Kyle Clauss, at Boston Magazine, “Boston 2024 Is Dead (A Eulogy)“:
Leave it to Boston to find a way to win, even in defeat.
Perhaps because it’s not really Boston who has lost. That would be Boston 2024, the Olympic bid killed off by the United States Olympic Committee Monday. As it became abundantly clear in recent months, the interests of Boston and those of the private, unelected, tax-exempt organization were increasingly divergent, even as the lines between the latter and city and state officials blurred…
The USOC pulling Boston 2024 isn’t an “L” on our foreheads; it’s a badge of honor. The people of Boston, armed only with shoestring budgets and broken public records laws, stood up to the IOC, an organization as contemptible and endlessly wealthy as FIFA, and said: “Slow your roll. We’re doing things our way.” This David-and-Goliath dynamic lends well to an already trite Revolutionary War narrative, but better to one evoking any failed invasion of Russia. But in addition to the crippling cold, Boston’s best defense was its native skepticism…
Paradoxically, the major players in this spectacular failure will all walk away virtually unscathed. Mayor Marty Walsh, despite he and lawyers never reading a deeply misleading bid book, will almost certainly win reelection. No one will remember what he did or didn’t read, or his increasingly antagonistic approach to a grassroots opposition group with a budget of less than $15,000. If people remember anything, it will be Walsh’s press conference Monday announcing his definitive refusal to sign a taxpayer guarantee despite signing Bid 1.0, or his request for the final bid book chapters once such a maneuver was politically expedient, after City Councillor Tito Jackson did the legwork of a subpoena threat, which eroded away the city’s remaining lump of patience for bid organizers’ antics…
Few things short of morphine make people glaze over quite like public records reform talk. In Boston 2024, advocates found a boogeyman, a corruptive force to stoke the people’s interest in what exactly their government is up to, who it conspires with, and a flawed yet occasionally successful way of finding out about it. A push for landmark legislation aimed at improving Massachusetts’ abysmal public records laws has coincided with the unprecedented use of such requests to bring down an organization that embraced secrecy while trumpeting transparency. Boston 2024 gave the general public a demonstration of the power of FOIA requests, and why those in power fear them so terribly….
As so many of its natives from Abigail Adams to George X. Higgins have chronicled, Boston is a pinched, parochial culture, proudly self-sufficient, inherently suspicious of Big Thinkers with Large Ideas. And sometimes that’s our best side. Kudos to “ten people on Twitter” for helping to strangle this terrible idea in its playpen, and best of luck to Los Angeles if it really wants to (heh, heh) pick up the torch.
KG
I’d be on board with LA getting the games. I don’t think we’d need to build many venues (it’d be nice to get a new Belmont Plaza in Long Beach since they tore the old one down due to structural issues), so infrastructure spending could go towards freeways and rail rather than stadiums that won’t be used.
RaflW
Maybe, and this is a wild shot, but maybe the Olympics community will wake up and realize that multibillion dollar boondoggle stadia-palooza Olympics are unsustainable.
I love watching (some parts of) both the Summer and Winter Games. But way they are staged these days is nuts. Tons of empty seats in overlarge venues at astronomical ticket prices seems antithetical to the whole ‘amateur’ notion (not that the participants are really non-professionals either, reform is probably needed in how the teams are recruited, coached, financed and packaged).
I hope the IOC can meet the 21st century successfully. But at the moment it seems titanically top-heavy, cumbersome, enormous and not much like sport but like corporatism run amok.
BGinCHI
Too bad the Massholes didn’t get the games so that Willard Romney could ride back in on his white horse and rescue them.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Pro sports – in general – is at the beginning of what will be a long and horrible decade of reckoning, as taxpayers throughout the US wake up and start realizing that you don’t have to hand over all your money to sports teams looking for a place to park their asses for a few years until they can find the next, bigger grift down the road.
Yeah, there are still a lot of knuckleheads in places no sane human would want to live (Ohio State) who will insist that their governments pony up whatever it takes to keep their local sportsball franchise in town, but now the majority of voters realize that the jobs and money these teams supposedly bring into their burg of residence stay with the owners of the team, and don’t go into the local community.
Privatized profits, socialized losses. At least here, the American people are getting tired of the ripoff.
srv
Boston is just not a first-tier city capable of hosting a World Event.
