Reply #5: I live close to Qualcomm Stadium, [View All]

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where Super Bowl games were held in 1988, 1998 and 2003. The strange thing about it was that the area around the stadium was amazingly quiet and peaceful - at least compared to how it is on regular game days for the Chargers, where it's an unspeakable miasma of traffic. They only let buses go into the stadium parking lot on the day of the Super Bowl (except of course for limousines for the fat cats). Common folk had to park in distant parking lots and take buses in. The result was that there was so little traffic other than the normal Sunday traffic, you would hardly guess that there was a big, important event going on. It's like the entire Super Bowl, a national-level event, was hermetically sealed inside the stadium (and the many huge tents surrounding the stadium) but in the immediate vicinity it's like nothing was happening. Really strange. The gym I go to is literally right next to the parking lot for Qualcomm Stadium, and on the day of the last Super Bowl, they were charging $100 to park there (unless, of course, you were a gym member like me). I saw one motor home with Tampa Bay Bucanneers flags all over it in that lot, and the were having a lively tailgate party, but I think they were the only ones who paid $100. They could just walk from there to the stadium gates. However the In-N-Out Burger closest to the stadium was absolutely crammed with Raider Nation members.