Rip City asks, "Recession? What Recession?"

Which one doesn’t fit?

a) Housing prices are falling. Bye-bye equity.

b) Car dealers can’t give away inventory.

c) The unemployment rate is soaring.

d) The Blazers are raising their ticket prices 6.7 percent

The correct answer is d) ... I guess.

It’s all a matter of supply and demand, sports reporter Jason Quick of The Oregonian tells us today.

The supply part I get. The supply of seats in the Rose Garden is fixed. The Blazer franchise finally has managed to hire law-abiding, yet competitive players. The place is selling out — at current prices.

It’s the demand part I can’t figure.

Blazer fans apparently don’t turn the pages from the sports section to the business section. Or open their 401 (k) statements.

If they did, they would join the rest of us in thinking about how to hack away at discretionary spending. You’d think Blazer tickets would be right up there at the top of the cut list — along with a spur-of-the-moment trip to Paris, a new car and a five-course dinner in the Pearl.

You’d think. But you’d be wrong.

When it comes to sports fans, we are in the world of fanaticism and fantasy. What do reason and a bank statement have to do with the thrill of victory on hardwood or turf?

The economy can be tanking, but as long at the Blazers are on a Rip City tear, Blazer owner Paul Allen can jack up his prices — the real world economy be damned.

For the ’09-’10 season, that means that the best seats in the house will go for $140 a pop, up from $130. The whole season will cost a cool $6,160.

It’s anybody’s guess what Paul will be asking for beer and parking.

If there is any consolation, it’s that the nose-bleed, blue collar sections won’t cost more next year. For the pleasure of watching ant-sized millionaires race around on a court the size of a playing card, you still will pay $9.

A point guard named Burger King

We’ve become accustomed to the naming rights sell-off game.

So now Paul Allen is auctioning off the naming rights to The Rose Garden.

Yawnnnnnn.

Allen, already a billionaire many times over, is hoping to reap millions by putting another corporate name in our faces.

Why are naming rights so valuable in marketing?

• We, the public, are forced to mouth the words “Wells Fargo Arena” (or Frito Lay, or Nike, or Adidas) every time we refer to the venue.

• The name gets mentioned repeatedly in the press. Every sports story, every sports broadcast, carries at least one mention.

• The “Rose Quarter” district, much of it belonging to the public, becomes the “Big Corporate Name” district.

• Freeway exit signs, again, owned by the public, become virtual billboards that we the people will receive zero compensation for.

We’ve seen the sell-outs take place around the country in less proud cities than ours.

But it’s here in Portland too. It started in the public sector where the proudly named Civic Stadium became a name-ad for Portland General Electric, PGE Park.

Now the Portland parks bureau is hiring a full-time sponsorship salesperson. Nike logos are on park basketball courts. Pepsi logos are on community center scoreboards. Piece by piece, the cash-starved public commons is being commercialized and privatized — and the public has grown increasingly accepting.

Of course several of us skeptics have suggested jokingly that Portland make the big re-naming leap and sell off “Portland.” Change the maps and road signs and call the place “Starbucks” or “Wal-Mart” or “Pepsi-Town,” all in exchange for a few million each year. Twenty years from now, we may all be Starbuckians or Pepsians.

But back to Allen and his Trail Blazers, who, according to The Oregonian, lost $25 million last year (the front office disputes the number but not the red ink).

Here’s a way to get in the black, Paul. Why not sell off the names of the players? Why does Brandon Roy have to be “Brandon Roy” or LaMarcus Aldridge “LaMarcus Aldridge” when they could be “Wells Fargo” and “Burger King”?

Think of the great product names that you could slap on a star point guard for a cool million or two. “Key Bank,” “Frito Lay,” “Kettle Chips,” and “Fred Meyer,” “Chevrolet Malibu” are just a few that come to mind.

Game commentary would be peppered with brand mentions: “Fargo passes into Frito who dribbles over the Wild Oats mid-court line. Lay to Burger. He fakes. A high lob into Kettle. He swings right with a hook over Chevrolet (previously known as Kobe Bryant). It’s up and in! Rip Diet Coke!”

Come’ on, Paul, you haven’t even turned the ignition on in your money machine.

Greg Oden: Slam-dunk as News Peg

Journalists are always looking for ways to hook the public on issues of pressing importance.

Like tonsillectomies, for instance.

The way to do it is to find a celebrity to front for the issue.

Like Greg Oden, the Trail Blazers' hyped-to-the-max, 7-foot rookie center.

Conveniently, the 19-year-old needs a tonsillectomy, so the public-spirited press has the chance to delve into the intricacies of these extractable organs as Oden, the NBA center turned tonsillectomy out-patient, goes under the knife next Tuesday.

Oh the minutiae of it all!

It began in today’s Oregonian:

600,000 Americans have their tonsils removed each year.

The average age for having one’s tonsils removed is 7.

But adults and older teenagers, like Greg, make up one-third of the tonsillectomy patients.

