My Seats

 Just before the year ended, I made a brief trip to San Diego. During the pandemic, Jack Murphy/Qualcomm/SDCCU Stadium was being torn down piece by piece. People from San Diego that I follow on Twitter were posting pics of the old stadium being reduced to rubble. 

I wanted to see it one last time.

It's still weird to me that I didn't go to many events as a lot of people from San Diego did but I felt sad it was going to be gone forever. 

The first time I went there was to see a Monday Night Football game where the Chargers were hosting the New York Jets. This was when Brett Favre had departed Green Bay and ended up as the Jets starting quarterback.

I had never been to an NFL game before and I was taken back by how electric the atmosphere was. The stadium was packed and it was loud. The Chargers won that game and I didn't know if I'd ever go to another game again. I moved closer to San Diego after college and went to a few games. The Chargers last season in San Diego is the year I ended up getting season tickets and I ended up going to four games that year. 

After years of neglect, it was deemed more cost effective to demolish the stadium and build a new one. The atmosphere and memories will be left in the old stadium.

The Aztecs sold pairs of seats for $330 and the buyer had to go to the stadium to pick them up. It's a long commute for me just to do it and truth be told, I wasn't in 100% condition to do it. I really wanted the seats because Qualcomm was special to me.

It took me about an hour and a half to get there using multiple freeways I wasn't familiar with.

When I got there, there were about six cars ahead of me. You had to show your purchase confirmation and ID in order for you to receive the seats. The seats were in a chain link cage and they would grab them and load them into the back of the vehicle.

They let you park and take pictures of the destruction taking place. All of this is gone now.

 

I stayed for about five minutes, watching it being slowly torn down. I think everyone who got seats stopped and took pictures.

After that I went home.