Yeah but I feel like football fans are a bit more rowdy than Olympics. I feel like Olympics is attended mostly by the families of the participants, VIPs with nothing better to do but have Olympics bragging rights, Olympic sports fans and pervs.
And football brings the worst of the worst out in people, just remember what happened at the copa America final. It'll be a shorter time but it will be a lot more chaotic.
You'll get comments like this upvoted like crazy no matter what city it is. It's just so much easier to hate. Out of all places I think Arlington would be a great spot to host that kind of thing cause a lot of the necessary infrastructure is already in place there compared to the rest of the metroplex
Arlington isn't assigned to a traditional transit authority that involves bus or rail but there is public transportation otherwise in the city. Like RAPID and On-Demand ride-sharing. They also have buses taking people to and from the stadiums from surrounding hotels. Jim Ross has said there are plans to involve Arlington in the new high speed rail project going through DFW
Seriously. Where is the civic pride?
We all understand that the Olympics have issues. And Dallas honestly would likely not be a great host city given our lack of non-road infrastructure for people moving. But Iāll be damned if it wouldnāt be amazing to have one of the worldās greatest spectacles in our backyard.
I am a 28 year old Texan guy. Iāve had any and all civic and state pride beaten out of me by my friends, family and community. Anytime anything positive happens there is an overwhelming chorus of negativity. Iāve never been able to go against the grain and tune out opposition, it eats away at my psyche . I was heavily involved in the campaign to get decent internet routed into my rural county back in 2016. The pushback to an effective $1.30 tax raise per household was so staggering that Iām done. Fuck it. These people can sit and rot. Iāll live my life and save my energy. Texans donāt want to improve or be better or live better lives. You canāt get them to spend an extra dollar to improve their lives so fuck em. I live in Dallas now for work and itās just as disheartening. This should be the jewel of our state, but we canāt get public transit in place.
Can you imagine thousands and thousands of foreigners getting on the DART and expecting it to function like an actual mass transit system? lol fucking chaos.
That would be hilarious, chaotic, and possibly end in personal injury. Hell they might not even try after the first attempt, just say fuck it. Few years back I had to stay at a hotel waiting on my apartment, off 75 and Park Rd area in Plano. I'm standing out front smoking and drinking coffee, this couple in their mid 50's walk up and ask "how many miles you reckon to the JFK memorial?". I said "if you mean where he was shot, I'd say 20 miles, what did Google say?". They proceed to tell me they're visiting from Canada (you could tell my their accent) and wanted to *hike* to the JFK memorial, the people they encountered on Dart scare them. They said they go on 20 mile hikes all the time, this is just on a street. I showed them on Google maps the straightest way to go, not having to make too many turns. They were excited. I would guess there would be more of that, people just giving up on taking the train.
Cover photo is out of place on the link.
Long story, in 2008-2014 movers and shakers in Dallas ramped up a push to bring the Olympics to Dallas in 2024. A lot of serious progress was made on the future bid, with the center of the Olympic experience being located in Fair Park.
But, due to international politics at the time -namely feelings among international partners were steel sore from the W. Bush Administration- Dallas was rapidly removed from the US bid (see article posted). The word from the US Olympic Committee to the Dallas Bid Committee was that their international partners told them "We would rather give the Olympics to Putin than to George W. Bush." (Which ultimately they would in fact do.)
The US Olympic Committee would eventually choose Boston as our city to proceed with the international bid, but voters in Boston rejected the Olympics. So the IOC chose instead to cancel the whole bidding process and select Paris for 2024 and LA for 2028 while they reconfigured their selection process.
Itās estimated Paris and the country of France spent 8.7 - 9.6 billion dollars since being āawardedā the Olympics. Itās also estimated they will make 7.3-12 billion, which could mean they lose a lot of money. China spent about 40 billion for the Winter Olympics in Beijing and only made a little over 3 billion.
There is value to these losses.
It all depends on where the money is going. China built a ton of infrastructure and is supposedly using many of the buildings for housing and businesses. France renovated many venues, only building two major locations, and added to their train system.
