Basedball Game in Camden

Website: www.riversharks.com

Last night, after being put off for weeks, we finally went to a baseball game in Camden at the Campbell's Fields baseball stadium. The stadium is nestled next to the Ben Franklin bridge on the New Jersey side. The trip was organized by VE after she got a good Groupon deal for tickets. The game was between the Camden Riversharks and the Bridgeport Bluefish.

ABJ and I turned up at 7pm for the 7.05pm start and found our seats mid-way through the opening National Anthem performance. There was a total of 7 of us in the group and one by one people turned up with various fast food items and made themselves comfortable. There were cheesesteak-ish hoagies, hotdogs, pretzels with cheese and chillies, pizza, french fries, cotton candy, ice cream... The food seemed to be one of the main reasons everyone was there.

As the game began there was an announcement about how there'd be special prizes if the home-team won a total of 5 runs. This surprisingly low number made it clear early on that the baseball we were about to watch was not going to world-beating.

Realizing that there was a long evening ahead of bad live sports I decided to get a beer. As part of the ticket deal we were given 2 "shark dollars" with our ticket. These could be spent on food and drink inside the stadium. At the beer stand I bought a bottle of Yards Philadelphia Pale Ale for a total cost of $7. I offered the woman $5 + 2 shark dollars and she waved me away, saying "What that? No we don't accept those". Soon a manager came over and reassured her that they did accept them so I grabbed my pricey beer and sped back to my seat.

The game was pretty slow and it was sometimes hard to tell the difference between play and warm-up exercises. Most of the entertainment was from people watching as well as weird competitions that were performed regularly throughout the evening. The competitions included:

• A small boy racing a giant gecko
• A bean-bag toss to win 12 donuts
• A tug-of-war to break apart a giant hoagie
• A potato-sack race
• Two-man sumo wrestling
• A small boy cleaning the soil off the bases with a giant toothbrush

There were also periodic giveaways of free food. A stadium helper would run around the stands with a slice of pizza or a portion of fries and give it to the person who cheered most loudly and enthusiastically. We didn't win any food but it was quite a sight to see the baying crowd. The most bizarre event was a race between two giant aerosol cans called Moose and Body Spray.

In amongst the crowd were hawkers of lemonade, cotton candy and slushies. We enjoyed watching little kids eating the sugary snacks and then getting hyperactive and dancing to the pop music.

The actual baseball was secondary to the proceedings. There were a few good hits but these were outweighed by the many mis-hits, foul balls and caught pitchers. I was surprised by how many balls flew into the stands with force. It was a marvel that no-one got injured by a ball in the face.

At the end of the game there was a "firework spectacular". This was worth waiting for. I especially enjoyed the excited sugar-crazed kids hopping in the seats to each rocket explosion.

After the fireworks we left the stadium and, after some tricky turns, finally succeeded in leaving Camden.

Washington Ave Green (Pier 53)

Last Sunday Ashley and I decided to visit the nearby Washington Avenue Green on the newly developed pier 53. We'd heard that this was similar to the Race St Pier redevelopment that we visited a few weeks ago.

It was a sunny day so we decided to take a picnic.

The pier is located behind some industrial buildings to the side of the busy South Columbus Boulevard. To access it we walked along a bike lane and into the redeveloped area.

The first thing we saw was a "dendritic garden" with plants growing in between the cracks in tarmac:

We carried on and admired the flowers and plants that had been carefully layed out. It seems that the development has not  been going long enough for the plants to have properly established themselves and take on a more wild appearance.

The pier now came into view:

and we saw that it was blocked off from visitors and was being used as a wildlife reserve. I read that this pier used to be the Washington Ave immigration station for people immigrating to America.

We found a nice bench and ate our picnic:

and admired the view across the Delaware River to Camden, NJ:

The overall theme for the redevelopment was to keep hints of its industrial past. This meant keeping a lot of concrete and tarmac and interspersing the plants in between. We decided that, although it was nice that the redevelopment had been done, it would have been even nicer to have more plants and less concrete.

After we'd eaten in the sunshine we walked back through the gardens, stopping to admire a glittery gemstone addition to the tarmac: