Olympics (Not)

I’m not used to hearing live rock music playing from the courthouse at 8:00 a.m. But that’s what happened this morning. You see my office faces the Daley Center Plaza and the volume of activity taking place there made it difficult to work.

Yes, today was the day that the 2016 Olympic games were going to be awarded to Chicago. And Chicago was ready. Clark Street, adjacent to the Daley Center Plaza, was closed to traffic and instead was occupied by a fleet of media trailers armed with satellite dishes. Two JumboTron monitors simultaneously displayed the goings on in Copenhagen and the activities that were taking place on a large stage that had been constructed in the plaza itself. The music was mostly from the 70’s and had a celebratory feel to it. If the crowd had been wearing green instead of orange, it would have had the feel of St. Patrick’s Day. Only bigger.

Being from Chicago, I had mixed feelings about the Olympics coming here. On one hand it probably would have been the only chance I might have in my lifetime to witness some Olympic events. On the other hand, the City of Chicago claimed to be broke. It has sold off the Skyway toll bridge and leased out its parking meters for 75 years just to raise some instant cash. City employees, including police, are being forced to take days off without pay. But we were assured that no tax dollars would to go pay for the Olympics and that it would all be financed privately. Sure.

For me the most unsettling part of Chicago’s Olympic bid was the construction of a $300,000,000.00 Olympic stadium which would not survive the Olympics and which would be razed following the games. I know we have turned into a disposable society, but I thought that term referred to items like shaving razors.

But the very first vote in Copenhagen eliminated Chicago as a candidate city. All of of a sudden, the noise in the Daley Center quieted. It was like a wedding where the bride had shocked everybody by failing to appear. On television, a camera panned the crowd. The facial expressions: like ten thousand children finding out simultaneously that there was no Santa Claus.

I decided to go home.