Both of these scenarios should yield better living and transport for those Olympic host cities.
If Dallas had āwonā the Olympics and spent it on similar enhancements, like public transport, updating older buildings and sports sites, and so on, it could have helped a wide group of people. (Traffic would still be horrendous, and I would have ensured our summer vacay lined up with the tourist takeove.)
Or, they could have a built single-use venues, evicted thousands of locals, and otherwise blow 11.1 billion like Brazil did for the Rio games.
The Los Angeles Olympics will be insightful for a model in the future. They haven plenty of stadiums/venues in place to where they donāt need to build anything new out. What new infrastructure would DFW need to build out? On the surface, it seems that we could utilize everything we already have for the most part.. maybe some athlete apartments and offices in Arlington but thatās it.
Somewhat ironically (given our push for a new convention center), the best idea for many of those sport-specific facilities is to build a huge convention center, and then just make the sport-specific stuff removable after the games.
That's what both London and Barcelona did, and is why Barcelona is the convention center of Europe when it comes to trade shows and the like.
Hosting the Olympics is like having a big wedding. No one says "We should have a big fancy wedding so that we make lots of money!" No, weddings are money losing things.
And that's okay. Sometimes it's okay to just throw a party for the sake of celebrating yourself.
> Sometimes it's okay to just throw a party for the sake of celebrating yourself
Exactly, no wonder people think Dallas is boring with all these negative comments saying āgood thing Dallas didn't host,ā like wtf.
Let the world celebrate your city!!
Preach. This sub's reaction to anything related to the world cup coming here is so depressing. Like god forbid something interesting happen here for all of *three weeks* before yall go back to your everyday, usual (clearly depressed) lives.
It was the same for the Dallas Marathon. The amount of moaning about closed streets for a single morning, I couldn't roll my eyes harder. Okay lets not ever do anything here ever, just work and drive and sleep until we die.
Truly who cares if traffic is worse for a few weeks for the world cup before going back to normal. Like does anyone think about any traffic they sat in ten years ago? Yall will forget about it but remember the cool experiences you had (unless yall shut yourselves in at home and try to pretend everyone out having fun is secretly miserable). Similarly it would have been cool as hell to get the olympics here. I'm with you, mate.
Arlington would've been an interesting choice for the Olympics, since it could've led to them acquiring mass transit and integrating it with Dallas' and Ft Worth's systems. Also, it would've been Arlington's headache, not Dallas's.
It's not hard to sell Texas internationally. Texas, like America, is as much a concept as it is a place (this was even more true 10 years ago).
Everyone loves a cowboy.
If you think Dallas actually has cowboys, youāve never really been outside of the city. The concept of Texas is known internationally, but doesnāt really have the draw or appeal that would be needed on a worldwide scale for a major event like the Olympics.
You joke but I guarantee there are way, way more dead bodies in the Seine river than will ever be in any body of water in Texas. That thing has thousands of years of dumping in it.
They spent literally billions to clean it for the Olympics.
The mayor of Paris did a whole PR stunt where she swam in it.
It is significantly cleaner, I believe the one thing it didn't pass was above average fecal matter.
The Olympics were in Atlanta back in 1996. After that Georgia Tech purchased the Olympic village housing development and made it on-campus housing for students. I lived in one of them in early 2010's. They were THE most cheaply constructed apartments you've ever been in. The outsides looked beautiful. But inside was garbage.
That is all to say that when stuff gets built in a frenzy to get ready for the Olympics, everything goes to the lowest bidder who can build the fastest. Nothing is good quality. Nothing is actually an improvement.
I was a student at Tech during The Games. The housing you're talking about was originally supposed to be for Georgia State before Tech bought it. The Olympic Village was actually most of campus and athletes stayed in all of the dorms, frat and sorority houses, Christian organization's buildings, etc. I remember one of the US women's swim team members complaining about stubbing/breaking a toe on the furniture in either Glenn or Towers dorm (based on how the furniture was described it could only have been one of those two).
