Okay, the big announcement for whether Chicago will get the 2016 Olympics is due in about 90 minutes. Maybe we’ll get it, maybe Rio de Janiero will be the dark horse/sentimental underdog and pull it out in the end. But in case the Windy City does land the games, I wanted to make a list of the things that will inevitably change or disappear in the next 7 years.
–The wide open, quiet, 19th-century feel of Washington Park
–The media neglect of the whole South Side.
–The quiet mornings on the Lincoln Park rowing course, which will be upgraded and lead to a new wave of Sculling-Mania!!
–The days when $1.5 billion seems like a large amount of money.
–the four-star Chicago flag, which will certainly get a fifth for the Games. (How interesting that the six-pointed star is now being graphically used all over the place, from T-shirts to company logos. Why did that take so long to think of?)
–Our feeling of being the Second City (though the condescension from New York will never stop–“It used to be the Hog Butcher to the world, now it’s the locker room.”)
–An affordable cab ride.
–the make-up of a good Chicago hot dog. There are bigger things to worry about, but I’m pretty certain that the recipes for basic local foods — hot dogs, Italian beef, Frango mints from The Store That Must Not Be Named — will all be watered down and homogenized to accommodate the new visitors. The opposite problem might be that every new restaurant in town is going to be a deep-dish pizzeria, “authentic Chicago style”.
–Richie Daley is just going to get scarier and scarier.
UPDATE: Wait, we DIDN’T get it??? Who the hell do they think they are????
Jaun Antonio Sumthinorother? He’s a DEAD man!!! Didn’t he watch The Untouchables??
Read my take at true/slant here.