JPL
When the Olympics were in Atlanta, a few tickets were open to area residents first. Since it was a lottery, I went after some that I thought would not be as popular. I saw team handball, which I loved, rowing, early track rounds and tennis. I only took the train once, cuz I got squished, but the experience was wonderful. The bombing was a downside, obviously. My son who was seventeen and just graduated from High School worked at a venue near the bombing. Since he knew I’d be concerned, he made his way to a phone booth and although it had yellow tape, he explained to the police officer that he was trying to call his f..king mother and he couldn’t stop him. Fortunately, the police man had better things to do than arrest him and his friend pulled him away.
joes527
@KG: I worked in the tourism industry (OK. … I worked at Disneyland) during the last LA Olympics. That summer was a total waste, as folks stayed away en masse to avoid the “crowds.” Hours were cut. People were sent home. It was a disaster.
Yeah, let’s do that again.
dedc79
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I hope you are right, but I suspect we haven’t come close to rock bottom just yet:
So arenas and cats apparently now have similar lifespans. How nice of the Hawks’ owner to consider a deal involving public funds. Will the public get a chance to consider that deal?
Cervantes
Did you mean George V. Higgins?
KG
@joes527: i think there’s enough people around who remember ’84 that it won’t be such a downer. plus, once a few people went out when everyone was staying home and post on twitter or instagram or facebook that nobody is out, everyone is going to go out. also, don’t forget that half the world end up boycotting the ’84 summer games because we boycotted the ’80 games over Afghanistan.
beltane
Is this good or bad news for Mitt Romney?
Mike E
@BGinCHI: Like Baron von Munchausen.
dogwood
@dedc79:
Cue up John Oliver on this.
dmsilev
@beltane: Dunno, but it’s clearly excellent news for John McCain.
vhh
Wisconsin is building a big new stadium. Hmm.
JPL
@dmsilev: Since Ann Romney is the Equestrian at tax payers expense, it might be good news for her or not.
Gin & Tonic
Not all that long ago, IIRC, The Economist had a longish piece about how events like the Olympics and the (FIFA) World Cup are becoming less and less likely to be hosted by more-or-less democratic countries. The level of spending and graft required are becoming the province only of authoritarian countries (see Sochi, Qatar, etc.)
Ruckus
The thing that I liked about the last LA Olympics was the traffic. Or rather the lack of it. And that it was realized that LA needed a comprehensive view of all traffic, from freeways to major surface streets, with an idea to keep them moving in an orderly fashion. It worked. It wasn’t perfect of course but it was better and changed the idea that traffic control is to stop everyone from moving to one of keeping them moving. Ten yrs later I moved to Columbus, OH and the difference in the concept was obvious.
The other thing was that unneeded billions were not spent on new facilities. We had several left from the 1932 games and only two new ones had to be built.
PurpleGirl
Congratulations, Boston. That’s a fine ending and I agree with it. Personally I was against the idea of having an Olympics in NYC that last time someone thought it was a good idea. (I just didn’t see people rushing around on mass transit between venues. No way, no how.)
Mike J
@JPL:
Anniversary is today, isn’t it?
Tell me again about how anti-abortion people are “pro-life”.
Gimlet
The wingnuts want NY Magazine to have a follow-up issue to the Bill Cosby one with all the women Bill Clinton has assaulted.
JPL
@Mike J: You are confusing the term pro-life with pro-fetus. The son was finally allowed into a locked restaurant so he could call me.
Cell phones are nice, btw.
RaflW
@srv: Boston is just not a first-tier city
capable of hostingeager to be ripped off for a World Event.FTFY
BGinCHI
@Mike E: Or if he sent one of his indistinguishable sons, Munchausen By Proxy.
chopper
okay, but was Jermaine behind it?
Schlemazel
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I’ll believe that when I see it. Not sure how many leeches are looking for new digs but the most recent rounds all went to the leeches over the objections of the taxpayers. Voters are finally having their fill but the pols are still funding & getting reelected.
mtiffany
@RaflW:
The athletes competing in the games are amatuers. The grifters behind the games are the professionals.
Roger Moore
@KG:
And most money that is spent on stadiums will be on ones that are already in use and are being upgraded, e.g. the Colosseum, Rose Bowl, etc., so the community will actually benefit.
Mike E
@BGinCHI: You mean ‘Trapp’ Romney?
