The Joe Louis Arena, or simply the Joe to Detroiters, is soon to be gone. With the Red Wings hockey team in a new stadium, the Joe is being deconstructed rather than torn down. As such, it's now in a state where you can see inside it from outside.
It is an odd, sad sight for a building that has brought concerts and circuses and four Stanley Cups to the city. I drove by yesterday and took a few pictures just for posterity's sake. Of course, that made me deeply sentimentally aware of what the arena meant to me and my family.
We went to hockey games there and watched on the big screen when the Wings won the Cup playing the Capitols in Washington. There were arena football games featuring the Detroit Drive and No-vo-boy-o-vic. Our family saw the circus there and even indoor lacrosse. My eldest son saw professional wrestling on several occasions, and I want to say he saw Kid Rock in concert when Mr. Rock was still only locally famous.
Seeing that hole in the Joe was sad for me. Not the closing of Detroit's Tiger Stadium sad (our sentimentality being generally stronger over our own youthful experiences) but sad just the same. It may be poor taste or bad timing to say this, but with the Joe only 40 years old well, it shows me all the more that Americans don't really take history to heart.
And so it goes. Farewell Joe. I will and do miss ya.
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