I was living in Georgia when the Atlanta games happened, and several events (including the soccer finals) were in Athens, where I was. Between what I saw around me, and what I heard about from the Atlanta media, there's NO WAY IN HELL Boston should be trying to host the Olympics, nor should we want to. Among other things, do people really want to find out which businesses are willing to totally screw over their regular clientele for the sake of Olympic big bucks by jacking up their prices for the duration? Or which landlords would evict their tenants so they could try to rent the apartments/houses out for insanely high rates that they think would be more than they'd normally get in a year?
Note: neither of these scenarios works particularly well in terms of making the piles of dough that people think they'll get; in the case of businesses such as restaurants, etc., they may end up much worse off in the end. The people going to the games in Atlanta were so convinced that they were going to be price-gouged by the locals--which, well, they WERE--basically shuttled between their hotels and the events, refusing to go out and eating mostly fast food or room service. The upshot was that a number of places went under or came perilously close to it; either they lost a hell of a lot of money on perishables that they never used and extra staff they'd hired--because the locals weren't going out either, partly to avoid the Olympic crowds and partly because they didn't like/couldn't afford the gouging going on--or because the same locals refused to patronize them again after seeing what they'd been up to and how willing they were to screw their regular customers. All this while the IOC was pissed that the locals were trying to milk the games for everything possible, never mind that they were doing the exact same thing themselves...I like the Olympic ideal, but the games themselves leave a hell of a lot to be desired, although I do have to admit London put on a hell of a good show.
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Date: 2015-03-26 01:25 am (UTC)Note: neither of these scenarios works particularly well in terms of making the piles of dough that people think they'll get; in the case of businesses such as restaurants, etc., they may end up much worse off in the end. The people going to the games in Atlanta were so convinced that they were going to be price-gouged by the locals--which, well, they WERE--basically shuttled between their hotels and the events, refusing to go out and eating mostly fast food or room service. The upshot was that a number of places went under or came perilously close to it; either they lost a hell of a lot of money on perishables that they never used and extra staff they'd hired--because the locals weren't going out either, partly to avoid the Olympic crowds and partly because they didn't like/couldn't afford the gouging going on--or because the same locals refused to patronize them again after seeing what they'd been up to and how willing they were to screw their regular customers. All this while the IOC was pissed that the locals were trying to milk the games for everything possible, never mind that they were doing the exact same thing themselves...I like the Olympic ideal, but the games themselves leave a hell of a lot to be desired, although I do have to admit London put on a hell of a good show.