by CLAIRE SUDDATH, BloombergBusinessweek, September 5, 2013
Wrigleyville rooftop, 1989
Photo: Jim Sugar/Corbis
Source: www.businessweek.com
Eric Wolverton is drinking a beer at a Cubs game. Actually, near a Cubs game. As 40,500 people—a near-sellout crowd—settled into their hard plastic seats at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, Wolverton perched on the bleachers on a rooftop across the street. He paid $124, roughly the cost of a field-level ticket at other Major League ballparks, for the privilege of cheering on the Cubs from atop 3643 N. Sheffield Ave., one of the 16 for-profit spectator spaces that make up the Wrigleyville Rooftops Association. The Cubs, who currently have the league’s third-worst record, are playing the third in a four-game series against the Dodgers, who’ve already beaten them twice. “You don’t go to a Cubs game to watch good baseball; you go to see Wrigley,” Wolverton says, and the ballpark, he adds, is best viewed from above. “Everyone talks about how historic Wrigley is, how going to a game is like stepping back in time,” he says. “And it is.” “But,” interjects Mike Gordon, Wolverton’s friend and fellow Cubs die-hard, “that place is a dump.”
