The Oakland Coliseum represented my last chance to see a cookie-cut, concrete donut stadium. Introduced in the 1960s, these stadiums were built to accommodate both baseball and football, but were criticized for being soulless dumps that didn't do either sport particularly well. As we move further into the 21st century and all four major sports - and even professional soccer - requires and demands their own solitary stadium, these concrete donuts have perished one by one.

Of the 11 main American stadiums of this design, Atlanta's was demolished in 1997, Seattle's Kingdome in 2000, Pittsburgh's Three Rivers in 2001, Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium in 2002, Philadelphia's The Vet in 2004, St. Louis' Busch II in 2005 and New York's Shea Stadium in early 2009. The remaining four are the Astrodome (standing, vacant), Qualcomm in San Diego (only home to college football & its days are numbered), RFK Memorial in Washington (host to soccer as of this update in 2017, now vacant) and the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum - still home to both the NFL Raiders and MLB Athletics.

I didn't care all that much that the Raiders were leaving and I'd never see them in their home, but I really wanted to see an Athletics game at the Coliseum.

This is the whole reason I found myself in California, tacking on a couple weekend days to an upcoming week-long trip with Clarkson.

The Athletics were playing the Red Sox at 1pm today, which didn't leave me much time to explore San Jose. Following a brief walkabout, the lovely Bay Area mass transit brought me all the way from the bottom of the bay at San Jose, on up to Oakland, due east of San Francisco.

Interestingly enough, this meant getting on a double-decker train car to reach the first BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station, but the train car was mostly empty and this experience was sort of funky, so I was all for it.

The Oakland Coliseum's field sits 21 feet below sea level, the lower level situated below the surrounding parking lots. Regardless of this fact, as I was riding the subway train the stadium rose from the horizon like a building in Waterworld, with nothing around the coliseum but low height industry and the aforementioned parking lots.

Many of these concrete donuts suffered because they were surrounded by a sea of parking. Looking into whether there were any restaurants or bars around the Oakland Coliseum, I found next to nothing and soon realized it was a lot like the Pontiac Silverdome - out in the middle of nowhere, the antithesis of the modern standard of stadiums near downtowns with food and beverage options.

Don't let Doug's Bar-B-Q in the foreground fool you either, I studied Doug's after I saw it in StreetView and it was the only thing around Oakland Coliseum, but it somehow only had 10 reviews, even though millions walk past here to attend Athletics and Warriors games. And as I arrived today, left today, arrived tomorrow & left tomorrow; I didn't see one person down at Doug's Bar-B-Q. Everyone was exiting the elevated rail, marching up the stairs and passing through the fenced tunnel with men hawking $10 knockoff shirts and $5 PBRs sitting in their personal Wal-Mart coolers.

Speaking of that, Oakland Coliseum was already grabbing points here with its approach. Plenty of people drive to the stadium, but for those taking mass transit, I loved how you got to the stadium through a chain link fenced pedestrian bridge stretching over a sleepy, urban creek, home to old mattresses and stray dogs. It had that old school game day congestion with characters, music playing, fans getting loud and dudes selling unlicensed gear. It reminded me of those crowded nights coming and going to Joe Louis Arena with everyone on the sidewalk or in those crazy tubes; the energy, excitement and sights adding to the whole experience.

Rounding around the coliseum, I headed over to the north side and the much appreciated luggage storage. I don't think many stadiums still offer this service - and Oakland's didn't look very busy when I was there - but I was so thankful for the Athletics saving me from trying to trick a hotel into storing my bag for the afternoon.

The nearby Lot A was littered with people playing cornhole and cooking up better food than Doug's Bar-B-Q, all of them out on this fine California day knocking back cold ones. I pulled out a beer that I had from the hotel last night, happily guzzling down the refreshing drink as I looked up and snapped pictures of the looming coliseum. Now that I wasn't in an elevated train car and in front of a hill to the north side, Oakland Coliseum blended in better and didn't stick out like Qualcomm in San Diego.

