As someone who’s living through being an Olympic City (Vancouver is the 2010 Winter Games city) and has lived through a Summer Olympics, lemme tell you – it’s a waste of money and ain’t nothing more than a lot of developer’s wet dreams.

I mean, honestly, how many people can even *name* the last three Olymipic Cities? I was asking one guy who was waxing enthusiastically about these Games, “did the Salt Lake City Olympics ever make you want to visit or live there?” “Where’s Salt Lake City? Was there an Olympics there?” [Salt Lake City was the 2002 Winter venue].

This thing’s all of two weeks and people generally forget about the names within a few very short years, television viewers don’t really get a ‘feel’ for the cities since the networks are concentrating on the athletes and their backstories… so… aside from overly-expensive and under-used facilities, what benefits are there that outweigh the inevitably HUGE financial bill and post-Olympic economic slow-down?

And it’s not just money from the locals, it’s money from the taxpayers of the entire country because they’re going to have to fork over the money to pay for extra civil servants and agencies to deal with this two-week event (trust me on this; I’m seeing it every day).

During the run-up to the Games, you’ll invariably see inflated housing prices and evictions of even middle-class renters, a tight squeeze made to affordable housing, the roll-over of boarding houses that results in more homelessness, temporary or permanent privitization of public spaces, increasing legislation to clamp down on things like the right to assembly (no protesting of any sort) and things like pan-handling, rushing through the usual construction process and practices for municipal projects “because they’re Olympic-related” (when, in fact, they’re not but the city wants to make the city look more efficient or pretty than it actually is) and pushes to get tax breaks on these construction projects and the invariable whine of the developers when, guess what, their financial projections have blown up in everyone’s faces.

Then… *b*O*o*M* – everything stops with the last flickering flame. Except the tax payers have to pay for these facitlities, if you’re from Montreal (like me), you’re taking 30 years to repay the $1Billion in cost-over-runs and everyone is now excited about the *next* games and will forget you soon enough. Oh, not to forget the law suits and criminal charges against bureaucrats and people associated with the Games that usually follow… .

And to think you’re going to do this to an already condensed city like Tokyo? Yikes.

That may be so… but my buddy who went through the Sydney Games wasn’t all that impressed, either, and was actually the first one to ‘warn me’ about what would happen when the Olympic Show came to Vancouver.

And the 1976 Summer Olympics *were* in my home city of Montreal so I got to see what was happening (except, you know, I was a kid… but a kid who read two newspapers a day and would spend my allowance on The New York Times (if I could get it). I was a *strange* kid, obviously… ).

My recollections of the summer Olympics:

2004 – Athens. Um… I’ve spent some time in Athens so I was particularly looking forward to these games. I don’t remember a damned thing except seeing a lot of empty seats.

2000 – Sydney. Don’t remember, don’t recall.

1996 – Atlanta. A hella hella lotta advertising all over the place and a bomb explosion by some White American Yahoo (people seem to sometimes forget that there are quite a few White American Yahoos doing terrorist-y things…).

1992 – Barcelona. I spent some time there. I can’t remember anything about the games. Not even the architecture of it (and in the land of Gaudi, you’da thought at least the architecture would have been memorable…).

I honestly don’t think any city can afford these Games any more. Unless you mean ‘afford’ like ‘will be able to pay the massive over-budget allowances eventually’.

Why Tokyo’d wanna take this giant White Elephant one is beyond me… .

How did the Nagano Games do? [That's the 1998 Winter Games ]

What happens to those poor chaps in the construction industry *after* the facilities are built and construction comes to a halt?

One of the problems I see in this whole Games thing is that the end is finite and definite (i.e. the Closing Ceremony).

And then what? Unless you have extraordinary planning, there isn’t any kind of real continuing momentum going after these massive frenzies and cities are left with expensive sport facilities that are hard to fill and harder to pay for, some civic projects that could certainly have been done *without* having to tie them into an Olympics project (and are probably over-budget because builders can name their price when they have a city desperate to get things done before the Games) and the local creepy people who have Olympic memorabilia all over their house :::shudder:::.

Even previously hyper-enthusiasts are getting Olympic Ennui around here and some are admitting that, OK, the Games are not going to be the panacea that will either lift Vancouver to World Class Status (’cause I still don’t think it is since it doesn’t have a depth and breadth of history, a deep cultural life, an influential art and culture that’s felt in any other places and the food’s not that noteworthy, either ) or will encourage more people to come to the already most over-inflated housing market in Canada.

‘Course, if the fair and sane people of Tokyo who have a say in this don’t get plowed over by grasping politicians and deeply partisan developers and are willing to accept massive cost over-runs that ends up costing all its citizens, mavel tov, babies!!

I’d hate to see the games come here for no other reason than that Ishihara would be able to claim it as a victory.