anti vancouver olympics 2010
 

hi,

i live in vancouver these days, the city is hosting an olympics if you didnt know. ok so its pretty much extremely unpopular with just about all who live here as the massive amount of restrictions that have been put in place on where you can and cant go, what are not allowed to wear (anything remotely anti olympics puts you in the back of a police car) plus the travel chaos that is being caused. a one hour wait just to get onto a train or bus is about normal and all this in a city with a major homeless population that is being pushed (literally) out of site and a poverty gap that gets bigger by the day, poorly functioning transport system, translink that has 28 CEO's all earning well over the standard amount for people in their position, a budget of $2bn dollars for homeless projects of which less than 1% has been used and given that they have had many many years preparation there are virtually no shelters for anyone yet the olympic village (which is supposed to be turned into affordable social housing afterwards and now is going to be luxury condo's instead) is millions over budget paid for by tax payers, VANOC basically making political requests as they see fit and getting them and also creating policy including pissing off the ambulance workers on strike over poor pay, the fact that so many streets are going to be closed to the public and when i live less than six blocks from the olympic village it means a commute of 25 minutes is now going to be 2 hours, passing through many security screens and closed off to the public areas even though we live here, the corporate sponsorship involved and the general feeling that the city is no way near ready, the 200,000 extra people that are going to be crammed into a very small space. all this plus the fact that its very warm here, the average temperature is +12 which means that must of the snow has melted, what you will see on your tv has actually been shipped in from other areas as basically its warm and raining. on the ground it basically feels like a poorly planned money making shit storm. the budget for this whole thing is mind blowing and i just wish that they could have spent the money on something else but as is most common with these kind of deals, things only change when the eyes of the world are upon you.

as a sporting event i think its fine but they should have it somewhere with snow that is able to cope with the whole thing.

i know the usual posters will post the usual thing but there you go. rant over.

I imagine theres going to be a similar reaction when the games come to London in 2012. At least you aint got Boris...

The London Olympics will be a mess. It's the British way.

Its not the British way, i think its actually gonna be fine. But im from west london so im paying for it but getting to any of the events would take me 1 and a half hours because its all happening in Stratford (East London). Im kinda willing to pay anything to see Usain Bolt run here, but I expect tickets to something.

Jessica Ennis in particular

Well, maybe it will be fine. I am pretty excited as well!

By the way, I know where Stratford is, I live relatively near. I often see the Olympic village.

Now, is it me or is that big cycling velodrome going to be a total waste of time?

What, that weird angle-sided stadium they're building? Why a waste of time?

noones going to use it. I dont know any people who wanted to grow up to be cyclists. Sprinters, yeah, 400m runners, they kicked my arse growing up, but cyclists?

poorly planned money making shit storm.

the shit has started.

I've never been a fan of olympic games, but now I'm sure they really suck. Actually, this is a very good thread because I've never thought of all the shit a sporting event could cause.

people say that now its here we should just enjoy it but that's like being repeatedly raped and then saying oh well i may just as well just be raped.

hmmm. The olympic and com games here really were only annoying to me because there was nothing else on television or local media for around a month. There were a lot more people in the city for com games, but there were also a lot more events on to cater for them. It wasn't that bad. And its only a few weeks. Stop whining. :p

I've been taking the train to and from work every day as usual and not had a problem. I didnt really expect much to change until now onwards if at all though, so now that the games have officially started we'll see.

My hero Seb Coe will make it alright.

I live less than 100 miles from Vancouver.....I'm so glad that I'm here not there. I believe in Olympics, but, it's become too big.

yeah I hear the Olympic police are roaming around like the gestappo like in China.. jesus what is wrong?


Can people at least still smoke pot casually?

i fucking hate this crap and all sports should be fucking banned. there. i said it. i can maybe enjoy a small game of soccer in a park with some friends, but it should never go any further than that. and noone should ever be allowed to spectate. that should be the height of sport right there. no more. no premiership, no money involved. nothing else ever. noone should be allowed to watch or cheer.

we should all boycott the olympics, and do our best to ruin it for everyone else. it's one of those times when, as i am so fond of saying, we really need our brethren in al qaeda to come to our aid. seriously, who would miss all the sports fans and athletes? you know you want it. unfortunately the authorities are well aware of this, and their paranoia only increases the draconian gestapo esque ultra security. so we must all pray to allah that al qaeda can manage an attack of sufficient magnitude to destroy them all.

you can help by being an utter dick, you can still for example ruin the fun of anyone watching it at home by shouting loudly, protesting and being horrible to them.

i mean WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG with a human being who dedicates their life to trying to run a certain distance in less and less miliseconds. how much do you have to hate your body and the possibilites of existance to dedicate yourself to something like that? and all the fucking nationalism that goes along with it? yuk. disgusting.

