a feeling of comfort in my own skin. But it's come at a price. As miserable as I was, the realist in me knows I could have found someone that would have fallen in love with the old me. It never would have worked, and I'd have ended up complicating or maybe even ruining several lives. But in the conventional sense, I'd have checked off all the boxes.

In some ways there are similarities to being prescribed hormones or diet pills. You go to a doctor and say, I want a different body. And the doctor says sure, here's a sledgehammer go wild. No one has any idea exactly what's going to happen to your body, but it's going to change rapidly. And you're going to have to adjust to the changes.

After the weight loss patient on This American Life lost all her weight, she had to have surgery to remove some of the excess skin. There was quite literally a seam up her crotch like a rag doll, and one time that seam burst. The image of trying to pack this leaking wound with gauze like a teddy bear that's lost its fluff was incredible.

I never had any complications from surgery, but it was something that just presented itself as necessary after a few years of swings from that estrogen sledgehammer. If I wanted to change my passport, my birth certificate, it was necessary. If I wanted to play team sports again, it was necessary. If I ever wanted someone to be intimate with girl me, it was necessary.

And believe me, I had to stuff myself after surgery, with a medical grade piece of plastic to keep my vagina open. Like before I went to bed I had to plug myself in or I could wake up to my Cinderella dream gone forever.

After all that, everything is still extremely complicated. On This American Life she talked about throwing out photos of the fat version of her, even the ones her parents owned. I never had the courage to toss out my parents' photos. I don't know if I have the right to tell them old me never existed. But seeing them makes me extremely uncomfortable.

Maybe someday someone will love me. Maybe there's a straight man out there who's comfortable with all the baggage I come with. Someone who never would have been interested in the old me. Ditto if I settle down with a lesbian. You wouldn't have loved the old me. Which I guess is fine since I didn't love that person either. But then, mentally, I have twelve years of material to chose from. Girl me is a teenager, which would explain the way I dress sometimes.

Mentally, physically, socially, you never really stop transitioning. Which makes the term way more permanent than its etymology implies. Girl me needs a daily pill to stay alive. I can be the life of the party when I feel secure, but when I don't I try my best to be invisible while feeling like a bright light is on me.

If there's anything this post is trying to say, it's that there are several ways of being that mainstream society has deemed icky. Being one of those icky people really sucks. Cause you don't know who finds you icky and who doesn't. And because you know that there are some out there who find you icky, sometimes you just assume that everyone thinks that way. It's a defense mechanism. People can be very mean to transgender people.

It's also to say that girl me saved my life. Even knowing the weight of everything I gave up, how much I feel my career and love life have been set back, every once in awhile it'll hit me just how happy I am. When it does, you might see me dance a little bit, or break out into song, or just grin from ear to ear.

Because I'm alive. And that's something 16 year old me would have put 50/50 odds on.

A brief history of pro baseball in New York

Baseball season is almost here again, and though my heart has been stolen by soccer the coming of a new season always fills me with nostalgia. One never forgets their first love.

For a sport that is deeply in love with its history, the telling of that story is still selective. So I'd like to take a minute and tell some of that story. The period from 1903 to 1953 was the most stable time Major League Baseball would ever know. For fifty years not one franchise would fold or relocate.

This period of prosperity was marked by the American League Baltimore franchise closing up shop and restarting life as MLB's most successful franchise: the New York Yankees. The story of how we got to the Bronx Bombers, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and the rest is less known. I won't be able to do it complete justice, and I won't be the first to try, but it's always fun to take a mental jog through the historical record.

The story of pre-1903 baseball is of individual clubs trying to decide upon the best way to organize. The National Association of Base Ball Players formed in 1857, at a convention of New York City clubs trying to agree on some rules. Mostly amateur, a Cincinnati franchise was the first to declare professionalism in 1869.

These were barnstorming clubs. They'd set their own schedules, and convene every once in awhile to discuss how things were going.

In 1871, the first professional league was formed: the National Association of Professional Baseball Players.  Two franchises which were a part of the National Association are still around today. They were originally known as the Chicago White Stockings and the Boston Red Stockings (many teams were known simply by their sock color, a lone distinguishing mark). Today they are known as the Chicago Cubs and the Atlanta Braves.

