What Steve Ballmer can't buy

INTUIT DOME ART PREVIEW, Intuit Dome, Inglewood, August 2024.

We cast long, slow shadows and watched them seep into the pale concrete. It felt like an hour, as if we were waiting for “Jenna.” Only she, I was told, could take me to my car.

It was late afternoon, early August. Intuit Dome, the new Westside Arena was still weeks away from being christened by Bruno Mars, but we were there for the unveiling of the artwork. For reasons I could barely remember now, this had seemed like a strange thing to do. The folly of the plan – if you can call it that – began to creep up on me on the drive there. How petty, this penchant for banality that I try to dismiss as perverse. Is time so cheap that I should trudge across the city in rush hour traffic just to make a few harmless jokes about public art that clumsily embellishes gentrification? The 10 makes everything seem small.

Steve Ballmer built the Intuit Dome for $2 billion as the home of the Los Angeles Clippers, which he also bought for $2 billion ten years ago. Ballmer is a former CEO of Microsoft and currently the seventh richest person in the world. You wouldn't know it at the lunch counter. “These cookies are terrible,” I said to a guy with a camera hanging around his neck. He was cautious. “Maybe they are,” he said. He was from a local Inglewood news site, and I asked him if Inglewood people were upset about the Intuit Dome and about SoFi Stadium, a mile north, with its huge adjacent retail and residential complex driving up rents, etc. “A little,” he said. “But here it is.” I couldn't really argue with that.

“Here it is” was also the core of what happened next. A representative from the Intuit Dome stood up and told us about the Intuit Dome’s commitment to the arts and to the community, why they have all this art outsidewhere everyone can see it. They had commissioned a handful of LA artists to decorate the street and the boardwalk leading to the arena entrance. We toured the works and listened to the artists explain their inspirations and intentions. Across Prairie Avenue was a huge, colorful mural in enamel by Inglewood native Michael Massenburg depicting people playing music, playing sports and dancing. It was called Cultural playgroundwhich seemed an apt title for a lot of things. Refik Anadol, who uses AI to translate data sets into gurgling digital color combinations, explained that the shapes and colors we saw on that big screen on the side of the building came from weather patterns and basketball statistics. Glenn Kaino created a sculpture of a clipper ship, its mast represented as an arrangement of backboards and baskets. Kaino is known for creating art that addresses social justice issues; the context called for positive messages of unity: “Lead with love,” read one of the backboards. “We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now,” read a pink neon sign by Patrick Martinez.

Some excellent works of art has A lot has been made about (or through) basketball before — by David Hammons or Paul Pfeiffer — but even if they had brought one of them here, it would probably still be bad. Intuit Dome is an impossible context, for reasons that became clear to me when I saw painter Jonas Wood. He was commissioned to design a jersey for the Clippers, which makes sense because he's known for his love of basketball, a recurring theme in his works. It's also funny because he's known for his love of another team, the Boston Celtics. The Clippers have no fans to speak of. They're a pathetic, cursed franchise. They languished in mediocrity for decades under famously stingy owner Donald Sterling, who was eventually forced to sell the team after he was caught on tape saying racist things about Magic Johnson. Since Ballmer bought the team, they've spent fantastic amounts of money and given away all their draft picks to get star players, and they're still mediocre, and nobody loves them, and they never will. Some things you can't buy, Steve.

With these encouraging thoughts, I headed for the parking lot. I wandered around alone, turned back, became confused, and then angry. I spoke to several Intuit Dome employees, and after some discussion they concluded that I must have parked in the loading dock, which was now completely inaccessible to me because it was at the end of corridors and elevators with special permission. I would have to wait for an escort. I protested. They passed me on to James, a white man with a pointed goatee who would have given me a ride himself but couldn't leave his post. It was unclear what this was, but I felt like he was my prison guard. It must have been hours. We studied the shadows we cast on the floor more closely than I had looked at the day's art. I asked him how long he had been working at the Intuit Dome, and he said just a few weeks, that they had only done maybe one or two events before this one. I asked him if he liked it and he said he liked it but the work was not very consistent and he wished he could work more hours.

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Photo by contributor.

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