Want to know more? Here’s The Oregonian’s breathless tonsil description, just in case you missed it:

“Tonsils are soft flaps of tissue at the back of the throat, one on each side. They are part of the lymphatic system, helping to catch germs before they cause infections in the throat, mouth or sinuses.”

Now you know, thanks to Greg’s celebrity tonsils, which may begin to feel like our own as Greg’s removal day approaches.

What next for Greg as news peg? Consider….

Greg Oden has really big feet (shoe size 18), but he’s not alone. Thousands suffer through “Big Foot” jokes. And a whole clod-hopper industry has grown up to serve them ....

When Greg Oden parks downtown, he has to feed parking meters, and so do you. In fact thousands of people smaller than Greg do it each day — or don’t, and have parking tickets to show for their transgressions. Greg, by the way, hasn’t been here long enough to get a ticket. Parking meter revenue and fines pay for more city services than you or Greg might imagine ….

Just because he’s really tall and people like him a lot, Greg Oden can’t avoid taxes, and neither can you. Yes, it’s tax time again and ….

Greg Oden isn’t the only young person who votes, etc., but he’d like to see many more of his generation casting ballots. Non-voting is a big problem among the young ….

No matter how Oden, sans tonsils, works out as Trailblazer center, he is the odds-on favorite for one honor, MVNP — Most Valuable News Peg.

Hook'em Greg!

Ripped City

I'm still aghast at that $66,000 that free-spending Blazermaniacs are willing to pay for a premium seat at season's worth of Trailblazer games.

And I keep running into comparisons. Yesterday it was college tuition; today it's what the average Oregonian makes in a year.

While our premium sitter shells out $66,000 for the season; it takes the average Oregonian two years ($33,000 per...) to make that much to live on — before taxes of course.

Maybe we should call it "Ripped City."

Costs compared: Blazer seat vs. a college degree

The $66,000 that rich Blazer fans are shelling out for season seats in the Rose Garden hasn't stopped gnawing at me since I wrote yesterday's post.

Now I'm seeing comparative numbers and weighing value and values.

Today we find on The Oregonian's front page that four years of college (tuition, housing and living costs) at Southern Oregon University goes for a relatively inexpensive $69,000. Surprise, surprise, a lot of talented high school graduates can't afford the price tag, just a shade over what those season Blazer seats go for.

Four years at Reed College works out to a whopping $192,000. If our fat-cat Blazer fan opted out of his Rose Garden "Premium" seat for three years, he could pay for four years, or a "classroom seat," at Reed for some worthy high school graduate.

What might our stay-at-home BlazerManiac-turned-philanthropist (yes, that's what I'm suggesting) do with his time? He could always watch the Blazer games on TV. There are some pretty good books out there. He might even take a course in philanthropy.

If enough premium seat holders walked away from the Rose Garden, the Blazers might find themselves in financial straits worse than the ones they are in now. Who knows, the Blazers no longer may be able to afford $3 million West Hills estates like the one Scottie Pippen recently sold.

Would that be all bad? $1 million will still put a tall roof over their lofty heads.

It’s a leap I know, but Mahatma Gandhi's saying comes to mind: Be the change you want to see in the world. And, yes, the “you” means me and you, as well as our premium seat holder, Pippen et. al.

Truth to tell, most of us have bought $66,000 seats (or their equivalent) at one time or another.

Choices the wealthy make

If you work to unscramble the news, if you strive to make sense of its seemingly disparate stories, truths often emerge.

Today's Oregonian noted the death of philanthropist Jean Vollum, the widow of Tektronix co-founder Howard Vollum. She and Howard gave away tens of millions of dollars. Such stories are heart-warming but the fail to mention the roles thousands of Tektronix workers played in earning the money that the Vollums gave away to worthy causes.

But never mind; that's not my point.

My point comes from connecting the Vollum story to another story, one about sports on the business page of the same Oregonian issue. It's about how the luck-of-the-draw Portland Trailblazers have set out to capitalize on their number-one draft pick and the hype surrounding it.

Turns out that the wealthy, in addition to not being like you and me, aren't like themselves.

On the one hand, a Jean Vollum can be giving money to the Mt. Angel Abbey, the Oregon College of Art & Craft and the Native American Center at PSU, while well-healed Blazer fans prefer to fork over megabucks to get up close to the pick-and-rolls, jump shots and trash talk at the Rose Garden. "Premium-priced seating" goes for...ready?....$66,000 a seat per season.

So here we have a class of folks who will pay for a well-situated seat at a season's worth of basketball games an amount greater than most Americans will earn in a year.

Taken separately, the Vollum story and the Blazer story are what we call news. Taken together, they offer a truth about values and choices.

P.S. Related — I'll leave the relationship to you — is the front-page story (same issue!) of how former Blazer Scottie Pippen took a hit on selling his 18,700-square-foot West Hills manor and estate for a shade under $3 million. The buyers are described simply as "Florida transplants," Razvani and Felicia Andreescu. If they hurry, they might still be able to pick up a pair of those "premium priced" seats at the Rose Garden. Then again, there's always Mercy Corps....