There's a third team I'd like to introduce in setting up how we got to the New York Yankees. The New York Mutuals were the city's leading professional baseball franchise from 1857 to 1876, and their story sheds light on what it was like trying to make it in the big apple.

Perhaps the most significant detail of the Mutuals' story is that they never had a home stadium on the island of Manhattan. Their first decade was spent in Hoboken, New Jersey, playing on a very important ground in baseball history: Elysian Fields.

In 1846 the first ever organized baseball game between two clubs took place at Elysian Fields when the Knickerbocker club took on a New York Nine. Polo and Cricket were the more popular sports then, so finding suitable grounds for baseball sometimes proved difficult. New York clubs tend to play in Hoboken throughout baseball's least organized years.

By the time the 1871 season had rolled around, the New York Mutuals were the lone representative of NY in the National Association, playing games in Brooklyn. The following year Brooklyn would get its own representative in the NA which shared the Union Grounds, the first baseball ground to build fences and thus made capable of charging admission. The stadium was built in 1862 by the Mutuals' proprietor William Cammeyer, who inherited his father's leather business. In the off-season, the ground was converted into a skating rink.

In 1875 the National Association would crumble, but its teams would rebound and form the National League in its place. Unfortunately, the Mutuals were running out of money out in Brooklyn. Players were paid from profits in gate receipts, if there were any, and the balance sheet was especially dreary toward the end of a losing season. They failed to make an end of season western road trip in 1876, violating league rules, and were kicked out of the newly minted NL.

That left New York with a professional baseball void which would not be filled until 1880. That void, and the NL's swiftness to expel teams, would prove important in setting up a mighty competitor. The NL was kicking out teams for playing baseball on Sundays, for selling beer at their ballparks, and shamefully for players guilty of match fixing. In the coming years the St Louis Brown Stockings, Philadelphia Athletics, Cincinnati Reds, and Louisville Grays would all meet similar fates.

New York got back into professional baseball in 1880 when John B. Day and manager Jim Mutrie started the barnstorming New York Metropolitans. Day was a successful tobacco merchant. The Mets too started out in NJ and Brooklyn, but by the end of the year they were renting out a polo field in Manhattan. This ground became known as the Polo Grounds (subsequent stadiums retained the name, even when not built on former polo fields). The name is kind of famous in NY baseball history; Willie Mays caught a ball there.

In 1882, the American Association forms with the cities just mentioned and a handful more. They allowed liquor sales and Sunday baseball, and gave consideration to some talented players who the NL had blacklisted for various behavioral problems. Of course the first thing the AA did was contact the Mets, but their games against NL opponents were lucrative so they declined to join. The NL came calling as well, and it came to pass that at the end of 1882, Day had two franchise offers. He took them both.

To satisfy both requirements, the Mets were entered in the AA while two teams the NL had folded to make room for expansion to NYC and Philadelphia were combined and made into the New York NL franchise. They were nicknamed the Gothams, and eventually they became the Giants who play in San Francisco today.

The Giants and the Mets split the Polo Grounds. With the space large enough for two diamonds, occasionally games were played simultaneously with a curtain separating the two contests. So New York went from pro baseball being impossible on Manhattan to having two pro franchises overnight.

American Association baseball was cheaper to attend (25 cents to the NLs 50 cent tickets) and had lucrative beer sales, so competitive teams tended to have full coffers. Losing teams, however, had a harder time hacking it. In 1884 the Brooklyn Atlantics moved to the AA after spending their first year in a minor league circuit. Trolley tracks ran by their home of Washington Park, which earned their fans the nickname Trolley Dodgers, a name which stuck through to their move west to become the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The National League was older and more respected, so as the Giants established themselves it behooved Day to funnel the talent in that direction. Manager Mutrie was moved to the NL squad and Day started to look for a way out. He sold the team in 1885 to Staten Island amusement and railroad kingpin Erastus Wiman for $25,000. The Mets were moved out to the Staten Island ballpark Wiman owned, the St. George Grounds.

Between their competition with the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Metropolitans struggled and eventually folded in 1887, three years before the National League and American Association would merge.