what really irks most people about this particular games is that the city needs so much but the money is spent on fireworks for an opening ceremony.

yep. it's insane. billions spent on the war everyday while the infrastructure of the countries fighting it crumbles. it's the same everywhere. there is next to nothing spent on social housing. it's all just yuppie regeneration if anything at all, pricing crappy apartments out of the range of all but the richest.

there is a point zizek makes, and i've seen others make it too, that the most dilapidated, poor, run down areas are also the ones where there is the most life. the idea is that some new form of social collectivity may emerge out of these places because the people that live there will be forced to develop something to survive. unfortunately for most of us we are in an in between stage of poverty, were people still live alone in their little boxes, only going out to shop and having no interaction with their neighbours except maybe really extreme hedonism in the form of house parties.

in places like london and berlin were squatting is easier and there isn't a complete legal ban on it, the poor/homeless at least have that option, altho it can be risky and unsafe.

what you are saying about the homeless being moved out of the way is the same as what will happen in london. the homeless there are already aware of it, basically the plan is to use water cannons against them to force them out of the way. there is a whole operation planned to basically clear them out of the cameras view and make certain areas uninhabitable for them.

I've just seen on the news that a guy died while training on bobsled (I think it was bobsled, or something else like that). That's sick. He was only training. These olympic games really suck.

I'm not saying we don't need more spent on social housing, but there was an extra £1 billion spent on social housing in last year's budget. That's 1/9th of the budget for the olympics, but bear in mind that the £9.3b for the olympics will recoup a huge amount - London gets into the regions of £millions on a daily basis in taxes (and so on), and that figure will only increase with the literally millions of additional people into London during that time.

'Regeneration' generally takes place in the private sphere - unfortunately, it's very difficult to stop the tide of regeneration. And while it's nearly always quite tasteless, the Labour-led regeneration of brownfield sites has meant that a lot of destitute areas are now less so.

Regarding sport - some of us enjoy watching sport. In the same way that some of you like watching music (which, lest we forget, is also an absolutely massive part of vulgar capitalism, and I include the 'independent' sector in that).

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to ni'k again for the Zizek reference. It's certainly true, I'm in Cuba right now and people have much more fun than anyone that needs to invest money into the 'fun'.

Ronald Wright points out in a couple of his books how throughout history, whenever a civilization gets an abundance of what it needs (food, shelter, water) they start going to extreme measures to solve the simple concept of boredom. Now it's been taken to extreme levels where a HUGE amount of money is put into something that really, most people can have the same excitement / happiness while playing soccer or floor hockey with a group of friends (like they do here in Cuba). Our demand for "higher" entertainment has gone through the roof! Propelled by fanbase and the media, people would rather spend $200 on an NHL game than watch or participate in hockey with friends. People's minds are twisted. One of our diplomat friends here left Cuba to go back to Vancouver to see the game

And I had no idea it was tax funded either... that money could have gone to Greenpeace or E.L.F or to helping the homeless issue.

Vancouver really does have a lot of places the money should have gone. There have been tons and tons of cuts to education throughout the province, and then yes, theres the housing issue. People in this city need to stop buying all those million dollar bachelor pads, and they need to stop being made.

Yeah, that luge track had raised some questions about safety even before the tragedy yesterday. Thank you vanoc for just having to be the best and make the most shocking and fastest track yet. I'd be surprised if they let the track stay open unaltered and there wasnt another serious accident (besides the guy the day before who was knocked unconscious, and the dozen or so minor injuries leading up to yesterday).



The thing about the punk/metal culture that seems to have a pulse in east van is that it is terribly exclusive.

thats the thing i dont like about it either but its not that bad. you just have to get to know some of the people involved. there is a thriving noise scene too.

The tunes in this heavily resemble what you hear in the Montreal punk scene, minus the city expansions. Since the whole city is apartments, condos, and condo-lofts, there's no room to tear anything down.

to say that I was anti Vancouver Olympics would imply that I cared in some sense about it. I don't. I also don't care if you do care.

what you do to entertain yrself is of no concern to me. I'm sure I've sunk lower.

The Olympics Will Eat Themselves.

I'm all for cities that can afford, have full support, and have the infrastructure to host the Olympics. Some do, like Madrid and Barcelona, I think. It shouldnt HAVE to be at a different city every time. Sports are pretty amazing, I love the determination and focus and refinement of athleticism. I just mean what its like for the athletes, inside their heads. I'm astounded by how precisely some of these folks are able to negotiate the space around them like its instinctual, how fluid and tight their movements are.

