RICHMOND, Va. -- I admit, this one’s just me being selfish.
When I was i high school, we lived about ten minutes away from Richfield Coliseum. The teams that played there had Cleveland in their names, but the physical building was miles from the city and, like my town, in the middle of nowhere. It was the place where I saw concerts (INXS, U2, George Michael), Cavaliers basketball games, Lumberjacks hockey games, even an arena football league game once or twice.
And yet, I missed this one.
It killed me to do so, but I was a broke college student at the time, about to embark on a spring break pilgrimage to Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Athens, Georgia to visit the cities that had produced my favorite rock bands, and I hadn’t a dime to spare. It was an amazing trip, my first as an adult, and it involved such adventures as driving through backwood country roads in search of the bridge pictured on REM’s “Murmur” album and sleeping in the car in a parking lot near UNC, because the Grateful Dead was playing at the Dean Dome and every hotel room in the vicinity was booked. The sort of memories you never forget. So, I regret nothing.
Still, how amazing it must have been to see the hockey fans of Northeast Ohio roll out the red carpet for a team from Pittsburgh, of all places, and to watch Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr scoring goals in my old stomping grounds!
ROB ULLMAN / DKPS
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