Not that everything was smooth sailing for the Gothams(Giants) from then out. In 1889 Manhattan extended its street grid, as what was once cheep outerlands were being settled. The plan for extending 111th street ran right through the original Polo Grounds. Progress would make the NL franchise nomads for the 1889 season, as ownership tried but was unable to purchase land from James J Coogan further uptown at 155th street.

Coogan, executing the will of William L. Lynch, was able to work out a lease deal with Day on June 22, 1889 for a portion of the site at a length of five years. Workers used salvaged materials from the old ballpark to hastily built a new park on the Coogan site, taking only three weeks to get it playable if unfinished.

1890 however was trouble for the NL. Unrest over the reserve clause and other player restrictions led to a player revolt. The Players League consisted of much of the NL's top talent, and they were able to rent ground on the northern end of that same site to build the stadium for their New York franchise. Brotherhood Park was built with only a ten foot alley separating the two ballparks.

The 1890 season ruined Day financially, but the Players League wasn't able to make it to a second season. Edward B. Talcott had signed a ten year lease when he built the ballpark for the PL squad, and as the NL Giants absorbed the PL assets it was Talcott's people who gained front office control. Day would eventually sell his majority share to Cornelius Van Cott.

After outlasting two territorial competitors, the 1883 NL expansion Giants and Phillies were joined in the 1890 merger by the aforementioned old as dirt Cubs and Braves franchises. They teamed up with the Association franchises today known as the Dodgers, Cardinals, Pirates, and Reds to form the Original Eight of the National League.

There were still untapped markets out there, so in 1901 the American League formed with teams in Detroit, Cleveland, Washington DC, and Baltimore as well as four teams in NL markets. The league was a growth out of the Western League, of which the Detroit Tigers were a founding member in 1894 (the only surviving franchise from that charter). However, Baltimore was new for the 1901 launch. They didn't do well.

After two seasons, the teams was bought, the roster was raided, ultimately having to be contracted by the league. A New York ownership group bought the franchise for $18,000 and did a rush job building a stadium on a hilltop in the Bronx up the road from the Giants. Swampland had to be reclaimed, and clubhouses hadn't been build yet, but the New York Hilltoppers had built a competing professional baseball ground in Manhattan not far from Coogan's Bluff.

Hilltop Park didn't last a decade. When the Giants, now owned by John T. Brush, had to rebuild the Polo Grounds after a fire in 1911, the now New York Yankees moved into the brand new stadium with them as tenants. In 1919 the Boston Red Sox (who took their name from the National League franchise which was now going by Boston Braves) needed cash in a hurry, and sold their star Babe Ruth to the Yankees who had not won a pennant up to that point.

Ruth changed everything. He broke the home run record three years in a row, and in 1921 he brought the Yankees their first pennant. That year and the next they would meet their landlords the Giants in the World Series and lose each time. However, the fame of Babe Ruth and the winning ways gave them enough capital to build the most famous stadium in baseball. In 1923, the house that Ruth built, Yankee Stadium would open.

From a team kicked out after running out of money, to a barnstorming franchise smart enough to try playing baseball in Manhattan, to trying to please two different leagues at the same time, to building on a poor site, to the most famous trade in baseball, to finally opening up Yankee Stadium in 1923.

The Yankees eventually became so good they chased the Giants and Dodgers out. Though the Braves, St. Louis Browns (now Baltimore Orioles), Senators (now Minnesota Twins) and Athletics had already started the movement train going, at the start of the 50s, New York franchises were once again changing baseball forever. Major League Baseball's first ever expansion took place after the Dodgers and Giants left, with an eye to balancing out the Los Angeles market (Angels) and replacing the NL hole in New York.

When it came time to name the new NL franchise, they chose a name from New York's baseball past. The Metropolitan Baseball Club was back. Of course, the chain of events those owners started in 1880 never really stopped.

Sources:
http://sabr.org/bioproj/park/8a2a9a1f
http://www.projectballpark.org/history/nl/polo2.html
http://flipflopflyin.com/flipflopflyball/info300-majorleaguehistory.png
http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/c281a493
http://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/july-24-1860-first-enclosed-ballpark
Google Books

Is University of Phoenix the best place for women's brains?