Even though I was quite content to laze about in the sunshine and appreciate the exterior, once I finally rid myself of my giant backpack, I was too excited to finally head inside after months of anticipation. The A's weren't great of late, and even with a tasty matchup against the Red Sox on a Saturday afternoon, today's game attendance was only 20,235. I easily purchased a ticket right where I wanted to sit.

A funny aside: I was defending this place online and declaring that I was going to head here from Newfoundland just to see it. I couldn't believe it, but some other random Deadspin guy happened to be from Newfoundland, a fan of the Red Sox and was going to the same game. He wanted to meet up, but as I find Corner Brook really isolating and hard to make legitimate friends, I didn't want to risk my Coliseum experience on not hitting it off with this guy.

The AFL was an upstart football league that had eight original teams forming a league to compete with the NFL. One of the original members was the Minnesota Vikings, but in an effort to derail the AFL, the NFL swooped in an offered the Minnesota Vikings a path into the NFL, leaving the AFL with only an uneven seven teams.

Meanwhile, with the league already on its way to failure, Los Angeles Chargers owner Barron Hilton threatened to leave the league if he didn't get a rival team on the West Coast. This forced the other owners to quickly select Oakland for expansion, even though Oakland didn't express any desire to have a team, it didn't have an AFL-level stadium, and there was no ownership group.

The Raiders spent their first two seasons either playing second fiddle to the 49ers at Candlestick Park; or at the neighbourhood, constructed-in-1924 Kezar Stadium that you can see in Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry. Quickly unimpressed with these options, the Raiders threatened to leave Oakland, resulting in the construction of a temporary ballpark at Frank Youell Field (22,000 capacity, demolished in 1969), and the approval of $25 million for an eventual permanent stadium. The City of Oakland and Alameda County also planned an adjacent indoor arena and an exhibition hall connecting the arena and the football stadium.

Even though funding for the Oakland Coliseum was approved in 1962, ground wasn't broke until April 15, 1964; ultimately meaning the Raiders would play four seasons at the temporary Frank Youell Field.

Oakland Coliseum was designed by the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merill with the head architect of Myron Goldsmith. I guess individual architects were needed for each concrete donut & the Raiders couldn't just call up Washington for their stadium's drawings, haha.

Oakland Coliseum opened on September 18th 1966 with a hallmark Raider event: a 32-10 loss to my beloved Kansas City Chiefs.

As for the Athletics, they started out as the Philadelphia Athletics, playing in the gorgeous Shibe Park until 1954. Following years of putting awful teams on the field and fans changing their loyalty to the Phillies, the Philadelphia Athletics were sold as their owner tried to avoid bankruptcy. The new owner, Arnold Johnson, owned the Yankees farm team in Kansas City & promptly moved the Athletics to KC.

Johnson would die from a cerebral hemorrhage on March 3rd 1960. Charles Finley purchased the team a few months later, immediately cutting the old ties to the Yankees and publicly burning the KC lease that included a clause where they could leave if they didn't get a game attendance of one million people per season.

The lease turned out to be a fake and from the start, Finley was continuously shopping the team to other cities. He had a group lined up in Dallas-Fort Worth, but the other owners all voted down the move. He then had an agreement with Louisville Kentucky, but again all the other owners voted this down. Finley had talks with five other cities, places like Atlanta and New Orleans, which torpedoed attendance in Kansas City and left Finley with disagreeable lease terms. Finally in 1968, the other owners relented and Finley was allowed to move the Athletics to Oakland and into the shiny Oakland Coliseum.

The Oakland Athletics also started out in a predictable way, losing their first ever game to my Baltimore Orioles in Baltimore by a score of 3-1. They would play their first game at Oakland Coliseum on April 17th 1968, of course losing to the Baltimore Orioles again, this time 4-1.

(I'm going to have to check if the California Golden Seals lost their first ever game to Boston, haha.)

