NYT: The VooDoo charm NOLA fans
Source: New York Times
By the standards of arena football, even star players count themselves lucky to receive a look over ice cream. But the VooDoo, 7-2 and in first place in the Southern Division, has been charmed. After a season lost to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the team has enjoyed the embrace of this damaged city, where many people still sleep in tents under highway overpasses.
The VooDoo has sold 13,000 season tickets for the spring, a record for the league. Its home games regularly sell out, though actual attendance has fallen more than a thousand short of capacity at the 16,021-seat New Orleans Arena. Seizing on the popularity, the league has scheduled its championship game here for the second year running, on July 27.
“It’s all the young kids — young, young, young,” said Blanca Maya, a taxi driver who keeps an amulet to ward off the evil eye dangling from her rearview mirror. “They go crazy.”
Wearing black and purple uniforms adorned with images of a skull in a top hat, the team seeks to evoke the New Orleans of the Widow Paris, gris-gris and dark Sunday nights on Decatur Street. Its cheerleaders call themselves the VooDoo Dolls. Its fans call the arena the Graveyard.
“They love a great show, and they love to dress up,” said Rita Benson LeBlanc, whose family owns the team. “They’re very creative. It’s costume night every time we have a game.”
In a city that took its time rallying around the Hornets of the N.B.A. on their dazzling run to the playoffs, the groundswell for arena football has arrived in unpredicted fashion. The $8 ticket price provides a partial explanation. And Louisiana is football country.
This is affordable family entertainment which is just what everyone wants, no matter where you live. $8 a ticket? That's awesome!