Tech did get the awesome aquatic center out of it. Many fraternity and sororities and a few of the Christian groups got excellent financing and were able to build new houses. And, after like a year, the intramural fields were finally redone and were beautiful (well, anything would have been beautiful compared to the old one). And in the meantime we played intramural wiffle ball, inner tube water polo and dodgeball...before dodgeball was cool.
Interesting. I lived in Glenn hall as a freshman in 2012 and it was one of 2 dorms that hadn't been updated in decades. They turned a broom closet with a window into a 1 person room and that's where I lived. It was miserable. Super damp, mildew growing on the walls. Something was wrong with my ancient air conditioner and I had to threaten legal action before they would actually fix it and clean the mildew. I was actually ill from it for a long time. That room def added to my depression and made me hate that school even more! So glad I left after 2 miserable years! The end!
Jeez, I remember 3 dorms on west campus had been renovated the first year I was there (Fitten was my dorm) and they werenāt all that bad. Food was decent at Woodyās compared to the clusterfuck that west village dining ended up being my last year.
We donāt have the obstacles for the Olympians to compete in. Imagine the ridiculousness of building a one Time use stadiums like other countries have and abandon like right away.
I went to Georgia Tech (right in midtown Atlanta) '93-'98. Tech was the Olympic village, hosted the aquatic events and I think a few other things (boxing maybe...it's been a while). It was a mess living with the preparation before and tear down after The Games. I'm not upset DFW has not been selected to host the Olympics.
Hello fellow GT grad. ā15-ā18 here, BSAE. My parents attended the ā96 games as they lived in Gwinnett county at the timeā mess is somehow an understatement based on the stories they told me. Definitely no lost sleep over not hosting it here.
I donāt think people understand the Olympics in a city is HUGE. So much is built and improvements made that vastly outlast the games. People just bitching because of traffic during it š
Improvements and venues that are usually not used after the games are over. Look at previous Olympics and what happened with everything they built. Thatās the reason they are having such q hard time finding cities willing to host.
> Every couple of years, when another Olympics rolls around, a familiar story is recycled: The Games are a way for host cities to fast-track infrastructure and urban-redevelopment projects. But there is surprisingly little evidence to back this story up and examples galore suggesting the reverse. Athens, which splurged on white elephant arenas in 2004 for sports that few Greeks play, stirred a rush of national pride but incurred debts that helped fuel an economic meltdown with ripple effects across Europe. Rio threw itself a giant party in 2016, then had to sell off its Olympic Village at a discount.
I'm sure I'm in the minority but I think it would be cool to have the Olympics be local. I can't really afford to travel to one with how much everything spikes in price so a local games might be my only chance.
What are you on about? You think LA does? I know DTLA like the back of my hand and it is very similar to Dallas. Both have come a long way but both are no NYC or Chicago. It's also hilarious you think that's a prerequisite for the Olympics.
All I know is that when the Olympic Committee came to tour Dallas, this is one of the things that they said Dallas lacked. I'll see if I can find the article
Los Angeles has zero "downtown vitality" and honestly worse infrastructure than here for the amount of people.
Also Atlanta hosted in 96 with not much of a downtown
and Dallas has already hosted the world cup at that lol
I worked in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics (lived about an hour SE of the city). My office adjusted our hours to come in and leave early so that we could avoid the worst traffic. And, they were pretty cool with is taking longish lunches so that we could walk around, down to the park. The sense of energy and excitement made any inconveniences worth it. People were so excited and it was fun chatting with people who had come to be part of it all.
Yes. There was the bombing, which was terrible and sad.
We were only able to afford a few events, two dressage ones (located in Conyers, quite a distance from the city). I think my ex took our son to a baseball game too. I do think that Atlantaās MARTA train and bus systems were better than DART. If I recall correctly there are very few places where MARTA runs at street level. So, little or no impacts to car traffic, as MARTA ran underground or on elevated tracks.
Anyway, while I agree that Olympics in Dallas would cause huge traffic issues, I think that it would have been kind of cool to show the world that Dallas is a cool city in many ways.
I wonder where the track and field events would have been held. Would it have been held at SMUs Gerald Ford Stadium or would one specifically for the Olympics have been built?
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