Skip to main content

Featured Post

Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park infographics: what's built/what's coming/what's missing, who's responsible, + project FAQ/timeline (pinned post)

IDNYC to offer Barclays Center discounts (because every undocumented New Yorker wants $12 beer?)

The New York Daily News reports, in an exclusive (i.e., fed to the paper by the city or the arena):
New Yorkers who have city municipal ID cards are in for some new perks.

Card holders will be able to get a 25% discount at Nets and Islanders game, boxing matches, and certain other events at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, officials are set to announce Wednesday.

...“What we really want this to be is a fixture of how New Yorkers interact with their city,” said Nisha Agarwal, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs.
This is interesting. The original justification for IDNYC was to get undocumented New Yorkers identification so they could navigate the city. The perks, including free membership in museums on city property, were added to entice more New Yorkers--including me--to get the card.

Now there's a logic that New Yorkers deserve a discount to the Barclays Center, given that city subsidies and other benefits went into it. But I can't imagine that struggling immigrants without ID are eager to get to most Barclays Center events, much less pay inflated concession prices.

Also, a 25% discount--presumably only on selected events, not, say, when LeBron James comes to town--suggests that Nets and Islanders tickets are generally overpriced. After all, both teams had big trouble filling the building last year, with actual gate count for the Nets averaging 11,622 and for the Islanders 11,200.

Comments

  1. One of the important ideas behind IDNYC is to make it useful for both people without documentation and citizens with full documentation. I will certainly object to the faults of Barclays Center, but I'm glad that they are making IDNYC attractive to all New Yorkers, regardless of residence status.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment