Hey, it's Vikes stadium debate time! Again!!

I've been a stadium skeptic all my days, but I have to admit: the Vikings are rocking this year, and the Metrodome is a big dank marshmallow. A new group called "savethevikes.org" held a rally the other day to push for a new stadium. It'll create jobs! So let's cough up 600 million dollars and git 'er done. OK?

No? Understood. But consider Target Field. Every time I drive past the new ballpark, I have the same impression: HOLY CROW WHERE DID THAT COME FROM? It's like the spaceship from "V" landed on the edge of town. It's beautiful. It'll make outdoor baseball fun again -- a new generation of fans will learn how freezing rain affects a fastball -- and it will revitalize the neighborhood when the condo glut shakes out and they start building again. Granted, it will be 2104 and they'll face competition from newly emerging Martian real-estate markets, but it'll happen.

See, that's the problem: You may balk at the taxpayer outlay when they're proposed, but then you find yourself sitting in a stadium on a warm June day with a cold local brew in one mitt and a Murray's Steak Sandwich® in the other, and you wonder what you were complaining about.

No big deal. No one ever said, "Honey, we can't pay the heat this month. It's that damned stadium tax." The economic impact is personally indistinct, and no one ever notices the things that weren't done because the money went to the stadium.

But it would be sad to lose the Vikings, so here's an idea. After they've proved they can't afford to build it themselves, even after they've checked behind the sofa cushions for loose change, maybe we should go for a "racino," or dedicated slots at Canterbury, to pay for it. This assumes there are 2,400,000,000 loose quarters in the hands of gamblers, so we'll have to put in more than 10 machines. Maybe 15.

Or, we wash it through some complex financial arrangement that technically pays us back but leaves a tax on downtown restaurants in place until 2105. At which point Murray's will have left for Mars because the business climate is better.

jlileks@startribune.com 612-673-7858 More daily at startribune.com/buzz.