There may or may not have been a thread dedicated to this already - I couldn't find one so I started anew.

For those unawares, Chicago's tubby dwarf Mayor Daley is on another glamor kick right now and is trying very hard to secure Chicago as the site of the 2016 summer Olympics. While the effort has been headed by folks claiming Chicago as the perfect site, a world class city eager to show off its amenities & beauty, I think these people are either on-the-take Chicago crooks or plain old crazy in the cocunut.

The Olympics!? Our public transportation system is an absolute shambles. Without whining too much its safe to say people from Belarus get frustrated at its filth & unreliability. City Hall itself seems to be the epicenter of a new scandal every week. Who isn't being indicted nowadays?! Every elected official we have in this city is embroiled in either a financial, real estate or sexy pajama scandal. In fact, isn't C®ook County broke itself? Issuing mass layoffs, restructuring aid programs and doing away with social services left & right in attempt to right the cash-strapped County boat?!

What're we doing even thinking about hosting an Olympics? Somebody? Please? I'm so confused why this is going on it makes me dizzy...

the video made for USOC:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/olymp...ack=1&cset=true



really, I didn't care in the beginning, but now that it's Chicago vs. LA, I hope Chicago kicks the living shit out of those twats.

After Daley had potted plants put next to the street, at a cost of Millions of Dollars, you should've expected something like this.

The best thing is you may be left with some extra sports facilities that can be used by HS & College athletes.

I'm all for it.

Financing Controversy

On 24th February 2007 a BBC report claimed that the cost of the 2012 London Olympics could rise to nearly four times the figure set out in the city's bid for the Games. It claimed that total cost had risen to £9bn which broke down as follows: construction costs had risen to £3.3bn, urban regeneration and land decontamination (of chemical and radioactive materials) up to £1.8bn, while security costs were expected to reach £900m. An additional contingency fund of £2bn was added in order to cover future rises in costs.

Ugh, and the cost of it all. I've read that no city has recovered from hosting a modern Olympics. Well...the cities that have semi-transparent & viewable economies anyway. Montreal, Calgary, Atlanta, et al are all still paying for hosting.

If the historically sensible & prudent Brits can't get the figures to work out then how in the fuck is the equally historically inept & duplicitous Chicago government going to!? Where does the money come from, anyway?! At this point they haven't told us. 4x over-budget already?! What'll that look like in, oh, 5 years. Ugly, that's how.

And the security concerns...oh, the security concerns.

edit: Sin City, I'd like to watch the video presentation but I'm not registered to that site...is there any other way to view the video?

say whatyou will about the cta. it does suck and is unreliable but i'll be damned... for public transportation that is widely used, it's pretty fucking clean.

Either you're making a funny or you live in squalor and your trousers smell of urine and skin rot.

And don't cherry-pick the topic - what are your feelings about a Chicago Olympics? You live here and, from what I can tell, you pretty much hate everything save cats & career changes. I'm counting on your support.

Gena is like me, and rides the Brown Line, which is very clean and orderly compared to other public transportation systems.

They have bidets at the back of every car, and classical muzak piped in over the PA. It's very civilized. While you are eating Cheetos for breakfast, we Brown Line riders are sipping tea and snacking on little cucumber sammiches.

The only reason I could possibly enjoy this would be to have the advantage of being able to go to some of the events. Outside of that fact, this would be the most expensive fiasco since the building of Millennium Park and I really don't see a point in getting involved in something I really don't think we're prepared to pull off.

yup. i got a massage on the way to work today by a nice korean fellow.

i dont know enough about the olympic bid to have an opinion on it. my gut reaction is HELL NO because i don't want millions more people i have to navigate through on my way to get a hot dog or something. and that was my exact same reaction when new york was vying for 2012.

but im apathetic. because they are the olympics. so who cares.

A voice of reason. Are we to expect the elected officials of Chicago to be able to execute something of this magnitude without fucking it up entirely? Financially & logistically? And all with a blind eye to the pressing issues Chicagoans are currently struggling with?! Dammit, why isn't there more discourse about this. Failed Mayoral candidate Dorothy Brown made mention of it but nobody else seems to be appalled at how arrogant & stupid this whole thing is.

