Having the Olympic Games in your city at first sounds exciting, exotic and somewhat cool. As the Vancouver Olympic Games approach there have been — and are sure to be many more– elements of that. For example, I went skating on the Olympic Speed Skating oval with my four year old son — what a fast ice surface; that was cool. Top Canadian and global musicians and entertainers will be in town, often performing free shows. I may try to catch one or two. Buildings are blanketed with 100 foot high images of athletes — I’ve been staring at Clara Hughes from my office for months.
And then there are the unexpected, strange and bizarre things. Here are a few:
- Large military aircraft suddenly make low speed passes through town; or a military helicopter circles above your house for hours.
- It’s a tent city! Giant white tents are everywhere — pavilions for various places and organizations. Nunavut has one, Canada has it’s own, etc. Millions have been spent on them.
- Lost mounties: hundreds (thousands) of RCMP officers are here to help with security. Vancouver doesn’t use the RCMP normally as its police force, so most have never been here. Helped some mounties on bikes (rather than horses) find their way the other day.
- Starbucks has new door signage everywhere, with “Welcome” written in at least 10 languages and 5 different alphabets.
- Time for residents, businesses and other organizations has three distinct phases in 2010: “Before the Games,” “During the Games,” and After the Games. All projects have deadlines before or sometime well after the Olympics. We all talk to each other with “what are you doing during the Games” (as in are you leaving town, renting out your place, staying, attempting to go to work, etc.)
- Garbage will be picked up in the middle of the night (roads will be too busy during the day).
- For many businesses, the Olympic 2 weeks will be a test run of “catastrophe management” — they have had to invest in technology so everyone can effectively do their jobs from home (as would have to happen should an earthquake or terrorist take out a bridge or two, cutting off parts of the city).
I’m sure there will be more. Anyone else care to add something?
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We live near the closest airforce base to Vancouver (Comox Valley) and we have the F18 Hornets based here. They take of at all times of the day and night. Quite disruptive. They are *much* louder than the aircraft that usually fly out of here (Buffalo, Aurora, Snowbirds, etc.). That is our small scale version of “Olympic disruption”.
Street closures I expected and can cope with. Wholesale closures of entire areas are something else. I cannot use the Richmond Library because it is now part of “The O Zone”. SFU downtown is being converted into the Deutsche Haus so the escalator is hidden by drywall. Fences in Queen E Park have been covered in tarpaulin so no-one can see through them. A huge fleet of dirty old buses (for the athletes?) has arrived – and a much bigger fleet of SUVs for the sponsors and the “Olympic family”. They get exclusive traffic lanes in a city which has been notoriously reluctant to ceed any lanes to transit.
I am leaving town on Monday for three weeks. By then this nonsense should be winding down. The bills will be huge and will need to be paid for years to come.
The closing down of unexpected public places also hit me off guard — good point Stephen. Because I have small kids who adore Science World, losing that has been noticeable in our household(it is Sochy Russia House for the Games).
My theory is that if I’m going to be paying for it, I might as well enjoy it. And my Salt Lake contacts say what a great fun and festive time it is.
I can’t wait to see how they handle Chinese New Year during the games too.
I’m not very impressed by the closure of parks, community centres, a school playing field and other public venues — this affects downtown families the most.
I’m not from Vancouver — I live in the Okanagan. A surprisingly bonus for us has been the arrival of many Olympic teams to practice.
At our little hill where we have both a cross-country facility and a downhill facility, (Nickel Plate and Apex), we’ve had the Russians, the Swedes, the Canadians, the Japanese, Chileans, Ukranians, Chinese, and the French — and that’s only in the few weeks. It’s been unexpectedly delightful to see these athletes train. We marvel at their abilities and work ethic. I find there’s a BIG disconnect between the Olympics as an event and the world of the amateur athlete. My two cents…
Gwen,
I sometimes think that people in the Okanagan or Comox Valley get to see more of the behind the scenes prep of athletes than Vancouverites. We’ve seen the behind-the-scenes prep of hosting, and the legitimate inconveniences to city residents.
As Andrea says, the downtown area has seen a disproportionate amount of public space taken over. Whereas in other parts of the city it has just been a skating rink or two that is unavailable for a couple months.
When you live in Vancouver, perhaps its hard to see past the “large public event” side of the Games, and not the more inspirational side of athletic dedication, determination, etc.