Roger Moore
@mtiffany:
Pretty much. Amateurism is just an excuse for a salary cap, which means more money for the owners.
Tree With Water
Echoes of his old man and Dana Carvey were heard today when Jeb! had this to say about Huck’s “ovens” remark:
“So, unfortunate remark — not quite sure why he felt compelled to say it.”
PaulW
Both FIFA and IOC are leviathans, corrupt and beholden only to themselves, driving countries poor and rich to waste billions of dollars on gaudy vanity projects.
None of the countries should offer bids anymore. It’s neither worth it nor needed. Let those sporting organizations rot without their kickbacks and bribes.
PaulW
@Ruckus:
I think one of the big problems with the IOC nowadays is that they are insisting on sparkingly brand new buildings to go oohhh and ahhhh over. Recycling older buildings is a bit of a bummer (even London had to revamp existing sports facilities to the tune of millions of dollars).
the Conster
Bostonians weren’t buying what Boston 2024 was selling, because it was all the same developers and arrogant power brokers that have steamrolled the neighborhood activists in the past that wanted it. Poll after poll showed a majority against, and Boston 2024 refused to disclose the bid details. It just got to the point where it was all like fuck you John Fish and Pagliuca and your “we know what’s best for Boston”.
FlyingToaster
As a local, I’m thrilled.
The Boston2024 organizers were all about the grift. They wanted to shut the Common (note: you can’t shut the Boston Common. Look at the city charter) and the Public Garden so that they could have Beach Volleyball on the Common. They wanted to take two developed areas of the city (Widett Circle and Bayside) by eminent domain and “upgrade” them to build more luxury housing. They wanted Cambridge and Brookline and possibly Somerville to host events (note: 3 municipalities not ruled by nor owing Boston anything to warrant this), and before Tito Jackson threatened his supoena, both the Cambridge City Council and the Brookline Town Meeting were preparing supoenas, and Mayor Joe in Somerville said “Thanks, but no thanks.”.
Boston could host a summer olympics, but not with Romneyites involved.
beltane
@Tree With Water: Jeb! also said that Donald Trump hurt his feelings with his remarks about Mexicans. This, folks, is not the way to endear yourself to the Republican base.
schrodinger's cat
Open thread blog pimping:
I came across an interesting discussion, where Shashi Tharoor (Member of Indian Parliament) debates in favor reparations for India for what it endured during the colonial rule in an Oxford Union debate.
Ruckus
@PaulW:
I think you are correct. I’ve worked events in the Coliseum back in the late 70s/early 80s and it was sort of a dump then. I think a lot of prettying up was done for 84 but that was 31 yrs ago. I can not imagine that the IOC will even think of giving the games to LA. First, there just isn’t enough money to spend. Second, the local governments seems to have learned from the 84 games/recent NFL talk that spending that money gets a negative rate of return, short and long term.
A Ghost To Most
Just have the summer games in Greece, as the gods intended, unless someone else steps up..
It would at least provide them a shot at getting out of debtors prison.
Roger Moore
@PaulW:
At least when you’re renovating an existing venue there’s an indication that there will still be demand for the venue when the games are over. And renovating an existing place is likely to be substantially cheaper than building one from the ground up, especially in a crowded city where open plots of land are hard to come by. In any case, if the IOC decides that reusing existing venues isn’t good enough, we just won’t win the bid. There are worse outcomes.
sigaba
@Ruckus: The Coliseum nowadays is mostly known for the raves, and occasional rave-related death that finally made them shut the raves down. It’s funny all the benches and sidewalks in Expo Park still have the ’84 logo stenciled into the concrete; there are poured-concrete benches from Griffith Park to the Mulholland overlooks with olympic insignia on them, as far as surplus hardware is concerned, ’84 was LA’s own little WW2.
Local governments do not watch John Oliver, thought to LA’s credit they’ve managed to avoid actually pulling the trigger on the New Football Stadium. I’m with KG, I’m down for the Olympics if they can somehow spin it into finishing the downtown-Westwood subway sometime sooner than the current deadline, 2036.
barbequebob
At last May’s Town Meeting here in Eastham, Cape Cod, we needed to practice using our new electonic voting devices before the real voting began. The first practice question was “Do you support Boston’s Olympic Bid? It was 2 to 1 NO!.
So, even out on Cape Cod, folks were not all that keen on this idea.