Please pick L.A.

And Biggie, I've been on the Brown Line before. All you white people smell like cheap soap & bad tips.

I love that guy. Did his wife whipe the slush off of your boots for you when you boarded the train? She's a doll.

i dont wear boots. but she always has nice hand lotions and balms for me to use. and one time she gave me a tip on eyebrow plucking.

I was against it at first, but now I want us to win. I think it could be a good thing. If we got the Olympics, they'd HAVE to upgrade the public transportation, so that would be a plus. Everything would get cleaned and spruced up, and that would be a plus. I could rent out my house to tourists and make a fortune, so that would be a plus. Not a lot of minuses, really.
I know that a lot of the Olympics have lost money, but I thought Salt Lake City actually ended in the black, no? I don't think anyone thinks of hosting the Olympics is going to be a big moneymaker really, but it showcases our city, which rocks, and it would increase tourism afterwards, which is good.

Plus, the logo is pretty bitchin.

except that the city will be in complete hell for the years prior, trying to build and maintain everything. especially if teh brown line project is any indication.

does the olympic committee give money to hosting cities?

Et tu, Kate?! Despite all your obviously levelheaded & dependable baseball commentary!? You've fallen for this!? This is a piece of dog shit served in a velvety Crown Royal bag. Oh, and while you're being asked to pay to sniff the shit in the bag, somebody's breaking your car windows.

I have no idea what any of that meant, either, but it seemed apropos.

I can't help myself Alan, I'm just getting caught up in all the fun.
Plus, how can we lose when our logo is just so fucking cool?




It doesn't stir your soul?

There's no more sure-fire way to make certain that a buttload of money gets put into the public transport system than hosting a major sports event like the Olympics or the Superbowl--at least if the experience of cities like Houston and Salt Lake City is any guide (which it may not be, since those cities basically had non-existent public transit systems before said events, at least from a light rail standpoint). That's not to say that it necessarily makes economic sense.


I would hardly call Millennium Park a "fiasco." It did certainly end up costing a great deal more than anyone anticipated, but I think it's one of the more successful efforts to develop a central-city public space that any major US city has pulled off in the past few decades.

Not a bit. It looks like a wee little orange Christmas tree light.

City Hall corruption, misappropriation of funds, neglect, contract steering, patronage...these are the things that stir my soul.

It's pretty awful, isn't it? What's really sad is that the LA one is actually worse.

It doesn't look like a Christmas light.
You see, the flames are the skyline, and the torch is the lake, with the reflection. See, isn't that cool?

ack, kate beat me to it.

but in a much much nicer way. in my response i called you two dickwads.

Oh, I get the representation fine enough. It's impossible to miss.

It's just stupid.

And whatever dough they spent to pay some scab-faced fuckin' Art Institute grad to design that mess should've been spent to repair the escalator at the Granville Red Line subway stop.

ew. only poor people ride the redline. let them use stairs.

Don't you mean, let them eat cake?

The brown line is a pos too, I've seen better subways in the 3rd world countries.

let's hope that they don't have alderwoman dorothy tillman squiring the olympic delegation through any part of her ward.

to the original question, i hope we win it. and, yes, that logo is very sharp.

Why? You insinuating she's any more bumbling & eager to steal than every single other Chicago politician? That's odd. She just wears dumb hats. Maybe if her hat was shaped like that silly Olympic torch logo it'd be different.

to be precise, i was insinuating that she represents one of the more impoverished wards in the city and is a crackpot. the funny hats don't help, though.

spaz.

It's a shame they cleaned up the IOC, otherwise we would have showed them how corruption is really done. I don't think theres any city in the world that can match us in a head to head battle when it comes to bribes.

the brown line isn't a subway.

Well, as an Elevate Heavy Rail Transit Line it's still a piece of shit compared to London, Paris, Mexico City and yes, even New York (barely),

I love this city but I do not think Chicago can pull this off. There is a ton of money that needs to be spent to host this kind of thing and the powers that be in this city are the masters of mismanaging funds.