There's a commercial which debuted with the new year for University of Phoenix. It's the one with the cover of "If I only had a brain", with images of working women studying when they can. In case you haven't seen it:


The song is a bit of an earworm, I find it floating through my brain at the oddest times. What compels me to write about it is how it fits into a larger narrative around surrounding women right now.

The first time I saw it, I was sure it was a commercial for a women's empowerment group. It's much artsier than what we're used to from a for-profit university, and the overall message is one of undervalued female workers going above and beyond to show their intelligence.

The ad was made by a company called 180LA, for whom this is a debut ad after they won the business from Phoenix' previous advertising agency. The stated purpose of the campaign is less to attract new students, but to retain the ones they have.

Enrollment at online universities like Phoenix happen on more of an ad hoc basis, so student retention is as important for them as subscriber retention is for Netflix. An ad like this fights the perception that Phoenix is just a degree mill, with images suggesting behind that name are these highly intelligent, hard working people.

It's a bold promise to make.

In the United States we're facing a demographic shift from marriage and homemaking as the norm for women and working only out of necessity, to young women staying single or unmarried longer and working out of preference.

Higher education rates tipped in favor of women in the 90s, and millennials have continued that trend. 38% of women aged 25 to 32 held a bachelor's degree (2013). That's seven percent higher than men in that same age group. Yet, millennial women still view men as the advantaged class in the workplace.

When I think about where a school like Phoenix fits in this puzzle, it scares me a little bit. The old adage "if everyone's special" is starting to apply with resumes. Yes, within the workforce there are ceilings one can hit without a specialized degree. This hits women who are returning to the workplace after divorce or children especially hard.

Is a degree mill going to give women the skills necessary to break through those ceilings? The data suggests high school dropouts fare better in the job market than graduates of for-profit Universities. Those who pursue credentials required by law for the jobs they want, for example nursing degrees, fare better. The catch there is the accrued student debt can be crippling.

There are setbacks which can affect both genders in their higher education goals: drug addiction, poverty, English as a second language to name a few. However pregnancy hits women fairly singularly. A female heavy add like Phoenix put out, with lyrics about taking care of children, seem to be talking directly to those women.

On the myth of high and low maintenance, through the lens of a trans experience

I read an article this morning "In praise of women who are high maintenance of proud of it" in which the author uses life experience and pop culture examples to explain what is meant when a woman is called high-maintenance. It's almost always thrown as an insult, at a woman who takes too long getting ready, who is too demanding in public, or feels uncomfortable in traditionally male social situations. The low-maintenance girl wears jeans and a t-shirt, drinks beer, and watches the game with the guys (while keeping her sports opinions to herself, of course).

There's a line in the piece which inspired me to write my own reaction piece. "If a woman does anything to distinguish herself from the fold — whether that means wearing lipstick or voicing strong opinions — it makes her difficult or prissy. It means she becomes harder to "maintain." The mere state of womanhood is considered an affect, a glamour on top of the default of maleness."

The maintenance comparison is to vehicles, which fits right in with men always referring to vehicles with female pronouns. The low maintenance woman is effortlessly beautiful (which, is an oxymoron if I ever saw one) requiring minimal effort on behalf of the owner (cause let's be real) but easy to show off to friends.

I have personal reactions to all elements of that statement that I hope to unpack here. As a transgender woman, the idea that womanhood is a glamour on top of default maleness set off several bells. That's certainly a charge that's been levied against trans-women, especially in pop culture. The trans-woman is the honeypot out to trick straight men into sleeping with what are essentially men wearing a glamour.

Recently I went to a new primary doctor for the first time, after ten years of only going to LGBT specialty clinics. I was honest about my sex reassignment surgery, about my hormone regimen. I was hoping to transition from specialty clinics to a normal doc like everyone else. After going through the full physical, which included putting on gloves and poking around downstairs, he told me I seemed like a well adjusted young man. He corrected himself to woman and apologized, but the damage to my psyche was done.

When people meet me and discover I'm trans and wish to broach the subject, it's always dressed with 'you look great' or 'I couldn't even tell'. I mention this as setup for the fact that I've consciously aimed for being a low-maintenance woman since pretty much the beginning of my transition.

