Results tagged “skydome”

According to Wikipedia, Detroit Rock City made a pathetic five million dollars at the box office but has since become a cult classic that "has been often compared to the 1993 film Dazed and Confused." That might be a nice way of saying it tries damned hard to be like Dazed and Confused (a real cult classic about a single, crazy night in the '70s), right down to the dude who apparently hoped to build a career born out of playing a combination of Slater from D&C and Jay from Kevin Smith's movies. Yeah, that didn't happen.

Little-known fact: during the construction of the SkyDome, so many people stared down at the rising stadium from the CN Tower that the landmark occasionally came to life, with binoculars in hand, to see what all the fuss was about. Reports of the tower leaning over at a precarious angle were written off as mass hallucinations or proof of too much partying.

The 1982 Grey Cup game was not a pleasurable one for Toronto football fans. The major disappointment was not that the Argonauts fell apart in the second half and lost to the Edmonton Eskimos 32 to 16—it was the bone-chilling, rainy weather. Downpours caused fans in fully exposed sections of Exhibition Stadium to risk injury in order to find shelter. Among the fifty-five thousand people in the stands observing the miserable experience were Metropolitan Toronto Chairman Paul Godfrey and Ontario Premier William Davis. As the Globe and Mail observed, as Godfrey "surveyed the scene from his dry seat in Section 42 at the 55-yard line, the falling rain brought a twinkle to his eye. There must have been visions of a domed stadium dancing in his head.” While Davis sighed that the Argonauts "played well," Godfrey told a Star reporter that “if you ever needed proof of the need for a domed stadium, this is your day.”

It was twenty years and one week ago today that the Toronto Blue Jays played their first-ever game at the stadium formerly known as SkyDome. They lost 5-3 to the Milwaukee Brewers; Paul Molitor, who’d be the Jays’ World Series MVP four years later, got the first-ever hit at the new ballpark.

Photo by Jonathan Goldsbie.

Every weekday morning, bright and early, we feature a photo (or two) from a photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's our way of giving the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention that they deserve.