Move Along, There's Nothing To See Here
By Jocelyn Geboy in News on Aug 9, 2006 4:51PM
"So, the U.S. Olympic Committee comes into town and...." Sounds like the beginning of a joke. To us, at least. We might be in the minority of people who *don't* want the Olympics to come to town in 2016.
The U.S. Olympic Committee is in town today to look around and check revisions to Chicago's bid and to help better shape each U.S. city's bid (also in the running are Los Angeles and San Francisco) to give the United States as a whole a better shot at winning the Olympic bid in 2016.
We'd love to see the U.S. get the bid. Go California! Statistically, they have a 66% shot at it, anyway. We have absolutely no interest in seeing Chicago win. You know how everyone bitches about the train ride north when there's a Cubs game?! We can't imagine what the already overworked, understaffed, sometimes slightly rickety CTA would look like under the load of an Olympic-sized crowd. Daley claims that there'd be money and support thrown toward the CTA, but given that he can't even manage to care about it for one second when his own citizens need it to run safely, efficiently and under budget, we have a hard time believing it wouldn't be one major CF*.
You know how people want to throw themselves under their own wheels on the Dan Ryan on a good day during rush hour? We have a hard time imagining how internationally fabulous the traffic will be with the Olympics in town. Love walking down Michigan Avenue amongst clueless tourists and suburbanites on a lovely summer Saturday? Don't get us started.
Are you also equally enamored of the Close Encounters of the Third Kind architectural redux of Soldier Field? We can't envision the glories that Daley has in store for creating (or re-creating) more sporting venues to accommodate sports and crowds we really aren't equipped to handle.
People are already complaining about last weekend's Lollapalooza, which most people considered a success. They didn't care about the extra money for the park. They were inconvenienced, and that was all that mattered. And let's face it. The money and jobs that are going to magically materialize? It sounds good in theory, but it seems time after time, cities are left in debt which taxpayers are left to repay. No, thanks. We think we've had enough parking tickets, thank you very much. And that's just our short list.
We love Chicago. We brag about it all the time. We can go on for hours. But it stands on its own merits. We don't need to have an Olympics to prove we're a world class city. We believe you have to have your own house in order before you invite over guests. Especially several hundred thousand.
*clusterfuck.
Image via smussyolay