Originally published at: The Las Vegas Sphere is rolling to a new location - Boing Boing
…
I remember there was some song back in the 80s about not playing Sun City (apartheid), are we going to expect modern musicians not to support slavery in the Emirates?
Adam Something posted a video about this an even more ridiculous sphere-based project earlier this year. It’s another incredibly stupid, poorly-thought-out vanity project designed to make some despot feel like he’s created something monumental.
Great, now every town over 250k is going to want their own Sphere™ and next thing you know it’s like the new Hard Rock Cafe.
Is that the same project? The one he talked about was going in Dubai, and the one in this news story is in Abu Dhabi.
If the Abu Dhabi project is just a clone of the existing performance venue in Vegas it’s still a big dumb expensive and energy-hungry vanity project but it seems almost restrained and reasonable compared to a lot of other projects in the region.
It looks like Big Ball Wars is kicking off across the world.
You’re right; I guess Abu Dhabi must be getting sphere envy from their northern neighbor.
Soon…
This is a cast off white elephant. It was meant to get the go-ahead in Stratford, London - but locals and the Mayor were sufficiently appalled that its creators took it to a place where taste and decency go to die (alongside the slave workers).
Everyone will want an orb to ponder
I was about to post something snarky about the lack of casinos in Abu Dhabi, but apparently those are coming soon too…
Honestly, that was one of the few of those from the 80s that weren’t a total cringefest…
I was going to post something about how it lost a massive amount of money, but apparently that is slightly misleading.
I interpreted that title to mean Vegas was removing the Sphere and sending it to some other benighted town.