Dex and I were talking about ways to improve the ballpark experience last night while he was on the trolley. That's when we talk bizness. We think best when Dex has gotten off a long day of work and sitting next to a hobo on the trolley and I've just woken up from my late afternoon / early evening nap.
I was telling him that the Padres should get electric hand driers in the bathrooms. There never seems to be any paper towels after the 2nd inning and if there are any left they are on the floor soaked in urine. Paper towels just create messes, so let's get hand driers. If you need any further encouragement, I read on a bathroom wall in a rest stop in Central California that Hand Drier are better for the environment than paper towels. There were other various drawings too and the old familiar suggestion, but that's neither here nor there.
If the Padres really can't afford them then get the Grounds Crew with their blowers standing outside the bathrooms drying hands. It will give them something to do other than walk on the field the instant the game is over and block the view of fans.
We also tossed around the idea of putting one of those annoying bathroom attendants in the Padres bathrooms. You know the guy that hands you a paper towel and wants a tip? He'd have gum, combs, condoms, Axe body spray, etc. People would see him, put their stuff away and walk out of the bathroom with their head down without washing their hands, thus saving paper towels, but spreading germs.
Here's another idea I was thinking about this morning. Season ticket holders should be assigned a Souvenir soda sippy cup for each seat they purchased and they can get $1 refills at the games with it. Padres would still make a profit and they'd add some value to Season Ticket holders, while making the rest of us non-Season Ticket Holders jealous, which I'm sure is their main objective anyway.
They should put a bar code on the cup, so it's easier to replace lost or stolen cups. As they activate the new cup for the Season Ticket Holder they inactivate the old one. You could also go so far as to only activate the cup on days when the Season Ticket Holder has a ticket to the game. That way you couldn't let somebody else use it on days you're not going. When a Food Service person rings you up, they simply scan the cup to make sure it's active, refill it and take your dollar.
Dex had a good idea about getting a shoe shine guy at the ballpark, but he doesn't shine or clean your shoes. He's a guy that cleans your baseball cap. You sit in one of those tall comfy chairs with your feet up while he takes your ball cap and a knee. Why he would kneel down, we had no idea, but thought it was funnier that way. Then he'd go to town on your cap.
He'd clean the grease and grime from your cap with some sort of chemical spray. Then he'd look it over maybe re-stitching certain places or using a razor blade to cut hanging strings. When the cap was sufficiently cleaned, he'd put the bill under a heat press and make it completely flat again. His finishing touch would be putting a new 59/50 sticker back on the bill with the hat's size on it. "Let's see I have a 7 3/8's sticker in here somewheres." That'd be rad.
If he didn't think the hat was worth repairing, he might suggest something else to you. You know how you can mail in your DVD's now to a company and they send you the same movie back only as a Blu-Ray DVD for a fee of like $10. Maybe they could do the same thing with caps. You turn in your old hat and they sell you a new one for say $20. You get a new cap and then they put your old one in the dishwasher and sell it back to fans at a premium price as a distressed style hat. Genius. Everybody wins, except the person buying a distressed hat, but they deserve it because buying distressed hats is stupid.
I feel like there was something else...let's see... hand driers, souvenir cups, hat cleaning guy... maybe that was it. Anyway, just think about all that, let it marinate, mull it over... before you shoot all those ideas down.