The Athletics fared much better when they didn't have to play the Orioles, including the amazing feat of a perfect game just a month into their stay at the coliseum. On May 8th 1968, Catfish Hunter threw a perfect game against the Minnesota Twins, achieving only the 9th perfect game in MLB history.

Catfish was indicative of the upward trend of the Athletics, and by 1971 they won over 100 games for the first time in 40 years. Unfortunately for the Athletics, they would once again fall to the Baltimore Orioles (LOL) in the 1971 ALCS.

Oakland got over the hump the following year. In addition to the owner adopting fun by dressing the team in bright yellows and greens, as well as having a mustache-growing competition during a time when almost all teams banned facial hair, the Athletics, with Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers & Vida Blue, marched right to the championship and defeated the drably-dressed, clean-shaven, Pete Rose-led Cincinnati Reds. The Athletics would then go on to form a dynasty by winning the next two World Series to win three straight.

Winning is supposed to cure all, but the Athletics were still dysfunctional under Charles Finley. The attendance during the championship seasons wasn't what you would expect & it plummeted as the Athletics started to lose their superstars in the mid to late-1970s, with only 306,763 people coming during the whole year of 1979. At its worst, an April 17th 1979 game against the newish Seattle Mariners only had an announced attendance of 653. The concrete, dark and empty Oakland Coliseum quickly found a new nickname - The Mausoleum.

(As someone who found the stadium empty and peaceful with only 20,000 people, I can't imagine it with 653 people. It must've been amazing.)

These horrible attendance numbers along with deferred maintenance of the Coliseum, led Finley to once again flirt with other cities. He had a deal done with Denver in 1978 and later proposed putting the Athletics in the Louisiana Superdome in 1979. The other owners supported moving the team to Denver, but Oakland and Alameda County didn't allow the Athletics break their lease, since the Raiders were also threatening to leave. Oakland didn't want to lose both teams and their standing as a major league city.

The Raiders tried to add luxury boxes to the Coliseum in 1980, but they were turned down and subsequently declared they were moving to Los Angeles, suing the NFL to let them leave. Around the same time, Charles Finley's marriage ended in divorce and now strapped for cash, he was forced to sell the Athletics. Upon Finley's selling of the team and the Raiders departure, attendance numbers skyrocketed and averaged about 1.9 million paid tickets per season from 1981 to 1994.

The Raiders would eventually come crawling back. Their new home, the ancient Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, never added promised luxury suites & the neighbourhood was so bad that the Raiders always played their Monday Night Football games on the road. As early as 1990, the Raiders had a deal in place to move back to Oakland, but delays caused them to stay in Los Angeles and further annoy the SoCal fan base. Finally, in 1994, $83 million was spent on renovations to the Oakland Coliseum, along with the addition of a 3-story, 20,000-seat monstrosity known as Mount Davis. Mount Davis came at a cost of $500 million, a cost split between Alameda County and the City of Oakland (plus $20 million a year in debt repayments). In addition to the exorbitant costs, Mt Davis also blocks the view of the Oakland Hills, something that is often lamented in online comments saying that the Coliseum was a decent place to watch baseball prior to its construction. There are also comments saying the Coliseum could be good again if they'd just demolish Mt Davis.

Nowadays the Raiders are committed to leaving the Oakland Coliseum, hilariously screwing things up by applying to go to Las Vegas before a stadium was even started, leaving them to play 3 years in Oakland in front of abandoned fans. In the meantime, the city is threatening to kick the Raiders out early, forcing them to go play in San Diego, Berkeley or as a travelling away team for all of 2019. I'm personally excited for something random like the Raiders playing at Stanford. With the Golden State Warriors also moving in 2019, themselves to San Francisco, the Athletics will be left as the only Oakland pro sports team.

The City of Oakland seems committed to the Athletics and just a couple of weeks ago (November 2018), a deal was finally hashed out for a new stadium site. Located at Howard Terminal, just up from Jack London Square, there is still lots of work to do between acquiring land, closing railways, environmental reviews and possibly building a gondola to connect people to the BART system. This means the Athletics might not actually leave the Coliseum until their lease expires in 2024. Maybe I was a bit premature in coming here, haha.