Germy Shoemangler
Where’s a good place to buy an inexpensive analog wristwatch? Target? Sears?
Nothing fancy, just a basic timepiece.
Mike E
@Germy Shoemangler: Chinatown!
Omnes Omnibus
@Germy Shoemangler: One of my watches is an LL Bean field watch. I recommend it highly as a basic watch. I’ve had it for 20 years; it has only required battery changes and band replacements.
FlyingToaster
@Germy Shoemangler: Target’s website has them for about 10-15 bucks, plus you can get a rough idea of what’s in your local store.
KMart is pretty much the same (it’s the Sears low-end store, shares Sears’ online marketplace).
Tree With Water
@FlyingToaster: If Troy McClure were still alive to sell those projects via film presentation, Boston 2024 might have had a chance.
FourTen
Being in the crowd at Daley Plaza when we (Chicago) lost the bid to Rio was one of the saddest non-death related days of my life.
I’m a cynical as the next Internet man, but I wanted the games here. Not everything has to be about dollars and cents
marduk
The greatest american city shows the rest of the country how it’s done, again.
Mike J
@marduk: Yeah, Seattle didn’t even put in a bid.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Germy Shoemangler:
Target. Thirty-forty bucks will get you a serviceable Timex. Check the water resistance: 30m = splash or a little rain, 50m = shower or casual swimming.
Kropadope
Personally, I thought Boston was a bad idea, but I would’ve been happy for a regional bid. Maybe they could’ve put it in Western MA or VT or NH? Oh, and not put taxpayers on the hook for the stadiums…stadia?
Germy Shoemangler
@Omnes Omnibus: @Steeplejack (phone): @FlyingToaster: thanks everyone for suggestions. I’m glad they still make analog watches; I still think in analog. My offspring I believe think in purely digital timekeeping terms.
JenJen
@mtiffany: Just to be clear, NHL and NBA players aren’t amateurs, and many of them compete in the winter and summer Olympics.
@FourTen: I remember that so clearly, as we all sat at work watching and hoping the Olympics would be only five hours away. Still pisses me off.
Groucho48
@Germy Shoemangler:
Amazon has basic Casio molded plastic watches for $12.
rikyrah
As a Chicagoan….I still remember the smile when Chicago was left in the dust for the 2016 Olympics.
JustRuss
Omnes Omnibus
@JustRuss: They don’t need your god-damned tea.
Kropadope
@JustRuss: I think we’re the very model of why interconnectedness and interdependence are important. The only justification I can think of for that assertion is that we are a net contributor of federal tax dollars.
Another Holocene Human
One of those people on twitter was one of my wife’s friends, so we’ve had a ringside seat for this. Sometimes good guys do finish first.
Another Holocene Human
@RaflW: The “amateur” thing is just an utter anachronism.
The problem with the games is the corruption, stupid. And as long as it goes on unchecked, only the most unfree places in the world will host them.
daverave
It’s a hoot to read who’s on the Boston 2024 BOD… a major player from Bain Capital (where have I heard of that before?), lots of construction trade mucky-mucks, some major sports names like David Ortiz and Larry Bird. I mean how could Larry Bird lead the people of Boston astray????
Another Holocene Human
@Ruckus:
It’s like these fucking FIFA tourneys, there are plenty of places in the world with enough stadia reasonably close together but they want brand new shiny now now now.
Fuck them. And their billions of cash reserves. Wankers.
RaflW
@PaulW:
Which is exactly why more cities like Boston need to say “buzz off” to the IOC.
Origuy
The Olympics dropped the whole “amateur” thing decades ago. The Communist bloc (and others) made a farce of it and it was always an upper-class British conceit anyway. Anyone who wants to compete at the world-class level needs sponsorship at the very least, if not a full-time stipend.
Another Holocene Human
@Gimlet: Sure. Why not. Clinton allegedly raped a woman in the late 70s. Afterwards, he realized he’d made a big mistake. And while he did some blurring lines and some uncool nonconsensual shit in the years that followed, he dialed the rapey stuff way back.
Cosby — apparently? — learned about ‘luudes and knocked out sex (which is rape) from his good buddy Hugh Hefner in the ’60’s, and decided he liked it so much he was still attempting to drug and rape women right up into the 2000s.
I’m not sure what my point is, except that righties love false equivalencies.
Ruckus
@Germy Shoemangler:
Overstock.com
Have bought a couple there at pretty good prices.
