• Jacksonville

Sochi Winter Olympics 2014

http://toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/tt.pl/article/171033/Sochi_Olympic_infrastructure_is_getting_slammed

Feb 4, 2014 Washington Post story titled Journalists at Sochi are live-tweeting their hilarious and gross hotel experiences

If these games were held in the U.S., I doubt those journalists would be cracking jokes if they experienced the same conditions.

Some journalists arriving in Sochi are describing appalling conditions in the housing there, where only six of nine media hotels are ready for guests.

Hotels are still under construction. Water, if it’s running, isn’t drinkable.

One German photographer told the AP over the weekend that his hotel still had stray dogs and construction workers wandering in and out of rooms.

The Sochi Olympics have run way over budget — to a record $51 billion — which seems particularly remarkable when you consider that some of the work isn’t actually done.

I suppose that people who travel a lot experience similar anomalies at times, such as stray dogs wandering their hotel.

That WaPo story contains numerous embedded Tweets. Here are a few:

Harry Reekie @HarryCNN

CNN booked 11 rooms in one @Sochi2014 media hotel five months ago. We have been here for a day and only one room is available.

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Harry Reekie @HarryCNN

This is the one hotel room @Sochi2014 have given us so far. Shambles.

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Shaun Walker @shaunwalker7

I have a room! No heating or internet, but it has a (single) bed at least...

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Rosa Hwang @RosaHwangCTV

Water main break means no water at our hotel in Sochi. Could take awhile to fix.

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Wayne Chow @wayne_chow

@bruce_arthur Hotel issues have been happening to a lot of people. Left out on the street, you risk being poisoned or trapped like the dogs.

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Mark MacKinnon @markmackinnon

For those of you asking, when there's no lobby in your hotel, you go to the owner's bedroom to check in. #Sochi2014

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Stacy St. Clair @StacyStClair

My hotel has no water. If restored, the front desk says, "do not use on your face because it contains something very dangerous." #Sochi2014

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katiebakes @katiebakes

Made new pal from La Presse as we struggled to find hotel. When we got to our (temporary) rooms his doorknob came off in hand

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Jo-Ann Barnas @JoAnnBarnas

Watch your step @Sochi2014 -- I've noticed on walkway and on sidewalks that not all man holes are always covered.

Related Feb 5, 2014 WaPo story titled 15 signs that Russia is not very ready for the Olympics

Only 15 reasons? Here are the reasons, days before the opening ceremonies:

1. The Olympic flame went out 44 times
2. An official Olympic hub isn't even finished
3. No one knows how bad the environmental damage is [from the construction]
4. Allegations of corruption with Olympic funds [you've got to be kidding me]
5. Woman displaced by construction mishap living in shack
6. Construction workers deported, possibly unpaid
7. The mass campaign to "dispose" of stray dogs
8. Political activists barred from even watching
9. Sochi filled with construction debris, unfinished buildings
10. Oh, and there may be loose terrorists
11. Athletes say snow jumps are dangerously steep
12. Photos of "Sochi problems" are going viral online
13. Journalists are live tweeting gross and hilarious hotel mishaps
14. At least one hotel has no floor. But it does have a prominent portrait of Vladimir Putin.
15. Russian Olympics officials are not really controlling the story

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my toledotalk.com:

"... socialism v capitalism ..."

I don't think that has anything to do with it. Maybe it's simple incompetence and fraud. But you can start a new thread and move it into the politics forum, and answer a couple questions, such as which economic system does Russia use today, and which one is better at hosting the Olympics? Is China more socialistic than Russia? China hosted the 2008 summer Olympics, and I don't recall this type of buffoonery. I do recall the Chinese demonstrating their design and technical prowess with their building construction and ceremonies.

Jacksonville

In February 2005, Jacksonville, Florida hosted the Super Bowl, and the sports media whined incessantly not about the game but about the host city.

http://www.chron.com/sports/texans/article/No-mercy-on-host-of-Super-Bowl-Jacksonville-1948525.php

If your 10-gallon hat got bent out of shape last year when the national media descended on Houston, called you a hick, searched your back yard for cattle and accused you of thinking barbecue was a food group, then you experienced only a fraction of the grief residents of this northeast Florida city have endured this past week.

It has become customary for reporters to spend the first couple of days of Super Bowl week trashing any host city that isn't New Orleans, Miami or San Diego. Within a couple of days, they've run out of insults and are ready to entertain the novel idea of writing about the game.

Jacksonville should be so lucky. The abuse has been almost constant.

The view from one particular room at the NFL's headquarters hotel is of cruise ships, docked one after another to bring Jacksonville's room total up to the minimum level required to host a Super Bowl.

For that, as you might imagine, Jacksonville has taken more heat than a bag of popcorn in a microwave.

"Some of us become a little too highfalutin," NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said. "The fans are having a great time here. The fans are here for football. They're here for fun. In other years, we get lambasted by some people because we're into high-end hotels and luxury in excess and hedonism. This year, we're not into any of those things and we're getting lambasted. It's one of those things -- you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't until it's time for the game."

Jacksonville is the second-smallest market in the NFL, looking down only to Green Bay.

But give Jacksonville credit for its Southern hospitality. The volunteers at the airport, the convention center and the downtown venues are more serious about their welcomes and farewells.

When it's all said and done, Jacksonville will not have embarrassed itself. Maybe, just maybe, it had the difficult task of following a tough act, and when the media complainers have their annual gripe fest at next year's Super Bowl in Detroit, maybe Jacksonville will look a little bit better. After all, the low temperature was 37 degrees in Jacksonville on Friday. The high was 38 in Detroit.

http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/superblog/3

Here's a quick breakdown of Super Bowl Week in Jacksonville.

The positives: The locals have been extremely nice.

The negatives: Everything else.

I'm not saying that Jacksonville is a bad place. The city seems fine. As far as middle-sized cities go, I like it less than Pittsburgh or Milwaukee, but more than Hartford or Sacramento. Still, you can't change certain realities in life.

Again, I'm not blaming Jacksonville. Why wouldn't they want the Super Bowl? Why not roll the dice and hope you can pull it off? From what I've found out over the past two days, the city has a complex about its place in the Florida pecking order -- it's not as sexy as Miami, doesn't have Disney like Orlando, isn't considered a major city like Tampa, doesn't even have a defining event like Daytona.

There are some major logistical problems here. Jacksonville is more spread out than any other American city -- 884 square miles, even bigger than Houston -- only they don't have nearly enough cabs, and there isn't a reliable form of public transportation that covers the entire territory.

(Even if you're 20 minutes from downtown, you're screwed. One of my cab drivers told me last night that, starting Thursday, his company will be charging $100 an hour for every cab ride, even if you're only going 10 minutes. Does that sound like a fun wrinkle for Super Bowl Week?)

By all accounts, the traffic heading into the city is going to be an uber-nightmare -- even on Tuesday at rush hour, cars were moving along at a snail's pace. And nobody's here yet. If you planned on renting a car, don't -- most of the streets downtown are shut off, and they're not letting anyone park anywhere. I have friends at hotels that are as far as 45 minutes away from me, and we're all within the city limits. There's no central location for people to meet -- I keep hearing about The Landing, but we went down there last night and the place was deader than dead.

It's MY JOB to tell you these things. I'm here and you're not. If the roles were reversed, I would want you to tell me one thing: "Is it fun there?" And the answer, honestly, is no. The weather stinks and it's impossible to get around. That's the bottom line. Everyone here is shaking their heads and saying, "Can you believe this?" These are the things you need to know. That's why ESPN sent me.

#olympics - #politics - #media - #moronism