AKRON ADOLESCENCE
By Chris Kessinger (The Film Freak)

Ten hours at The Rubber Bowl

When i look back on it now, Ozzfest 98 was probably a rough first concert for a 13-year-old. I had just gotten into Rock/Alternative music fresh off of my country music phase, when my best friend, Jeff Gill invited me to the biggest music festival of the year. When thinking about where the road would take me, my mind wandered to exotic lands that i have never been to. Places like Detroit, Pittsburgh, or Columbus was where i was expecting as the nearest venue to host such a huge event. As it turned out, my entrance into the rock-and-roll world was a mile from my house. A stone’s throw away from the safe haven that i had experienced up till that time in my bubble of protective childhood. This magical place was called the “Rubber Bowl”

It seems mind boggling today to think that big name music concerts were the everyday occurance at The Rubber Bowl, but at the time it was Akron’s biggest venue. It opened in 1940, and stood as the home of Akron’s college football team, the Zips. Besides the Zips, the bowl hosted local high school football games, including the City Series Championship game, every Thanksgiving, two Cleveland Browns regular season football games in 1941, and 1942, and many must see concerts that included Metallica, The Rolling Stones, and Alice Cooper. I remember attending for many Akron Vs Kent State matchups, one of which included an overtime thriller won by the Zips with a long field goal. The Rubber Bowl was Akron’s biggest claim to fame in an era when stadiums were being built to bring outsiders in to enhance their big city experience.

I arrived to the stadium around noon, and was greeted by many sights and smells forbidden to a teenager exploring his adolescent voice. As it turned out, that voice went from alto to bass as many good looking women scantily dressed graced my peripherary. I won’t get into the details, but i will just say that women became cootie free that day for this Akronite. Tickets were $32, which seemed like a lot of money at the time, but the lineup has yet to be topped by any of the 80 concerts that i have seen since. Tool, Limp Bizkit, Megadeath, and Ozzy Osbourne were just a few of the names to melt the rubber city that day. General admission granted you a come-and-go choice between sitting in the stands, and standing on the same turf that the Zips invaded every Saturday. I took the latter because the thrill of standing in the endzone to watch my biggest rock idols, seemed too good to be true.

As the night hours approached, i became drained both mentally and physically from a lack of liquids, to the amount of energy that i spent moshing around with grown men as big as pro wrestlers. By the time my favorite band (Tool) hit the stage, i got the blast of energy that i needed to get through the final two hours. People were passed out on the turf from a hard day of rock and roll, but i raged on, as i ran along the field like a football player to get to the front of the crowd. Did i succeed? One fat lip and a black eye later, i was jamming out painless (Until the next morning anyway) to cap off a day that prepared me for many shows for years to come. Since then, i have been to every venue in Northeast Ohio, but none of them will ever hold a place in my heart like the Rubber Bowl did on that hot and sunny Sunday afternoon in 1998.

The Rubber Bowl was left vacant in 2008, with the Zips opting out for the brand new Infocision Stadium on Exchange Street. It was purchased by Team1 Marketing Group in January 2013 for $38,000. With rumors of a USFL Pro Football team taking over the stadium, perhaps some new life has been injected into the crumbling ruins of one of Akron’s biggest landmarks. People love their history, and the Rubber Bowl is etched in it for generations past, present, and future.

Got any Rubber Bowl Stories? Leave a comment below.

You can find The Film Freak’s film reviews at:
Thefilmfreak.com