I don't understand the argument about the Olympics boosting tourism, i mean Chicago is not some podunk town that no ones knows about. Chicago is a well known tourist destination. Of course Atlanta and Salt Lake City saw a huge bump in tourism after they hosted The Games, but that's because people weren't really travelling there before that time. I think there are too many serious issues plaguing this city that need to be dealt with instead of planting a few flowers and bidding on the Games.

Also the final host city decision won't be made until late 2009. That leaves Chicago only 6 1/2 years to get everything straight. To me it will take way more than 6 years to get the CTA rail system up to snuff.

Daley is such a dimwit.

You know Daley, he'll find something the city of can lease. he got 1.8 billion for the skyway, I wonder how much he can get for Lake Shore drive or Midway.

Speaking of - did the leasing of the Millenium Park underground parking ever go through? I haven't heard about that in awhile...I would imagine those plans are somehow awkwardly woven into the as-yet-undisclosed manner in which the City will pay for these stupid fuckin' Olympics.

Great way to manage debt: put off paying it for the immediate future. This is the kind of financial planning espoused by people who still live with their parents.

Sorry for being spastic - I get riled up.

the city sold the underground parking to an investment bank (i believe morgan stanley). my guess is that the bank is going to come out ahead on that deal.

We can't use taxes on hotels, because we're using that to pay for the new Soldier Field. You know, the gigantic stadium downtown that can't fit an Olympic track anymore.

Well played Daley, well played.

I just heard on WLS-AM that Daley dodged the question of how the City will pay for the Olympics during a press conference today. Apparently one of the reporters asked him about his earlier promise that the taxpayers of the City will not incur the cost.

Your audio clip was even funnier (and more infuriating) when coupled with the video. Reporters pressed him to explain where the money would come from. He shifted in his seat and got visibly frustrated, saying they're "working on it" and that he'd already covered that ground. In other words, he doesn't have an answer because they haven't figured out a way to steal taxpayer funds. Yet.

He's a big fat liar who's lying through his capped teeth.

Fix the CTA and you can march the fourth reich up Lake Shore Drive for all Alan cares.

i mentioned this in my office the other day to great laughter. i'm sure there're some asian countries that do bribes well, but SLC02 would've been put to shame by the hijinks involved with a chicago bid.

As an Evanston resident, I am all for Chicago and its residents paying a boatload of money to host the Olympics so I can walk to events held on the Northwestern campus.

Well, I'll certainly cop to the C.T.A. rotting on Daley & Krusei's watch being my biggest complaint, no doubt. For that alone, Krusei should be fired (if not jailed - where'd the money go?). But that's not the only issue here. City Hall is cancerous with law suits, investigations, corruption, theft, scandal and mismanagement. And the county is completely broke. Totally skint...no dough. Tapped. Again, where'd the money go?

And they want to land the Olympics?

"THEY CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"

Alan: do you think it's a good idea to have the olympics in Chicago?

I don't think the money went anywhere, it was a shift in federal money from giving out operating funds to capital funds. It's meant for cities that don't have public transportation, but cities like Chicago got screwed. Theres also no way in hell the CTA was going say no to free money, so we end up with a spiffy new brown line and everything else goes to hell.
Although I'm sure some of that money was dribbled off, but they didn't steal all of it.

I think the only misguided assumption is that the city/county will somehow be less screwed up if we don't get the Olympics. Stuff's probably fucked either way.

Having said that, I still say "meh" to the games coming here. Meh!

I think we need campaign finance reform in Illinois.

Yeah, but what about all those cool fucking posters. The thought of that going away makes me queasy.

OK, new day new lie, folks. The financial plan the City is speaking of is "layered" and possible use of public funds to finance these stupid fuckin' Olympics is "practically nonexsistent". In a wondrous example of City Hall double-speak & non-speak Chief Financial Officer Dana Levenson had to explain how it is that, horus after promising no taxpayer funds would be used to land these stupid fuckin' Olympics, a revised proposal is in front of City Council that includes local tax dollars.

But they say it's virtually impossible that they'd have to actually use them.

Which makes one wonder why they're built into the proposal in the first place.

C'mon, City Hall - you've smelled Daley's blood before. Slap this stupid fuckin' Olympic idea in the face and send Daley back to his office to stamp his feet and demand heads platters...