I first went to change my name and go full time as a woman a year and a half into hormone therapy, living in vegetarian themed co-op student housing. I came out to my house of sixty some people, and then soon after I changed my name in my student records and started attending classes as myself. There was a conscious decision to gravitate toward skirts and makeup, to really assert the change.

A few months into going full time a housemate made the comment that I'd been wearing a lot of makeup lately, which another housemate softened with saying they knew I was just finding myself. The message was clear, and all the blue eye-shadow and blush went in the trash. I was coming across as too high-maintenance.

I wasn't surprised that googling Caitlyn Jenner high maintenance yielded a result, as every other word out of her mouth is something about makeup or nail polish or fashion. It definitely depends on your peer group, but I had the low-maintenance creed affirmed later when I had a long term relationship with a man.

We were in the subway headed out, and I saw a young trans-woman I had mentored at Cal headed down. I pointed her out, and his comment was "I can barely see her face under all that makeup". I tried to deflect and point out that its a personal choice and it's what makes her feel comfortable going out in public, but my choices were reaffirmed.

The irony is that looking like you're not wearing makeup takes a bunch of makeup. I was at Disneyland once and overheard a young woman saying "he told me I look so much better without makeup, and I was like 'if you only knew how much makeup I'm wearing right now'". For me, a 'no makeup' look involves covering my entire face in foundation, either eyeliner or mascara, and a lip tint or gloss.

That's a solid five minutes of makeup application to look like I'm not wearing any. Every once in a while I'll have a woman tell me "wow, your face is so smooth". Hormone therapy, deep face washes, careful makeup application. Or, y'know, effortless.

For me, low-maintenance is a constructed bubble where I feel freest to relax. I wasn't going to stop liking sports just cause I transitioned, or video games, or beer. On that same token, it was easier for my family to be around me in girls jeans and a t-shirt than in a dress.

There's something I'm trying to wrestle in my head here. There's the association with low-maintenance lifestyle and maleness which doesn't entirely ring true. The language of being chill and down to earth is very much male gendered. From the original article's "guy with long hair" to the ever popular "one of the guys". However, within that acceptance of women in male social situations, there's still a lot of distrust of women's opinions.

A cursory search of google for sexism in sports journalism turns up plenty of results. Here's one just as a jumping off point. If a female sports reporter is too critical, she's told to get back into the kitchen. If she appears to try too hard on her appearance, then it's assumed she doesn't know anything about the sport she's covering. The female sports reporter is expected to be reasonably attractive while minimally informative.

I make mental notes when a sideline reporter shares actually insightful information, only to have the booth essentially ignore what she had to say for their own conversation. There are any number of sports chat shows where the female host is there only to introduce topics, while an all male panel discusses the issues of the day.

Women like Katie Nolan, who have earned a space to share their opinion, have to deal with articles from their own company about landing a husband at sporting events. Even that article Nolan called out is still dealing with the dichotomy created by high-maintenance/low-maintenance. Can you still be a high-maintenance girl while enjoying things boys like? Yes, and it could result in getting a husband!

Ultimately, and especially as a trans-woman, the gendered terms used to describe social spaces are meaningless. A guy with long hair is a guy with long hair. There are plenty of them riding surfboards shirtless in Venice, a girl is more than long hair. No girl is just one of the guys if she isn't allowed to point out when a sports team isn't performing well.

My personal journey has been in finding the value in both high-maintenance and low-maintenance lifestyles. It's liking sports and not being afraid to wear a little pink dress. It's natural looking makeup and not being afraid to speak up when a server gets your order wrong. It's why women look up to characters like Peggy Olsen, who show these are not binary choices but rather window dressing on the things that really matter.

Finding that truth is how my internal drive to be female finally met a fleshed out version of an adult woman. It's a journey I feel every woman has to go through while coming up through a society where male is default. Where women are described through male gaze terms like low-maintenance and high-maintenance.

A society ultimately where you have to deconstruct years of narrative to find a place to just be. Good times, for a change.

