Brooklyn's Barclays Center

A few weeks ago, I had a charity meeting at Jay-Z's 40/40 Club in Manhattan.  As you might have been able to guess - I do write a "sports fan experience blog," after all - I'm not much of the clubbing type, and had never been to Jay-Z's establishment before.  I have to say, it was a pretty awesome spot - giant HDTVs everywhere showing (mainly) basketball games, tons of rare sports memorabilia on the walls and cool lighting that gave the club a very unique feel.  Surprisingly, I enjoyed my time in the 40/40 Club.  But while I can now officially say that I visited Jay-Z's club, in a way I wasn't really there.  Sure, I was physically inside the building, but the lack of a true club atmosphere makes it impossible for me to say whether or not I'd like the place at midnight on a Saturday.  Places like the 40/40 Club can't be judged solely on looks.  They need to be felt, and I can't say I've ever really felt what it's like to party with the 40/40 crowd (I imagine I'd hate it).

The reason I bring up this anecdote is because on Saturday afternoon I made my first trip to New York City's latest Jay-Z-inspired establishment, Brooklyn's Barclays Center.  I visited Barclays over the summer before construcution was finished, but this was my first visit to the arena for a real event.  Overall, I was extremely impressed with the building even before I walked inside.  The subway ride from the east side of Manhattan was incredibly convenient - a ~25 minute ride (tops) dropped us literally just steps from the building's main entrance - and upon exiting the subway we were immediately greeted by the Barclays Center's impressive and unique facade.  The staff was especially friendly - everyone we spoke to, from the people at Will Call to the security guards to the ushers in our section, was really sociable - and the building looks new, fresh and clean (as you'd expect from an arena that opened just weeks ago).

Thanks to a connection at the area, we had particularly good seats in the fifth row of the lower level (see the picture, below).  The arena is pretty small, both in terms of capacity and footprint, so virtually every seat is right on top of the court.  The upper level seats are stacked tightly, so that they seem simultaneously very close to the court (horizontally) but extremely high up (vertically).  Just like Jay-Z's 40/40 Club, Barclays has a modern, dark, sleek look - it's not bright and friendly like Indiana's Bankers Life Fieldhouse, but is instead chic and dark, like a bar. Our seats also came with access to one of the arena's eleven "Vault Suites," which are basically ultra-luxury boxes located under the arena with no view of the court.  We didn't hang out in ours for long - there were no other people there and there was no food, so we didn't have much of a reason to spend more time there - but it was apparent that the Vault Suites could be an awesome place for someone rich and/or important to host guests before the game or during halftime.

Check out the empty seats in the background - it looked like that in every single section.

While I loved the building, it's still hard for me to picture what it's really like to attend a big-time sporting event at Barclays.  I went for a Princeton basketball game versus Fordham, and at opening tip there weren't more than 1,000 people in the place (it might have been closer to a few hundred, realistically).  Never once did the crowd get up on it's feet, you could hear every sneaker squeak on the court, and I had dozens of empty seats on either side onto which I could stretch out, lay my coats, etc.  I'm guessing that, for a Knicks vs. Nets game or even the A-10 Tournament finals (coming to Brooklyn in March), the place could get loud and exciting, but I really can't say for sure.  In fact, the crowd was so sparse that I got selected for an on-court promotion (a shooting contest that I'm sad to say I lost) because I was virtually the only person in the entire lower bowl who was a) in my seat right after the opening tip, b) wearing a Princeton shirt and c) young enough to avoid having a heart attack under the basket.  The new Barclays Center has a ton of potential - I can't wait to see, hear and feel what it's like to be there for a "real" event.

      Replace "Ian Hummer" with "Deron Williams" and Barclays Center might feel a lot different.