What I dont care for is the pride thing, getting into nationalism and heavy sponsorship. I hate that even living in Vancouver, I have no idea who any of these athletes are from the media, that there are no posters or bios or anything to be found. But some skytrain stations are just fucking PLASTERED in McDonalds ads.

It's just too big.

I think the LA Times is grossly insensitive for posting on the FRONT PAGE a photo still from the fatal crash of the Georgian luger at the moment of impact with the poll :(


well, when done correctly preparation for the Olympics is supposed to result in beneficial permanent development of infrastucture, so technically less developed cities compete to host the Games precisely to get assistance in the planning and funding for development of roads, airports, public stadiums/plazas, eateries, housing etc etc..

However in the past 20 odd years we have not necessarily seen this happen appropriately. Los Angeles did benefit from having the 1984 Olympics, though only marginally.
Training, preparing and competing for the Olympics has had many socio-political and economic benefits world wide, but the most-2000 era Olympics, and in truth perhaps ALL the Olympic games themselves have proven debaucles. They are supposed to generate money, they lose it. The are supposed to develop a community, they destroy it. I am therefore conflicted.. I obviously abhor the Nazi tactics seen to in the preparation for and celebration of the Games, as seen so visibly in Beijing and Vancouver, but participating in the Olympics does benefit many communities..

ni'k is a bit extreme, but I have already posted in the past that spectator sports are the true opiate of the masses.. but sometimes opiates are necessary for people to get high.

Seriously, this isn't the only moment that I've wanted to decapitate every contributor to this thread, but it's certainly the most pertinent example of fuckhattery.

Exactly, the proper word is CORRECT not EXTREME.

Yeah, I feel the same way as y'all do. It's all about the host country having to put on extremely inviting, wonderful and welcoming face: Welcome!...but watch what the fuck you wear, do, look like, carry, etc. etc.
When a country puts in a bid for the Olympics, so much can happen between then and now. Like the summer Olympics in Bejing. What a shitstorm before the actual Olympics.
But back on the subject, it is all about $$$$$$$, hype, and terrorrism, in whatever order you choose. What a shame for these dedicated athletes.

Bottom line for me is that the country can't afford an olympics and most of its people don't want it even if it could. New Labour clearly haven't learnt any lessons from the whole Millennium Dome fiasco.

you seem to be operating from the base assumption of new labour learning lessons. learning lessons is precisely what new labour do everyday, when they are not talking about learning lessons, or the lessons that need to be learnt. and they would agree with you, that these are the lessons that we need to learn, but the point is how we apply these lessons and what we learn from them. we fully accept that there are lessons here, and we would draw your attention to the committee's recommendations from 2006, which underlined our resolve to learn the right lessons from this situation, so that in the future we can apply those lessons. we feel it is important that those who are directly affected by this issue, have their voices heard and that is why the committee exists, so that these lessons can be looked at and we can learn from them, so we can move forward and face this issue, knowing that we have learnt the right lessons from it.

and that is precisely why new labour will never learn anything.

I love the Olympics as I do most sports entertainment. Hell I'll watch 8 hour of curling if it's on. I don't for one minute believe they loose money between the cooperate sponsorships and the influx of tourism. I certainly feel for the homeless but it is only two weeks and if the city itself doesn't take care of them shame on the city.

What is a real shame is the victim is being vindicate for the accident. Why
wasn't that metal post cushioned to start with. Just might have saved his life. Now I hear some whacked out reporters wanting to blame the XGames because they're forcing the Olympics to be riskier and faster to keep up.

excuse me? I read in the paper that the police were given temporary authority to enter private residences to take down protest signs.. there have been excessive arrests, mass censorship, journalists and even bloggers who have posted negative comments have had police and government agents confronting them at their jobs and homes.. the homeless have been rounded up...

(and this is kid shit compared to what kind of shit went down in Beijing)

glice, thats twice now, why don't you try to keep your feet out of your mouth. I like you better that way.

1. Comparing anything to the Nazis is off-limit. Because nothing is rational then.
2. I was contrasting that 'Ni'k is extreme' with your also excessively extreme statement. Ni'k is criticising the here-and-now, not relying overly on historical/ hysterical antecedents.
3. China (by western reports) didn't kill people in preparation for the games, they relocated them; they also shut down any means of peaceful protest. The did this in a horrible and inhumane fashion. The Nazis shot insurgents and protesters. As did Pinochet (etc).
4. Regarding the 'foot-in-mouth' comment, I talk a lot of shit. I didn't, however, at any point start and continue defending a thread in which I suggested that "Germany's" holocaust memorials were somehow 'Disneyland-esque'; I likewise didn't suggest that Germany was somehow proud of murdering a sizeable proportion of Jewry in Europe.

Also, you seem to have some real aggression issues that burst out at odd times.