I've walked past this sign most days for the last year.
For the last couple of weeks it's looked plausible again, but here we are on another 15th March and it's about to go back to being totally wrong.
Even that supposed 'next event' never happened. It was supposed to be West Ham versus Wolverhampton Wanderers on 15th March 2020, but that got cancelled two days previously along with the rest of the UK's professional football fixtures.
Subsequent events that never happened included West Ham v Chelsea (5th April), West Ham v Burnley (18th April), West Ham v Watford (2nd May) and West Ham v Aston Villa (17th May), not to mention St Louis Cardinals v Chicago Cubs (13th/14th June) and the Anniversary Games (4th/5th July). Sport has never been so cancelled.
But numerous events have been held at the London Stadium since last March. All those leftover matches got rescheduled behind closed doors. West Ham's 2020/21 season is three-quarters complete. Only one of this season's games had any spectators, the 3-1 defeat to Man Utd during London's brief flirtation with Tier 2, but nobody came back to update the "next event" sign to 5th December. I guess 2000 spectators, compared to the usual 60000, don't cause much parking disruption.
What did happen back in June is that West Ham circled their stadium with a ring of barriers. Each of the five bridges was affected along with all the other points where footpaths encroach upon Stadium Island. The idea was to keep inquisitive West Ham fans at bay when their team were playing and prevent illegal assembly, despite the fact there'd be nothing for them to see or even hear. But rather than removing the barriers after that weekend's football match they remained in situ. A small gap has been left open, most of the time, but every matchday it all gets closed off again for 24 hours.
This unecessarily blunt security system has been in place ever since. Some bridges have been semi-dead-ends for the last nine months. Big signs scream Access Closed, even when it isn't. The staircase near the bell is permanently blocked because nobody ever removes that panel. Desire line paths have appeared as people divert round this defensive wall. We have this beautiful park and then we have these crappy barriers and there's no sign of them ever being removed.
What's fascinating is that the Olympic Stadium was once at the heart of one of the most high profile security operations this country has ever seen, cunningly located on an island to prevent unwanted access by undesirables, and yet it was never deemed necessary to provide access points with permanent lockable gates. The fortress-like exterior of the stadium normally performs this defensive task, but during lockdown a new perimeter has been suddenly deemed essential to hold a few football supporters at bay a bit further back.
London Stadium is due to host five more football matches this season, while a single highly optimistic concert is booked in for 25th June. But it's unlikely any of these will trigger Newham's parking department to come round and update the date on the signs, so I fear I'll be walking past "Next event day 15th March" for several more months, a constant reminder of how utterly stuck we've become.
