I went to grade school with Artis Gilmours Daughter. She was 6ft in grade school.
Artis was one of my all-time favorite Chicago Bull players. I'm glad he made it into the Hall of Fame. He was a beast in the paint.
And that sandwich you buy at the Carvery, you could get 2lbs of the best roast beef Jewel has, some Keisers and make 4 of them at the same price.
Levey does many venues across the country, and in Chicago Sox Park, Wrigley and I believe Soldier Field. Bismark was owned out right by Peter so no surprise it was sold off and look what we are left with. Another fucked up decision caused by the new "organization".
Oh and the frozen pizza, well, sucks shit.
I thought the food at the Cell was always better than the food at Wrigley, and then Levy became the Wrigley vendor. I used to think Bismark was bad too, and then you saw the Levy changes, not just the pricing but some of the menu items and such. I thought the pizza was way better before, with Connies (they have a frozen pizza too you can buy at your local supermarket, and it's better than what the UC offers).
The thing is the Blackhawks' policy was to only sell tickets six games in advance. I would go down after the first period and buy tickets for the the next available game. Never had an issue.
Season tickets were easy to come by. Different era, for sure.
I don't know what the season ticket holder ratio was back in the 80s or 90s save for the last season, but I think the ledger is bigger now; i.e. there are more season ticket holders across the board. However, I don't know how many of those are brokers/people just looking to sell rather than actually going to a bulk of the games.
I think a decent measure is when you have X amount of SRO, the old building use to sell a few thousand SRO tickets, not every night, but a great deal of them.
I give MCD some credit with creating demand, but the quality of the team has contributed greatly to that too. MCD was just smart enough to capitalize on the work done before him. Getting the games on TV no doubt has helped create demand, but ultimately it's that team on the ice that will keep it.
I remember going to Bulls games where you could almost sit on the bench there were so few there.
The Chicago Sting indoor games always outdrew the Bulls.
Until......
Sometimes, the Sting attendance numbers are a mix. There were nights the Sting drew crazy attendance numbers, especially at the Stadium, but there were also nights it was a ghost town. The 80s and soccer had a love/hate relationship.
The Bulls use to have to giveaway tickets, just to get butts in the seats pre-Jordan. It took that rookie year for people to realize what they had, but not until 86-87 did the Bulls consistently pack it in, and I don't think their sellout streak took hold till the next season (87-88).