What LAFC's new stadium means for the LA Galaxy

Today MLS expansion franchise LAFC announced their intentions to build a soccer specific stadium in Exposition Park, on the former site of the Los Angeles Sports Arena. At a cost of $250 million dollars, it will have a capacity of 22,000 seats. At its completion it will be the first open air stadium built within the city of Los Angeles since Dodger Stadium. Permitting and construction will take more than two years, pushing LAFC’s entry into the league back to 2018.

The point about construction in the city of Los Angeles isn’t just public relations. Since Dodger Stadium was built, many teams have played within the city of Los Angeles only to leave for a stadium somewhere else.

Los Angeles Angels left for Anaheim, Los Angeles Chargers left for San Diego after only a year, Los Angeles Rams left for St. Louis, and the Los Angeles Raiders went back to Oakland. The Los Angeles Galaxy leapfrogged over the city going from Pasadena to their own stadium in Carson. UCLA ditched the Coliseum for the Rose Bowl. The Dodgers own their stadium and USC has nowhere to go, so until now they’ve been the only open-air sports teams inside the borders of the city of LA.

The Los Angeles Sports Arena that LAFC will replace with their soccer-specific stadium had its own experience with the flakiness of LA sports. Jack Kent Cooke built the Fabulous Forum in 1967 for his recently purchased expansion Kings, moving the Lakers out of the Sports Arena in the process.

This cost the Sports Arena its hockey tennant, the WHL Blades (who didn’t draw very well anyhow). They’d try again with the Los Angeles Sharks of WHA, which lasted two years. It’s ABA tennant the Stars moved in after the Lakers left and lasted two years. The Clippers came in the mid-80s, but were a doormat until they moved into the Staples Center. UCLA and USC both called the Sports Arena home at one point, but both opted instead for on campus arenas.

AEG worked some magic building the Staples Center Downtown, but they chose to build their soccer stadium in Carson. Built on the site of a 1984 Olympic cycling venue, the now StubHub Center serves not only the LA Galaxy but US Soccer, the US Tennis Association, and up until this season a second MLS tennant in Chivas USA.

In that way it’s quite similar to Staples Center which houses the Lakers, Clippers, Kings, Sparks, and at one point even an arena football team. For indoor arenas, which have lower capacities but year round functionality, sharing is the norm. Conversion from one sport to the other can be done in an afternoon.

Ultimately my thoughts on LAFC’s stadium are filtered through the Galaxy’s needs, specifically, is LAFC’s stadium a legitimate salvo in a battle which hasn’t even officially begun? In trying to organize my feelings I read a bunch of economics articles which used math I couldn’t understand. Outside of the math, what they’re dealing with is supply and demand.

	Attendance Per Game	Capacity	A/C%
LA Galaxy 2014	21,258	27,000	79%
2013	22,152		82.04%
2012	23,136		85.69%
2011	23,335		86.43%
2010	21,437		79.40%

The StubHub! Center is built at a greater capacity than there is demand for Galaxy tickets. It was built at well above the average attendance the Galaxy saw in the cavernous Rose Bowl. This has kept ticket prices relatively stable over the history of the complex, but it has also dampened the demand for season tickets. Getting Galaxy season tickets comes down to preference for a specific seat, as getting in day of game is rarely an issue.

This hurts the secondary market value of tickets. It’s common practice for season ticket holders to subsidize the tickets by selling off extra seats for high demand games, but outside of Fourth of July there just isn’t a guaranteed Galaxy sellout.  

	Games at less than 1/3 Capacity	Games at 1/3 - 2/3 Capacity	Games at 2/3 Capacity and Above	Games at 90% Capacity and Above
LA Galaxy 2014	0.00%	17.65%	82.35%	23.53%

While the Galaxy don’t sell out, attendance is incredibly stable. Referring to a chart in a CIT Social Science paper from 1974, while the percentage of games at 90% capacity is below an average ABA franchise in 1974, the games at ⅔ capacity or better rival the NFL of that time. Factor in the fact that the games below ⅔ were all weekday games, which carry their own restraints at the StubHub! Center, and you see just how consistent the Galaxy draw is.

I’d conclude that the 27k capacity of the StubHub! Center wasn’t done with the Galaxy in mind. It was done for the national teams, to host World Cup qualifiers, Gold Cup games, Olympic qualifying tournaments, and friendlies.

