The jewel of the San Diego Midway neighborhood has been renamed. The San Diego Sports Arena will be called the Valley View Casino Center, thanks to a financial agreement between the the company that manages the place and the San Pasqual tribe.
The arena now has a name that may be even more strange and puzzling than it’s old corporate name, the iPayOne Center. The San Pasqual tribe named it after their North County casino, obviously. But there will be no casino gambling in the arena (as far as we know) and there’s no valley in the flat coastal plain that is the Midway district.
Midway may be an unsightly urban jumble of strip malls and strip clubs, and the Sports Arena has never been much to look at. But the round, flat-topped concert venue has always given the neighborhood a measure of character and glitz. Elvis performed there. Bruce Springsteen performed there. And that’s not to mention the swap meets.
Now we just have to imagine the place has a valley view.
