The interesting bits of the stadium expansion are almost over.

They’ve finished spelling out SCUSA on the seats in the middle row. There’s also the beginnings of a skin on the roof for the first time. I though I had read the covering was going to be fabric based of some sort, but this looks like corrugated metal. It’s going to be loud when it rains!

They’ve started the second tier of new seats, which includes the white seats that spell out SCUSA. Meanwhile, Bob the Builder has finally started using landscape orientation on his videos, and is uploading them to Youtube.

Thanks to Erik Graham for letting me post these pics he took from an interior perspective of the Providence Park expansion project. He was there legitimately and didn’t have to bum rush Providence Wellspace at Providence Park. One of these days I will get in there to take some pictures too. I’ve contemplated just walking in with a hard hat and a vest, but the possibility of a regular season ban from Providence Park makes it not worth it to me, despite the fact that I have 10’s of readers…

Last week’s Timbers in 30 featured a lengthy segment with Merritt Paulson talking about all things Timbers, including the fact that the overall really good 2018 season was overshadowed by the loss in MLS Cup. About 12 minutes into the segment we get to see some video shot from the new seats.

They’ve started adding the seats to lowest level the stadium expansion, a week or so after they started connecting the exterior anchors to the top of the new roof outside the concourse. I spoke to a guy in a hardhat who said the scaffolding on the west end is being used to install news video boards. The work continues, run, snow, or shine. Brace yourselves, this is quite a large dump of photos.

Some games are legendary because of the run of play. Our 2019 season opener in Colorado will be infamous for what happened on the pitch in a different way. A disappointing draw, sure, but highly memorable. In fact, the coldest game in MLS history so far. It was officially 18 degrees at kickoff, but unofficially reported as low as 16 degrees during the match. However, It’s not the cold that made it memorable, but the snow. That’s William H. Macy doppelgänger and referee Drew Fischer doing his unintentional impersonation of Jack Nicholson in The Shinning thanks to an image put together by Jacqueline Pi.

Liam Ridgewell dishes on his MLS experiences to the Hull faithful.

Randy Kilwag (That’s me!) guests on a very long episode of Soccer Touchtown!

MLSsoccer.com rates the Timbers #7 in the first edition of the 2019 Power rankings behind Atlanta, the Red Bulls, SKC, LAFC, Sounders, and DC United.

The construction cam goes in and out of focus every half hour, which makes for very trippy viewing of the time-lapse video if you’re in the mood. Highly recommended! What’s going on? They’ve started dismantling the big yellow crane, digging the foundation for the exterior retail store, and there is some interesting scaffolding up in the West end between the press box and the box suites.

Timbers Army “No Pity” scarves made an impression in Atlanta. Enough so that Five Stripes supporters have made their own edition, a riff on ours that welcomes Gonzalo “Pity” Martinez as their new DP. I’m wondering how it will be received out of context without No Pity to reflect it. Does it make sense? About as much as me including Caleb Porter [source] in this graphic.