Hoop-it-up Dallas Part I

Location
The site of this year’s Dallas Hoop-it-up was Fair Park. Before I discuss the things wrong with having it at Fair Park, let me list a couple of places that Dallas has hosted the event before.

West End – This was my personal favorite. Although the courts are really spread out, you had a lot to chooses for shade, food, and entertainment in general between games. The only thing I didn’t like was the distance you would have to walk between courts. You could play your first game on court 12 and then have to play your second game on court 256. Kinda ridiculous.

AA Center – This one was one of the worst. Played in the parking lot of the AA Center. There is no shade what so ever. Although the West End is located near the AA Center and you can get there relatively easy for some good food. Side note: The highlight of the AA Center one was when a storm blew in and 15,000 black people ran to the parking garages for cover. You could see them all poking there heads out of the different levels. It was high comedy, trust me!

Ameriquest Field a.k.a. Ballpark at Arlington - I had a lot of the same feelings about this location as I did about the AAC one, but the difference was that I lived 10 minutes from the Ballpark at the time of this event and could go home and get back relatively easy.

Fair Park – This was by far the worst site I have played at yet. I felt like I was in a Visa commercial.
Parking - $8
Bratwurst - $3.50
8 ounce Gatorade - $3.50
Water - $3.00
Getting sunburned out in the ghetto that is otherwise known as fair park – Priceless.

I don’t know if anyone has ever been there, but this was my first experience. The only other time I have been to the state fair is during Texas/OU weekends.

First, the site of HIU was WAY in the back. We had to drive behind the carnival section, over the rail road tracks, and park right next to Ghettoville. The one plus about parking was that we didn’t have to walk far from our car to the court. I think there were only 40 or 50 courts max. (this is not that many considering West End had over 200+)
Second, one of the things I loved about HIU was that you could buy a Gatorade bottle for $5 bucks and get unlimited refills of Gatorade all weekend. Well supposedly, Gatorade has backed out as a sponsor. They have been replaced with “Concessions by Cindy”. Biggest sponsor that HIU had was Whataburger. And although I enjoyed my free spin at the wheel where I won a free BOB (which I redeemed the following day), I still loved my $5 unlimited Gatorades.
Third, They charged you to re-park. On Saturday, we had a 2 hour break between our 2nd and 3rd game (which is not unusual, and another reason I don’t care for HIU but yet continue to give them my money and time). We decided to all get in one car and go get some lunch. Well we asked the lady if we had to pay again to park and she said yes. So we ended up not going out of the park and spending an additional $8 to park AGAIN. We instead donated our money to Concessions by Cindy and I had a Brat and Gatorade for $7.00. I do have to say that the Brat was probably in the top 5 Brats of all-time, however. Still contemplating if the Brat was worth $3.50. I’ll get back to you on this.

The one good thing I liked about the location/setup was that you played all your games on one court. You didn’t have to go to the bracket and see where your next game was and where that court was located. Everyone in your pool played on that court. Even gave you an advantage of scouting them out before you played them. The disadvantage of playing on the same court all day is the refs. One ref is assigned to one court for the day. Meaning we had the same ref ALL day. This was especially costly on Sunday.

*Stay tuned for comments/analysis on actual Game Play.