Earlier this week Richard posted on movie production incentives as a development tool. This weekend’s WSJ has an interesting editorial by Jerry Bowyer investigating NFL Conference Championship teams Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Baltimore’s use of stadium centric development in recent years. (The Arizona Cardinals, based in the Phoenix-metro, is the fourth team playing this weekend.)

From the Op-Ed, Sports Mania Is a Poor Substitute for Economic Success;

“If there ever was a time to crow about the wonders of rebuilding a city around a professional sports team, this would be it. Three of the four teams remaining in the play-offs hail from cities — Baltimore, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh — that in recent years spent billions rebuilding their downtowns around pro sports facilities and other community “anchors.”

Except that there’s a problem. The teams might be competitive, but the cities definitely are not. All three continue to shrink in population, and have stagnant job markets and crumbling public schools.”

And later,

“When the Steelers were in the Super Bowl in 2006 I was the host of a radio show in Pittsburgh. I argued that the franchise was an exercise in leadership excellence in a city whose politicians were anything but. Numerous callers hammered me. They said there are a lot of “Steelers” bars across the country, and that proved the city still had some national respect. Indeed, there are hundreds of watering holes dispersed across America loaded with fanatical devotes of the Pittsburgh Steelers. “Where are the Seahawks bars?” the callers asked.

In Seattle, of course. That city has gained population while Pittsburgh lost it. Steelers bars are the visible cultural artifact of a kind of economic diaspora.”

I am a huge sports fan and appreciate many of the new stadiums across the country and know the record is mixed – look at the benefits of the privately financed Verizon Center in D.C’s China Town. Clearly the devil is in the financing details and the overall balance of the regional economy as to whether stadiums help or hurt economic success.

WARNING: IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN ALL FIVE SEASONS OF THE WIRE AND INTEND TO DO SO, AVOID THIS POST.

Let’s take a pause from fashion for a minute and turn our gaze to the fair city of Baltimore, home to one of the finest pieces of drama on television or any medium. The Wire, while Emmy-ignored and critically adored, serves as the one of the more dense and layered deliberations on how a city functions that entertainment has ever produced. No amount of hyperbole can properly convey how much I love this show but, moreover, no amount of hyperbole can properly convey how good this show actually is, whether I fancy it or not. The interconnectivity of the story lines, nuance of the dialogue, and quality of the characters and acting rings out verisimilitude. In five seasons, creators David Simon and Ed Burns laid bare the ways that institutions can fail society through all-too-human lines of desire and corruption.

From the grime of the drug game in the streets, through to the docks where the union gave way to corruption to save their own skin and livelihood and the drugs come in and connect to the big money players, to the development of the docks into waterfront property, through to the school system to see how the streets affect the youth, and finally to the grime of city hall to see where the politics and the media connect to produce and leverage the information and conditions that people react to. When the show ended after season five, the overwhelming sentiment was that the players change but the game remains the same. In the political arena, after dodging a major scandal, corrupt Mayor Carcetti moved to governor, while somewhat conniving City Council President Nerisse Campbell became mayor after years of positioning and planning.

Nerisse’s character was very loosely based on real-life Mayor Sheila Dixon who was also city council president before rising to the mayoral position after then-current mayor Martin O’Malley became governor.  While Sheila Dixon has said on numerous occasions that she is a fan of the show, it does not reflect what the city or politics are like.

Yet three years after the show ended, this:

Baltimore Mayor Sheila A. Dixon was charged today with 12 counts of felony theft, perjury, fraud and misconduct in office, becoming the city’s first sitting mayor to be criminally indicted.

The case stems in part from at least $15,348 in gifts Dixon allegedly received from her former boyfriend, prominent city developer Ronald H. Lipscomb, while she was City Council president. She also is accused of using as much as $3,400 in gift cards, some donated to her office for distribution to “needy families,” to purchase Best Buy electronics and other items for herself and her staff.

Lipscomb was not indicted in the Dixon case, but he and City Councilwoman Helen L. Holton were charged this week in a separate $12,500 bribery scheme. Both cases grew out of a nearly three-year probe by the state prosecutor into City Hall corruption.

No deep analysis here folks. My only question about this is: What do you think that David Simon and Ed Burns are thinking right now?

And now, as always, some music.