Whether you’re in favor of Boston hosting the 2024 summer olympics or have lived here long enough to know how this is gonna turn out, there is one thing this bid has brought out in every resident of Eastern Massachusetts. An unabashed realization that things could be better around here. Much better. ‘Joo see the renderings of Boston in 2024 after we spent money on the place as if we thought we were going to be alive to be there for it?
Canals turned into byways of pedestrial heaven with cloud happy people effortlessly floating across clear plastic sidewalks. Trees so full and perfectly sumptuous even the Seagulls know not to land on them. Olympic venues cum future affordable housing delicately drizzled into the existing landscape as if the Shawmut themselves placed them there. One look at those pictures and I thought, “Man I would love to live there! Why I would even put up with three weeks of renting out my livingroom for $3,000 a night on air bnb just to accommodate one of the 200,000 - 178 million people estimated to visit Boston during that time.”
That’s crazy though. No wait, it’s not crazy. There are statues, monuments, circles and a whole panoply of constructed odes to a grand civic life strewn throughout New England. Evidence, scant only because we don’t look at it, that at one point a whole society of people took time and spent money to make things great because they wanted to live in a great place. Yes, I know! Right? One guy thought (back then it was always a guy), “I’m sick of the cramped, slow moving, manure cleaving traffic on Tremont Street. We should just put this all underground. On a train.” That guy died thinking he was the only one who thought like that. But fifty years later another guy (again, it was always a guy before 1970) thought the same thing, but this guy said to another guy, “Hey. The slow moving traffic…” and before he could finish the other guy said “that runs through the sickening horse shit that make you puke?” And then together they said in unison, “We should put it all underground!”.
Then a miracle happened. A tiny miracle. Another person (maybe a guy, maybe not, after two guys talked about it then it was considered a real idea that could be uttered by anybody) agreed. And then more people agreed until in a matter of a day EVERYONE agreed that moving at 1 MPH on Tremont Street filled with the leavings of thousands of quadrapeds was really a ghastly horrible thing.
And then it didn’t happen. Because this idea was so blazingly obvious, so clearly a good idea to find out how to get done, not one person, not even Mr. Miserly Miser living up on Nomoney Hill said, “Oh but, well it will cost something.” No one said that. Imagine. Can you imagine? No. Think of it like this. A five year old child is rushed into a hospital emergency room, bleeding from a compound leg fracture. Immediately, doctors and nurses scramble to the young child, ease his and his parent’s fears and pain. Yes it hurts. Yes we can take care of it. No it’s not minor. No it’s not deadly, if we can treat it now. Then, and why then, you don’t know, but then a gray, slight figure appears out of a darkened corner, chewing on a toothpick, sallow cheeked and weary eyelids puffy from, well from. it. all. The figure speaks, slow, low, halting. “ah but the cost…..” And then, he disappears. Every one and every thing stops. The cost is considered. The system that delivers the service and the attendant cost is debated and weighed. The insurance and the premiums and the building and would it be cheaper to let him die and that’s crazy and this is my religion and no it’s not a religious issue it’s a tax issue but taxes don’t pay for this yes but they built the road that brought the child to the emergency room and right but the hospital was taxed to pay for the roads and the...kid is dead.
So the cost. I have often said “Money doesn’t grow on trees” at gardening conventions but I now realize that may be more than a horticultural lesson rooted in utter stupidity. Money, is a tool. A very useful tool. While we make up and believe what it’s worth based on what we believe what it’s worth we do know that it’s not infinite. After all if money were unlimited then any giant bank would think, “Oh it doesn’t matter if I invest this money into something completely fraudulent. Money is unlimited. The government will bail me out no matter what.” That would be a waste.
So the cost. The cost is the cost. No we can’t afford it. That’s why we have the lottery. WE can’t afford, but poor people can. The Olympics in the Summer of 2024 WILL happen. And someone WILL win the lottery. You can’t win if you don’t buy a ticket. You’re not even paying for the chance at a win. There’s not value in that. What you are paying for is the chance to dream. To think, even for brief moments while sitting on a train home after a long day, if I won I would….
If we have the Olympics we would….Good for us. We know we can dream. We know we can see a future boston. A city that, while not a shiny place, a better place. A landscape that quietly and confidently holds its citizens who built a place they wanted. A city that they envisioned, that they advocated for. We need infrastructure change, most certainly. Let’s do that. We need an even more walkable city. A city that is kinder and easier on you as move through it. A city that one would want to live in, if just for a few weeks, as the excitement of the whole world looked on it. We can dream and think of that because it COULD happen. Without the Olympics though, we can’t dream, we can’t allow ourselves to think about getting it done, because, ‘the cost, the cost’...
Back to horseshit covered streets. Never built the subway. Or the mass pike. Or the Tobin. Or the library. Never cleaned up the Charles. Never laid down the Esplanade. Never had fireworks on the 4th of July. But man, oh man, the money we saved. Certainly was no cost in that.