A book is coming out that will have us elderly Caps fans reliving the days of the Capital Centre.
The folks who run the The Laurel History Boys website, Richard Friend and Kevin Leonard, along with Jeff Krulik, who made the documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot in 1986 about the band Judas Priest coming to Landover, teamed up to make this book called “Capital Centre | A Retrospective” which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the arena that was originally built as the home of the Washington Capitals, Washington Bullets, and countless other events.
The Capital Centre, which was renamed USAir Arena in 1993 and US Airways Arena in 1996, was demolished in 2002, several years after Capital One Arena opened in D.C.
The writers previously raised money for other books on Kickstarter, a crowdfunding website that promises donors discounts and deals for early donations (with refunds if funding goals aren’t met). For this, they sought $14,000, but raised more than $20,000 with less than a day to go, and even raised enough to upgrade the initial publication from paperback to hardback.
Here are other details about the book, which you can also read about on their Kickstarter page:
The Capital Centre holds countless memories for so many in the DC/MD/VA region, even all these years later. It was also truly a landmark arena: the first to feature an indoor video projection system, the first with in-house computerized ticketing, the first to lease private boxes with bathrooms and catering service, and much more. Sadly, there have been no retrospectives of this kind to date, and we would very much like to make it a reality.
The only puzzling thing about this is that they had to use crowdfunding for this in the first place. Some ideas are no-brainers and should get backing in the traditional ways. But, as is, everything about this seems fantastic. Perhaps one day these folks will write a book on “Capital One Arena | A Retrospective”
See more about their project on Kickstarter and I’m looking forward to diving into this one.