I was still loving this. This was what football and baseball should be. I know people call these places dumps and cry for more glass and can't stand the sight of concrete, but I loved how much this felt like the good old days. A stadium like how sports commentators romantically reminisce about stadiums, with dark, utilitarian concourses and an escape into the beautiful sight of the field once you emerge from the lightless confines.

My seats were great, but I was also here early to explore. I came to see the stadium and not the Red Sox, so it was time to giddily wander around.

One of my favourite things was the hall underneath Mount Davis. It was so stark and shadowy, and I could only grab brief glimpses of the field from the tiny slots leading up to each fan section. It felt like I was in a brutalist library instead of a stadium. It's amazing that this section was built, and thought of as a good idea, in just 1996.

It only took the Athletics 10 years to put tarps over the top section of Mount Davis and the Raiders would follow suit in 2013, mostly because it allowed them to avoid television blackouts when the stadium attendance fell below 85%. The Athletics said they would only take the tarps off if they made the World Series - which was especially silly when the stadium was sold out during the playoffs in 2012 and 2013.

I wanted to walk up the stairs and explore Mt. Davis, but hanging, horizontal chains and CLOSED signs kept me from going up. I didn't really want to come all this way just to get banned from the Oakland Coliseum.

It was long ago in this lengthy update that I mentioned the Coliseum site included a stadium, arena and a planned exhibition hall between the two. I obviously missed the California Golden Seals of the NHL by a few years (they left for Cleveland in 1976), but the dominant Golden State Warriors have made Oracle Arena one of the most popular NBA arenas of the past few years.

I never realized just how close the two stadiums were to each other. Recent improvements to the Coliseum include the demarcation of an area known as Championship Plaza, which they fill with visiting and rotating food trucks. This helps with one of the main criticisms of the Oakland Coliseum; that the food hasn't kept up with the culinary delights people expect of modern baseball stadiums. It's in Championship Plaza that Oracle Arena is even closer, so close that there's security there to keep you in the Coliseum area.

(Funny aside: one of the food trucks while I was there? Smoke's Poutinerie.)

With the Warriors leaving, you might be wondering about my desire to see a game where the California Golden Seals played. There was an E-40 concert while I was in town, but deciding that sounded too sketchy, I hoped that one day I would be back. Unfortunately with the Warriors leaving in June 2019, it's no longer looking promising that I'll see a basketball game at Oracle Arena and the only hope will lay in seeing a musical performance, as the City of Oakland plans to keep it open as a music venue.

Another criticism of the Coliseum is the giant foul territory caused by having to fit a football field in here 10 times a year. This means that the pitchers don't have bullpens, but actually warm up on the field like back in the day.

I bought my typical baseball seats up in the second deck around the first or third base line. This would put me in the sun, but as I walked up the long, dark tunnels and found myself up on the second level, the first handful of rows was underneath the concrete substructure, with some amazing 2-seat-wide rows tucked up underneath everything. I almost hit my head as I crouched down to get to these enticing spots.

When people talk about "the old Vet" or Three Rivers, these are the some of the unique seats I picture. If football is going to attach such romance to these old stadiums, then I wanted to see one of them and I wasn't being let down.

I was in heaven sitting in these funky, little tucked away seats, and if I lived in Oakland, these are the season tickets I would buy.

It was funny watching people slowly accept that it was too much to sit out in the Californian sun and head up after a few innings to grab seats in the shade.

Eventually a whole row of women got up and started walking up the section towards the shaded seats. Noticing me sitting alone and surrounded by cool seats out of the sun, they asked if I minded them sitting with me. Suddenly all of my relaxed lounging across four seats was interrupted by six coworkers having a good, drunken time for a work event. As the one girl was from Boston and the Athletics were playing the Red Sox, she tried to convert me into a Sawx fan but that wasn't happening. The Orioles won the first ever game at this stadium, I couldn't abandon them now! (I wasn't actually nerdy enough to know this fact at the time.)