Another Holocene Human
@JustRuss: Good point, loaded shipping containers come in (by rail, Boston is no good as a harbor for modern craft), empty shipping containers go out.
There is still manufacturing but by god it is getting picked off one by one. Nothing like it used to be.
Mass is a net payor state into the federal bucket, so there is that.
Roger Moore
@Origuy:
Not quite. They still maintain amateurism in the sense that matters most to them: refusal to pay the athletes even a tiny share of the massive revenues the Olympics generate. Keeping hold of all that sweet, sweet cash is their #1 priority.
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human:
You are aware that Massport operates a container terminal, yes? And that MSC, Hapag-Lloyd, COSCO, and Maersk all use it?
Another Holocene Human
@Cervantes: Well, my bad then, not long before I left Menino was lunging for the pants legs of Norwegian executives begging them to call twice a month.
Anne Laurie
@JustRuss: I said a “self-sufficient culture“. In the sense that we don’t go hankering after how they do things in NY or LA or Rio, cuz we have as many ideas as we can implement already.
Yeah, it can be stultifying, but it also saves a ton of heartburn over not having the biggest stadium or the loudest rich people or the hippest night life. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or go without” is practically the Boston motto.
(True story: The actual motto of the City of Boston translates as “God be with us as he was with our fathers before us”. A mischievous Jesuit told me it could also be translated as “Gawd help us poor bastids”… )
Tree With Water
@Roger Moore: That sounds a lot like the NCAA, doesn’t it?
Tyro
@Germy Shoemangler: Where’s a good place to buy an inexpensive analog wristwatch? Target? Sears?
CVS or whatever your local drug store is.
Roger Moore
@Tree With Water:
NCAA is actually stricter than the Olympics are. The Olympics allow athletes to earn money for their athletic skills outside the Olympics, and they even allow other people to reward athletes for how they do in the Olympics. The NCAA has very strict rules that even prevent their athletes from having outside jobs so that they can’t get money under the table.
Kropadope
@Roger Moore: Wait, so they can’t even bag groceries? How are these kids supposed to live? No wonder that one who’s name I can’t remember was stealing fountain drinks from the fast food place.
Roger Moore
@Kropadope:
NCAA athletes are allowed full ride scholarships, so they get room and board included as part of the deal. Other than that, they’re supposed to depend on their parents.
Kropadope
@Roger Moore: That’s great for the top-of-the-line athletes. I’m sure not all of them get that free ride.
Roger Moore
@Kropadope:
I think the rules are looser for athletes not on a scholarship, especially at the lower levels where there may not be any scholarships. That said, my general impression is that “depend on your parents” is the rule of thumb at the NCAA.
Goblue72
@Anne Laurie: Thrift was a Puritan virtue after all. Not being miserly or cheap, but thrifty. Careful with your money, making it stretch, not being ostentatious with it, and using it to satisfy needs not wants. Not so you could sit on a pile of gold, but to have sufficient leftover to go back to the common weal. It’s not surprising that Boston has a long tradition of good schools & colleges, museums, libraries, & public parks.
We use more thrift in our society I think.
Also too – could the Sox suck any worse? Jesus. Pats pre-season can’t start soon enough.
mezz
Bostonians have a nice recent tradition of fking up Big People’s Plans. When the state proposed their highway system in the 50s and 60s, the plans called for an intermediate radial highway, which would have run basically through JP, Roxbury, Dorchester, Brookline, Newton, Cambridge and Somerville. (The “Inner Belt” inside 128.)
Riotous opposition (largely from the wealthy enclaves of Harvard, Newton and Brookline, go figure) put the kibosh on the plans (though not after rites-of-way were acquired in the poor parts of town; Southwest Corridor Park is one result) in the early 1970s. Which made the Big Dig absolutely necessary. Which made all of us entirely aware that getting Fked by the Big People kinda sucks – when they say they can deliver on budget and on time, that’s when you hide your wallet.
Shame on the Boston 2024 Big People for being idiots and not aware of our . . . staunch defense of the things that matter, like communities, neighborhoods, and quality of life.
We’re real pleased here in our Beantown household Palgiuca and those other toads got their asses handed to them.
lawguy
@FourTen: Actually, as far as the people who run the Olympics are concerned everything does have to be about dollars and cents. And by the way it is your dollars and cents, not theirs.