Which returns me to my original question, is LAFC’s stadium going to impact the gate for the LA Galaxy. We know Chivas USA didn’t have much of an effect on Galaxy attendance, but that was a franchise which required the exact same effort to follow as the Galaxy.

Another paper I read from UNC uses the example of two competing restaurants across from each other, each serving seafood. One is at capacity every day during peak hours and doesn’t take reservations, while another offers comparable food and service at a slightly higher price but has many empty seats. In this example, why doesn’t the popular restaurant raise its prices slightly higher?

This paper, long before Yelp existed, argues that demand for some goods is dependant on the demands of other consumers. Think about how crazy some restaurant owners go over their Yelp reviews. Emotional attachment is harder for economists to quantify, but what if some goods are in high demand because other people want them and not because of price or quantity?

In the case of the Galaxy and Chivas, while the community around LA has held steady and kept the same group coming back year after year, once popular opinion turned on Chivas they literally couldn’t give tickets away. The product didn’t matter, they had a bad reputation.

This might explain some of the scorched earth policy LAFC has had with elements of Chivas USA. While LAFC has been taken to task for allowing a talented youth program to get absorbed by the Galaxy when they could have claimed it as their own, the very brand aware folk at the center want nothing that will be a callback to the former MLS club.

So what is the identity of this brand new club? Thus far, what they are is not-the-Galaxy. Galaxy are blue, they are red. Galaxy are suburban, they’re building in the city. It’s the same strategy NYCFC has employed. They too came in without building a youth structure, because their entire hook boiled down to being blue while they were red. Why take the time to go out to New Jersey? We’re a soccer team in New York.

The Galaxy base isn’t at risk. For that some-20k strong core, the investment is in the Galaxy. LAFC is going after that other 7k, who show up for fireworks or when LA plays the Sounders, or for a national team friendly. Don’t drive from Echo Park, Santa Monica, Burbank, Pasadena, the Valley, down to see the Galaxy. We’re so much closer, and we’re way cooler. We’ll have food trucks and show outdoor movies, and all the things you young kids and your new families like.

That’s where that 22k capacity comes in. They aren’t building for the occasional national team game, or the possibility of landing a bowl game. It’s opening up in a completely different part of town, and they’re going to look for a different core, and they’ll work hard to keep it.

LAFC isn’t the restaurant across the street. That was Chivas USA, and economics took its course. LAFC is the restaurant across town, which with the right yelp reviews will take away the folk who were willing to drive out of their way just to have the experience you offered.

How does the StubHub! Center compete? Go all-seater, reduce capacity. Make it an in-demand ticket more than twice a year. Make it something people need to plan ahead for. There’s going to be a bump with Steven Gerrard comes over, but how do you keep those people? They didn’t stick around with Beckham. After that initial full year, it went right back to that core. Do something to make life better for that core, instead of chasing the capacity which is too big for the club anyhow and always has been.  

Old Navy jeans and whimsical Americana

It's only recently that I've begun thinking critically about my sense of style. I knew looking good was better than the alternative, but there wasn't too much investment in how or if I got there. Looking back, my biggest influences weren't at all high fashion. When I sought to get away from the free pile at my vegetarian themed co-operative student-housing, it was thrift shops and a dab of surplus store that defined my day to day look.

If one were to combine this with my Los Angeles upbringing, plus a surprising amount of nostalgia, the result is something I didn't know was called whimsical Americana. I didn't know that was my aesthetic until I read an article on Emily Current and Merritt Elliott (link) where they described their style with that phrase.

I got to meet Current and Elliot at an Old Navy event promoting the store's spring line, which is tied heavily into the Spring Break/festival/road trip scene. On a road trip you need essentials and jeans, and that's what Old Navy is known for.

The event had a hitch-trailer on site similar to the one which was on the Coachella grounds last year, with the various pieces of the collection strung on clotheslines. There were stations to make key chains, get your hair braided, and doodle on maps of California and the US. A contemporary bluegrass band played on stage, as people sipped on orange-vodka cocktails and snacked on chicken & waffles.