You might think this would have ruined my time because I'm so awkward, but I was enjoying myself after a few Coliseum beers by now and with 2 or 3 innings of these women sitting here, I had enough time to adjust and feel marginally comfortable. They were also drinking and outgoing, so obviously that's another reason I talked to Raquel & co. a bit more than you envision. We all had a good laugh as random moths appeared in the 8th inning, which is just part of the fun in seeing a game at a place like the Oakland Coliseum.

The Athletics would win the game 8-3, mostly because of a 5-run 5th inning that featured 3 home runs from the likes of Khris Davis, Mark Canha & Chad Pinder.

Leaving the game, there was another teenager in the pedestrian bridge offering $5 beers. I was already going to buy a beer because I like supporting degeneracy and taking money out of rich stadium owners' pockets, but this also allowed me to watch a nearby scuffle, sloppy drunks leaving & have an empty train car headed north. The transit police were down below and staying there, while I relaxed and enjoyed the ambiance of this BART station with my PBR. It's too bad modern stadiums are designed to squash this type of thing.

Seeing as I'd never been to Oakland before and I enjoy checking out the actual baseball cities, I headed downtown following the game.

One of the main tourist sites in Oakland is Heinold's First & Last Chance, a bar continuously open since 1883 and located in a building built from the wood of an old whaling ship in 1880. Originally a bunkhouse for men working as oyster harvesters in the nearby tidal beds, Philadelphian Johnny Heinold bought the building in 1883 and converted it into a bar.

Heinold's is an attraction not just for its age, but also because it's where author Jack London studied to pass his high school courses. London is known for The Call of The Wild and White Fang, while his The Sea-Wolf contains references to a sea captain he met at Heinold's.

Inside the floors are slanted by the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, with a broken clock still reading the time that it was disrupted by the movement of Earth (5:18). There are also the original gas lights and the potbelly stove that's the only source of heat. Sadly, Heinold's is now surrounded by shiny yet bland mixed retail and sits as the only throwback to a waterfront Oakland long ago lost.

Heinold's is also really popular. There wasn't a single seat available and I struggled to maneuvre my giant backpack. I would have to return for a drink another day.

Getting away from the glass and coloured panel architecture down by the water, just a street over I found buildings that looked like fruit storage warehouses, and a promising little bar. The Warriors were about to start their playoff game and I hoped that this place wasn't so rough that it wouldn't have a TV.

I was a bit nervous after I walked by some homeless tent cities to get down here, and now it seemed really apparent that I wasn't on the manicured waterfront anymore. There were some big, heavily-tattooed dudes in here & and they looked legitimate - they didn't have hipster sparrows or fancy anchors, they looked like genuine hardasses and I was dressed like a doofus, only thinking of attending a sunny ballgame and trying to look desirable in that atmosphere.

As I approached the bar, no one vibed me & and the friendly bartender even suggested a great beer special. Sitting down, the other side of the bar had a giant screen showing the pregame Warriors coverage and it now seemed silly to question whether they would have the game on. Of course they'd have the game on, it's not like I was trying to watch a major event at the Halifax airport! Soon after tipoff people started coming in, including some nerdy dudes that made me laugh about my initial fears of this place.

Looking up this bar now, I see that it's called the Merchant Tavern and has been open since 1916. It felt pretty damn authentic and I guess it was.

Following the Warriors win, I left the Merchant Tavern for a fun walk under the interstate, past all of the homeless tents, then through a vacant lot thinking it would save time, only to find an 8-foot fence on the other end. Climbing atop the fence and dropping down into the street below, I only slightly hurt my heel.

20 minutes later, the subway brought me up to Berkeley and my accommodations. In Oakland it was either a choice of expensive hotels or sketchy yet still costly motels; while Berkeley is safer and home to the economical Berkeley YMCA. I paid $130 for 2 nights.

