"For two weeks around Labor Day, fans from all over the world stream to and from the tennis center's two main entrances in a dull stampede. Entering the complex from the subway station to its north, there's a maze of security barriers to negotiate; arriving at the Open from the ride share dropoff/pickup zone to the center's west requires slaloming around an obstacle course of tinted-window cop cars, mobile floodlights, and foot-thick pre-cast concrete traffic barriers branded with "NYPD" in dark blue paint."
"Given the cultural heft of the U.S. Open, a measure of contrast between the glitz of the tennis center itself-the Honey Deuces, the champagne goblets, the boxes groaning with Hollywood elites, not to mention the exorbitant cost of tickets to get inside-and the working-class areas of New York immediately surrounding it is probably inevitable. But the size of the gulf is genuinely startling."
The U.S. Open perimeter is defined by heavy security that channels and excludes local residents as much as it protects attendees. Maze-like barriers, NYPD-branded concrete blocks, mobile floodlights, and tinted squad cars shape access routes and ride-share dropoffs. The pedestrian bridge from Mets-Willets Point is badly degraded, with loose planks and makeshift plywood repairs. A stark material and social gulf separates the tournament's luxury—hospitality boxes, expensive tickets, and corporate amenities—from adjacent working-class neighborhoods. Surveillance and access control prioritize keeping ordinary New Yorkers at a distance, reinforcing socioeconomic separation around the tennis center.
Read at Defector
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]