Word: rink
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Construction worker Macario Lopez has queued for four hours, along with his brothers, children, and nephews, to swap his cowboy boots for a pair of ice skates. He could never afford to take them to a commercial rink at $5 a head, he says. But the Christmas season has brought a colossal 34,400 square-foot open-air skating rink to the heart of Mexico City, in the central square known as the Zocalo. It's the largest rink in the world, its boosters claim, and more importantly, it's free...
...free mega rink is the brainchild of leftist Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, as part of his campaign to make this heaving mountain capital a more pleasant environment. Last spring, he shipped in tons of sand to build four urban beaches that were also a hit with residents, while inspiring dozens of comedy skits about plump sunbathers walking through gridlocked traffic. Ebrard has also built miles of cycle paths, on which he's posed for cameras atop his mountain bike on sunny Sundays...
...Surrounded by towering models of candles and a vast canvas of a moonlit lake, the rink is a surreal spectacle in the midst of Mexico City's grinding traffic, colonial churches, and endless protest marches. To add to the illusion of escape offered by the rink, huge speakers play sweet Spanish ballads as the skaters glide along the white surface...
...unmistakable décor of an insurgent operation: thinning, mildewed carpet; litter from sign-painting parties; recycling boxes full of canvassing tally sheets and empty Miller Lite cartons. But the deepening clutter hasn't covered up all the traces of what the building used to be: a hockey rink, which could hardly be a more fitting metaphor for a political contest that is suddenly getting a lot rougher. The old Dr Pepper scoreboard is still on the wall, but the largely twentysomething crew at Obama Central has another way of measuring the team's progress. Staffers ring a silver bellhop...
...like for you, the fan?This parallel universe would start with the venue name, of course. Bid farewell to the Bright Hockey Center, as its name changes to the “insert random bank here” Hockey Center.But that pales in comparison to the ads around the rink, on the jumbotron, on the boards, and amazingly, even on the ice itself. At least this makes it easy to keep track of where all the big plays happened.“I still can’t believe that guy got up after taking that shoulder check into...