Aquarian Weekly 11/13/02 REALITY CHECK
THE BIG OLYMPIC LIE or NEW YORK CITY DREAMIN’
Here’s one for ya: New York City is a finalist to host the 2012 Olympic Games.
And whose one board for this monumental fiasco? The rich, the politically connected, the marketing assholes on Madison Avenue, the unions, the mob and an agonizing slew of hotel and restaurant owners. The rest of us get fucked, but good.
This is the most asinine concept dreamed up in the bowels of this great city since some rapacious road jockey with a drafting board wanted to turn Lower Manhattan into a lame Los Angeles freeway knockoff.
Listen, if I had Billy Crystal’s money I’d be sitting next to Michael Bloomberg and cheering too. But I don’t, and chances are neither do you, so why the hell would any of the remaining millions of people who have anything to do with the five boroughs want the kind of construction, destruction and interruption it would take to refigure acres and miles and blocks with canoeing canals, swimming pools, equestrian tracks and a full-sized monstrosity of a stadium on the West Side Highway.
The West Side Highway? They’ve been fixing the same pothole on that Godforsaken stretch of road since 1986. Two Saturdays ago I sat in horrendous traffic for nearly two hours at 158th street so the lazy weekend orange-flag boys can widen an exit ramp between four-hour coffee breaks.
A few greed heads with blue prints will gut your town with your tax dollars just to turn your daily routine into a Marilyn Manson video, count their money and leave your neighborhoods in ruins. You get about as much say in this as those riled lunatics who were reduced to heaving tea overboard in Boston Harbor 240 odd years ago.
Can you even begin to imagine the levels of Hades we’re in for if they start erecting this elitist scam? And for what? Three weeks in July ten years from now, so the three people left on this spinning sphere who haven’t descended on this over bloated island of lost souls can shoe-horn their way in?
Is there not enough neck-bending, camera-toting, map-folding, drive-two-miles-an-hour-on-fifth-avenue tourists now? We have to invite the rest of this planet to converge on New York’s overcrowded streets. Hey, we’re not enough of a target; let’s give the terrorist community all the more reason to torch the joint.
Of course, I fail to even broach what this will cost a city teetering on bankruptcy right now. The painfully rough conservative estimates – and believe me their rough in a wholly false way – see this thing in the $250 billion range.
The mayor claims he can’t pay the cops or the firemen now. You remember those guys right? The ones celebrities and news anchors brandishing their fancy American flag pins were gushing over for weeks after 9/11? They can’t be paid, but we can build an Olympic Village in Astoria for $800 million.
And when annoying people such as myself complain about this overblown marketing nightmare, we are reminded of the jobs this madness will produce, the beautification, the affordable housing and the brand spanking new stadium the N.Y. Jets will play in when everyone is finished trashing the city and return to their native lands.
Sure, lots of improvements. We’ll have affordable housing in Manhattan when they let the Son of Sam out and tag him to run things for a while. And the Jets? Keep the fucking Jets in Jersey. The organization is cursed and only plays eight games a year, most of which the team loses in embarrassing fashion. The Jets need a new stadium like the Germans need to rebuild their military.
And nothing, I mean nothing else needs to be crammed on the West Side. Not the least of which is this half-baked drug-addled idea to stretch the subway system over to 11th avenue. After the Olympic committee cashes their enormously grotesque checks for this rolling farce, the only people taking the train to Hudson are pimps, gunrunners and those shady looking characters who ran the kamikaze Tom Golisano campaign.
As a great New Yawker and oldest living friend of the Desk once said in a midnight Times Square diatribe: Who’s kiddin’ who?
Speaking of the Olympic Committee. Yeah, you want to get into bed with these cretins like you want to use Tony Soprano as a bookie. In fact, I’m fashioning a reasonable guess there’s not a more corrupt outfit on the fringes of civilization than the Olympic Committee. There are teams of lawyers still figuring out who’s paying back the $465 million federal government buy out that was the Salt Lake Winter Olympics.
Isn’t it bad enough the city got in deep with the National Football League? What a deal that turned out to be. Bon Jovi and a few thousand drunken extras cramming mid-town for three days in exchange for cheaply produced promos of fat guys in Browns uniforms and dog masks cheering the Statue of Liberty from one of those pathetically ostentatious double-decker tour buses. When I see those convincing spots, I want to pack my bags in Peoria and brave the winter to see “Phantom of Opera” one more time for $200 a pop.
Jesus Christ, this Bloomberg dipshit has to go. The man doesn’t even want to be mayor. I think he wants to be prom queen or get on the radio for five minutes. Let’s give him a gold plated tiara and a press hat and send him back to corporate oblivion. This mondo jack ass will do anything for attention, including selling the greatest city in the world to international bankers and turn the entire thing into gridlock debt for two minutes of quality time with Katie Couric.
And one more thing, fine people of the Big Apple, these Olympic things never involve referendums or votes or even town meetings. A few greed heads with blue prints will gut your town with your tax dollars just to turn your daily routine into a Marilyn Manson video, count their money and leave your neighborhoods in ruins. You get about as much say in this as those riled lunatics who were reduced to heaving tea overboard in Boston Harbor 240 odd years ago.
Taxation without representation, indeed.
Stand up for your turf. Let your voice be heard. Flood city hall and head to the streets or get the fuck out now before the mob-funded bulldozers start tearing up concrete.
Let the Parisians deal with this heinous shit. They love lending their town to conquering hordes.
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