Pontiac Silverdome sells for half a million dollars

They finally sold the Pontiac Silverdome, the former home of the Detroit Lions and standing monument to the complete waste of American sports. How much did it go for?

$583,000

How much did it cost to build?

$55.7 million

Talk about a price drop, holy cow! Ladies and Gentlemen, the Detroit housing market!

A business from Toronto bought the building and they actually plan to turn the place into a palace for soccer.

The company plans to refurbish the Silverdome into a stadium for men's Major League Soccer and women's professional soccer teams, said the auctioneer. While the stadium was the former home of the National Football League's Detroit Lions, it also played host to some of the World Cup games in 1994. Brazil's victory over Italy occurred elsewhere, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.

Not sure if a MLS team can draw 80,000 fans but it could be a good spot for bigger international matches. I'm still a little miffed that my $1 bid for the building was completely rejected.

The Silverdome is for sale!

When the NFL's Detroit Lions moved out of the Silverdome in 2002, one of the largest stadiums in the world suddenly lost its purpose. The city of Pontiac continued to use it for events but I can imagine that the 80,000 seat stadium was probably more of a headache than a blessing.

They put it up for sale and nobody bit. Now it's up for auction with no minimum bid.

That's right, you could throw a dollar at the Silverdome and if nobody else bids, you would be the owner of this mammoth monument to the waste of American professional sports.

To walk into the huge structure that is the Silverdome can still take your breath away. With a seating capacity of 80,311, its still one of the largest in the world. The Silverdome was home to the National Football League’s Detroit Lions, the National Basketball Association’s Detroit Pistons and the United States Football League’s Michigan Panthers. It has seen major events such as Super Bowl 16 and the 1994 FIFA World Cup.

The dome established the largest indoor attendance record for a sporting event when Hulk Hogan met Andre the Giant in the World Wrestling Entertainment’s WrestleMania III. The Lion's franchise moved from the Silverdome in 2002 and while the Silverdome has had periodic and varied use since then, its owner, the City of Pontiac has chosen to auction the dome and the land it is on in an effort to stimulate development in their city.

Holy cow, how could you not bid on this thing? I think I'm throwing down a twenty for it...

Epic Photo: Detroit in decay

You've heard that the city of Detroit has been in some serious trouble for years - but I don't think you can actually get a picture of how bad things are there unless you live there. We're talking blocks and blocks of abandoned buildings. And with the auto industry the way it is, it's not going to get better anytime soon. Since 1950, the city of Detroit has lost a smidgen under one million people in terms of population.

What we're witnessing is the slow bleeding of a once-proud American city. And here's an absolutely haunting slide show by Time.com of the city that is slipping into ruin. Keep in mind some of these photos are of buildings that were still inhabited as recent as 2005 and now they've fallen into ruins. No joke.

(This particular photo is of Michigan Central Station, Detroit's central train station which was constructed in 1913 and closed in 1988)

Boardman!

So last night in the Washington Huskies victory over the Oregon Ducks, Jon Brockman the Senior Power Forward for the Huskies broke A) His nose again, or B) a 50 year old Huskie record? I'll wait.....ok if you answered B you would be correct (peeling off a piece of clothing a la Chris Farley in Billy Madison).

With 11:17 to play in the 2nd half Brockman grabbed a rebound off of a missed free throw (convenient because of Brockmans own charity stripe woes) by Matthew Humphrey to break the record that was held by Maxwell....er Doug Smart.

Congratulations Jon! Now Detroit or bust Dawgs!!

And you thought Total Recall was fiction

Remember watching Total Recall and thinking how cool the X-ray vision glass was. Well it's just become a reality, only a little more perverted.

BALTIMORE — Body-scanning machines that show images of people underneath their clothing are being installed in 10 of the nation's busiest airports in one of the biggest public uses of security devices that reveal intimate body parts.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently started using body scans on randomly chosen passengers in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Denver, Albuquerque and at New York's Kennedy airport.

Airports in Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas and Miami will be added this month. Reagan National Airport in Washington starts using a body scanner today. A total of 38 machines will be in use within weeks.

"It's the wave of the future," said James Schear, the TSA security director at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, where two body scanners are in use at one checkpoint.

Schear said the scanners could eventually replace metal detectors at the nation's 2,000 airport checkpoints and the pat-downs done on passengers who need extra screening. "We're just scratching the surface of what we can do with whole-body imaging," Schear said.

Great, wonderful, how fantastic. That creepy airport security guard with the Brett Hart hair and food-stained uniform gets to see the full monty, all in the name of national security.

For the full story head on over here.

"Oh, excuse me miss, it looks like you'll have to go through the scanner again. Whoops, there it goes again you're going to have step through once again."

"You're holding your car keys in the scanner, sir."

"So I am, good catch."