It wasn’t so long ago that Boston, a highway rest stop on the road from New York to Maine, was pining for the world’s spotlight and asking to host the Olympic games and generally be the center of attention. My, how things change.
Since Boston announced its Olympic bid, the city has gotten approximately 1,647 inches of snow. If you’re a reasonable American, you might say to yourself: “If you don’t like snow, or racism, get the fuck out of Boston!!!” But try telling this to a Bostonian, and you will be drunkenly assaulted. Some people just don’t listen to reason.
Anyhow, the winter has now ground down the will of Boston’s citizens so much that more and more of them are piping up to say that they don’t really want the Olympics after all—even though the Olympics would be in the summer. Okay… Bostonians have a lot of excuses, it seems. From the LA Times:
Boston’s icy reception to the Games may reveal something deeper about the city that likes to call itself the Hub of the Universe, often without irony. Though few cities rival Boston in sports fanaticism, many Bostonians find insulting the notion that they need validation on the international stage in the same way as Atlanta or Sochi, Russia. The world already looks to Boston, they say, as a leader in medicine, higher education and biotechnology, not to mention as the home of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots and the regularly successful Red Sox.
“We don’t need the Olympics to do that,” said Pat Shaughnessy, a paralegal also awaiting a train. “People already know where Boston is.”
People already know where Boston is: buried under an enormous snowdrift, next to an area of green-tinted beer vomit.
In any case, Boston not gonna get the Olympics.
[Metaphorically powerful photo: AP]
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