We need to talk about the Boston Pizza curling house
...while also balancing the importance of benevolent advertising.
I wrote last week that I am very happy about all the curling webstreams, because I can flip back and forth between an array of games. What I have also noticed are some incredibly designed curling houses, many of them sponsored. Oakville, for example, had immaculate-looking houses. Then there was Sherwood Park Curling Club in Alberta, which has this fella:
For the uninitiated Americans, the BP stands for Boston Pizza. They are a heavy sponsor to curling. They sponsor, most prominently, Alberta’s provincial championships. They also sponsor SPCC’s Sheet 5.
You can see the hazy concentric circles in there, but even compared to the adjacent sheets, this one completely dominates the scoring area. I understand that their logo is round by design, and therefore ubiquitous to the sheet. Maybe I need to play one game on it before judging it. I’m not sure what it looks like in the hack — maybe those concentric markings show up better from that perspective — but I can’t imagine it’s comfortable throwing to it.
And let me say this: businesses sponsoring curling houses is extremely good. That’s money for the club. It pays the bills. It goes into club programs. Please sponsor houses! Put your business in the ice! But at the same time you don’t want to sacrifice from the playability of the game. In-ice ads in the free guard zone, or for that matter between the hogs, can help with the playability of the game. I always thought it was a genius move by the Tim Horton’s Brier to paint coffee cups in the corner guard zones.
And to that sentiment: I love me some good curling house advertising. I want to see some creative use of the space. I am also waiting to see the first house sponsored from Target. Get on that.
It also needs to be said that the Boston Pizza one wasn’t the least aesthetic one I discovered yesterday. Greg Lawson sent me this one, from the Mayflower in Halifax:
This one just makes me want to take up golf again. Great 12-foot circle energy, but absolutely psychotic design toward the button. Why. Why do this.
On that note, please send me your cool house designs. I suppose also send me your cursed house designs as well.