Current and Elliot are responsible for bringing back bell-bottoms (now called Boot Cut) and boyfriend jeans (link). That's quite literally my entire jean collection, much of which came from Old Navy. They're described as ambassadors of this line, not designers, but if their track record means anything I'd buy whatever they're selling.

Old Navy - On the Road

That time when soccer gave me hope

I want to write a story about the 2006 World Cup, which will have little to do with soccer and just about everything about what soccer has meant to me. Have a feeling I'll end up using I much more in this than I'm comfortable doing, but it is my story after all so here goes.

I followed the 2006 World Cup from Thailand, recovering from gender reassignment surgery in a hotel just outside of Bangkok. My friends Neil and Chris had come with me for support, but the pain meds they had me on kept me pretty spacey. Which was unfortunate, as Neil had brought Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon to read to me as I recovered. There was no hope of focusing on that, as I could barely follow the NFL reruns that made up one of this Thai hotel's two English language channels.

These were friends I'd made at Berkeley, living in a vegetarian themed Co-op house. I'd begun my transition to my current life as Josie Moira after moving to Berkeley in 2003. Not that I hadn't been preparing for years throughout my high school experience, but Berkeley presented two things which my high school home life hadn't.

The first is probably guessable, my family was traditional and catholic and my father had already at a few points made threatening remarks about the parts of my life I was having trouble hiding. By senior year I felt like I was ready to burst, having read a coming out poem to my AP English Lit class and often wearing a skirt on stage with my garage band.

The other bit is something that still follows me, and part of the reason I've felt pressure to re-come out to the new people I've met, the fact that I went to high school at an all-boys Salesian catholic school in Los Angeles. Its something most folk probably never think about, but imagine if the question "where did you go to high school" was a loaded scary question. It comes up whenever I apply for work, it comes up in getting to know people.

So Berkeley distanced me from those concerns, and my transition unfolded rapidly enough that by the 2006 World Cup I was in a hotel in Thailand undergoing a procedure. When I was finally clear headed enough to want some of the outside world, it was an English language Thai newspaper covering the Cup that gave me something to focus on. The US didn't do so well during that June, but it was my first time really caring about soccer results since the 1994 World Cup.

By the time the Italy-France final rolled around, I was back in the states and completely depressed. Maybe it was getting off the pain meds, but I've often suspected that it was an emptiness at the end of a long journey. I'd spent the space of a World Cup cycle with my sole focus on transitioning. School happened in the background, more about getting to stay in Berkeley than about working on my degree.

The day of the final was my One Good Day before things really went dark. A park in the Italian corner of San Francisco was showing the game on a big screen, and when they won in penalties fans of the Italian team marched down Columbus ave. holding a giant Italian flag. It wasn't my team, but there was something comforting in feeling lost in the event and not wallowing in my own stuff.

By the 2008 Euro tournament I was living in San Francisco in the Italian quarter above an AS Roma supporting coffee shop. I was supposed to graduate Berkeley in 2007, but the depression had taken over to the point that I withdrew in my last semester. I'd found work in a coffee shop, but housing was tougher. The residential hotel above the coffee shop was a step up from the residential hotel above a strip club, but it wasn't the most glamorous life.

2008 and the Euros is the year when I truly got into soccer as an adult. The coffee shop I worked in was a little French bakery across from the Roma coffee shop. The Roma shop had a little TV and was showing all the games to a packed house, and I became the designated rep for the French team as I watched along with them. Italy beat France to get out of the group, which I was fairly glad of as far as getting out of there alive was concerned.

By the 2010 World Cup I was back in Los Angeles, and I screamed my lungs out as Landon Donovan put the US through to the knockout stage. I'd gone to a handful of Galaxy games in 09 and 10, and after the 2010 Cup I decided I'd try my hand at blogging about this sport which was capturing my imagination.

When I say soccer gave me drive and direction, I say that as someone who can tell the story of my last decade using major tournaments as plot points. In the past when I've been asked about how I got into soccer I've told half the story, the same way I've mumbled and said something vague when someone local asks me where I went to high school.

This is just a glimpse at where my transition and my soccer love intertwine. Thanks for reading, and thanks for all your support.