The room could have used a TV, but in the incredibly expensive Bay Area, this wasn't bad at all.

Being up in Berkeley also meant lots of restaurants were open even as it was getting into the night. I headed towards this restaurant in a beautiful stone building, but it was also full of beautiful, impeccably dressed people. Instead I went up the road a little more, stumbling on Tuk Tuk Thai and some damn good pad thai.

The next morning I walked around Berkeley and up to the UC-Berkeley campus. I imagined one of those universities you see in biking videos with crazy spots everywhere, but it was so hilly that I questioned how many people ride bikes here. One thing I know is that the students here must have amazing calves and cardio from going up all these hills.

Much of the campus was stately and grand, built around a Beaux Arts core of buildings that reminded me of Washington DC. As I'm not the biggest Beaux Arts guy, I took a picture of the Chemistry Building (Hildebrand Hall), built in 1966.

My main reason for walking up here was The Campanile, a 308-foot bell tower with an elevator inside and an observation deck. Unfortunately after lounging about waiting for The Campanile to open, some random dude popped out and confused by our presence, then let us know it wasn't open today as the elevator was broken.

You'd think they'd put up a sign.

Lastly, I stopped by California Memorial Stadium at the top of the UC-Berkeley campus & now I have to see a game there. What a beautiful, old school stadium.

The Cal Bears weren't playing today and instead it was back to the Oakland Coliseum for another matchup with the Red Sox. I was again walking to the ticket booth on the other side of the stadium, when a scalper was so adamant that I finally worked out a deal with him - and either he didn't care or there's not much of a scalper market here - because I grabbed a seat 7 rows from the field for $20. Score!

I was also here early enough today to grab a picture of the urinal troughs without anyone else in the washroom. And okay, even I have to admit these things are old school and people may want them replaced. New Athletics CEO Dave Kaval has been making some great changes to the Coliseum and one of them is washroom improvements. (No word on whether he replaced the troughs.)

It's a funny thing to make improvements to a stadium when there are immediate plans to leave, but it's also helping to rebuild the relationship with the fanbase.

As a stadium nerd, I enjoyed that they embraced their history with the new Shibe Park Tavern - replacing a crummy "Westside Club/Bar & Grille" with a new space showing old Athletics gear, photos and memorabilia; all there for you to peruse as you sip on one of the 77 beers they have on tap. I didn't know this at the time, but there's even bricks from the original Shibe Park in Philadelphia incorporated into this tavern (courtesy of the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society).

They even had playoff hockey on, sadly allowing me to see Pittsburgh dominating Ottawa 6-0.

I've always despised the Red Sox and had a soft spot for the Athletics (even prior to visiting the Oakland Coliseum and wondering if it's my favourite stadium). Unfortunately for me, the Red Sox dominated the Athletics today 12-3.

Visiting Oakland Coliseum gave me stadium #25 out of 30. So is it my favourite? The answer I usually give for that question is Baltimore's Camden Yards, a combination of a great stadium in a great city hosting a great team. On the other hand, it feels kind of corny to say your favourite stadium is your favourite team's stadium.

It's been 7 years since I've been to Camden Yards, but from memory, I think I like Oakland Coliseum more. It's more authentic, it feels like attending an event with the beautiful, youthful sights of old-time baseball in a stadium that's a stadium. Camden isn't some new age ballpark that feels like a mall, but it also blends into the Citi Fields (Mets) and Citizen Bank Parks (Phillies) of the world.

I'm not going to forget Oakland Coliseum and the uniqueness and character of the whole experience. I look back and think of those funky seats beneath the concrete substructure, the Mount Davis hallways and the dark, gritty concourses with bars and stores shoehorned into the concrete.

Kauffman, Camden & Citizens Bank Park are always going to be in the conversation, but Oakland Coliseum just might be #1. I can't wait to give that as an answer to some random drunk bro at a game who has this place strictly defined as a "dump".

Continue to Part 3...