I held a season ticket plan at Joe Louis Arena for eleven years before they tore her down and I've had one at Little Caesars since it opened, so I feel like I've earned the right to start this fight.
The Joe was a dump. The concourses were too narrow, the bathrooms were a crime, you could feel the place breathing in the cold. And I would trade the entire glass and steel concourse at LCA, every single restaurant, to get one more playoff night at the Joe with the building so loud the seats vibrated. LCA is nicer in every measurable way and it has none of the soul. The acoustics are wrong. The crowd sits on its hands until someone scores. It feels like a mall that happens to have ice in it.
Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm just an old sentimental fool. But also tell me the truth.
you're not wrong but you're also describing every new arena in the league hon. they're all malls with ice now. the difference is the Joe earned its grime over decades of playoff hockey and LCA hasn't earned anything yet because we haven't given it a single playoff series to get loud about. give that building a Game 7 and check back.
the joe smelled like a hockey rink should. lca smells like a pretzel franchise 🥨 i said what i said
THE ACOUSTICS ARE THE WHOLE THING AND NOBODY DESIGNS FOR IT ANYMORE. The Joe trapped the noise. LCA lets it escape up into that giant gondola ceiling and it just dissipates. You can be in a sellout and it sounds like a half empty building because the sound has nowhere to live. That's not sentiment. That's physics and it's a real downgrade.
I want to push back gently because I think we're grading on nostalgia. I bring my kids to LCA and the experience of actually attending a game with a family is so much better than the Joe ever was. Sightlines, getting in and out, not waiting twenty minutes for a bathroom. The Joe was magic if you were a 25 year old who didn't mind discomfort. It was genuinely hard to bring a seven year old to. The soul we miss was partly just our own youth.
Molly, you're not a fool, you're just honest. But Suburban has the right of it too. I'm old enough to remember when Olympia was the cathedral and the Joe was the soulless new mall we all complained about. Same exact argument, word for word, in 1979. Buildings don't have souls when they're born, kid. We give it to them, one heartbreak and one parade at a time. LCA's just waiting on its first parade.
olympia comparison is exactly right and it pains me to agree with anyone. we cried about the joe too. doesn't mean the joe wasn't better, just means i'm consistent about hating change.
the one thing lca will never replicate is the walk across the bridge and through that weird industrial riverfront to get to the joe. it FELT like a pilgrimage. you earned the game. now you valet park and walk past a chipotle. it's just different energy and i miss the pilgrimage.
joe parking lot was a horror movie tho. don't romanticize the dark scary garage molly. i love you but no.
alright Gordie got me with the Olympia thing and I'm not too proud to admit it. maybe I'm just grieving being young at the Joe more than I'm grieving the building. but I stand by the acoustics complaint forever and ever. give LCA a playoff run and ask me again. I want to be wrong about this one.
One thing nobody's said: the Joe had the worst sightlines from the upper bowl of any building I ever sat in, and we forgive it completely because of what happened on the ice. That's the lesson. We don't actually love the architecture, we love the memories it held. LCA will earn its forgiveness the same way the Joe did, one unforgettable night at a time. The grime was never the magic. The magic made us forgive the grime.