It Takes an Olympic Village

With the mayor’s Olympic Village plans in limbo, we here at Division Street Labs have learned of alternate sites being considered by the Chicago 2016 committee.

* Welcome back, Cabrini-Green!

* That giant ferris wheel planned for Navy Pier fits at least two to a car.

* Sending the Sox on a long road trip while Olympians camp out at The Cell.

* O’Hare’s concourses are already equipped to house long-term visitors.

* The Brown Line is converted to sleeper cars.

* Local pols say Oxford, Wisconsin has acceptable facilities.

Daley’s Uneven Bars

While Richard M. Daley plays dodgeball with the local press, he’s always willing to give interviews to an adoring national media that would never dream to ask him who hired Angelo Torres or point out to him that taxpayer money has already been pledged – and spent – by the Chicago Olympic committee. So we get pieces like the one George Vecsey produced in the New York Times this morning, “Chicago Has Shoulders Broad Enough To Host Games.”

Let’s take a look.

“’People want to know that taxpayers’ money will not be used for this event,’ Daley said over lunch the other day,” Vecsey writes approvingly.

George Vecsey, meet Ben Joravsky.

If only the mayor would grant Ben a lunch interview.

The Beijing Transit Authority

“Chicago Mayor Richard Daley took a subway ride in Beijing on Wednesday as part of his efforts to scope out ways his city might refine its bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics,” AP reports.

Daley was impressed, but said that “upgrading an aging public transportation system to be as nice as the one in Beijing isn’t cheap and finding the money to do it is difficult.

[UPDATE: The Trib has a photo of Daley on a train. A Division Street reader wonders if the mayor has ever been spotted on one of ours.]

[UPDATE 2: Here's an AP video report.]

“‘No one can spend this much money. I mean, no one can spend it. I don’t care. What country can spend this much money,’ he said.”

Um, apparently China can.

Money Matters

“[The governor] cut more than $240,000 for the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois, Springfield, and $800,000 to address the state’s DNA testing backlog. Another $1 million to offset the cost of videotaping police interrogations was cut,” Kristen McQueary reported on Sunday.

I thought of this while reading these stories today:

* “Olympic Bid Raises $12 Mil, $37 Mil To Go.”
* “Mich. Ave Riverwalk To Cost City $8.1 Mil.“

I realize the funding sources for all of these things are different, but doesn’t it say something nonetheless about our priorities?

Losers’ Circle

There’ll be plenty of coverage to chew on about Chicago advancing to the next round in its bid for the 2016 Olympics, but for now, let’s mourn the losers. I was really pulling for Doha, Qatar, to sneak in there.

The News From Doha: It’s the middle of the night in Doha, so I guess the Gulf Times – apparently Qatar’s top-selling English daily newspaper – can be forgiven for not having gotten the news yet.

“The excitement is palpable and the tension unbearable as Qatar awaits its tryst with Olympic history when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) reveals its Candidate City shortlist for the 2016 Games in Athens today,” the paper still says at 12:22 p.m. CST.

“Qatar couldn’t have chosen a better slogan to drive its Olympic dreams and it would be nothing short of a ‘Greek tragedy’ if the Doha-2016 Bid fails to get past the first hurdle.”

The News From Prague: Apparently they don’t publish bad news in The Prague Post because the Olympics aren’t mentioned anywhere – at least on the home page. The Czech Hunter S. Thompson, though, is going on a hunger strike. That’s something.

The News From Baku: Apparently they don’t publish bad news at AzerNEWS Online because the Olympics aren’t mentioned anywhere – at least on the home page. Azerbaijani billionaire Vagit Alekperov plans to buy England’s Tottenham football club, though. That’s something.

No wonder Doha, Prague and Baku were eliminated; their local media simply isn’t cooperating. I wonder if they have children’s museums there.

Olympic Bid Off Track?

At least 24 injuries are reported so far in a Green Line derailment this morning on the South Side – just a day before Mayor Richard M. Daley flies to Athens to learn if Chicago will advance to the next round of competition for the 2016 Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee is expected to pare the list of finalists from seven to four or five. That’s cutting it pretty close for Chicago; last fall, United States Olympic Committee Chairman Peter Ueberroth said that Rio, Madrid and Tokyo were ahead of Chicago. The other contenders are Prague; Doha, Qatar; and Baku, Azerbaijan. (Doha just won a nice little award for how it handled the Asian Games.)

It seems unlikely that Chicago won’t make it to the next round – Sun-Times reporter Andrew Herrmann recently said on Week in Review that his sources say it’s a lock, though I haven’t seen that in the paper – but visions in the minds of IOC members of Olympic visitors hurt in train derailments don’t help.

The Elympics

“The loud thump heard in Chicago last week was the sound of CTA President Ron Huberman falling out of bed as his honeymoon with transit riders came to an abrupt end,” Crain’s writes in an editorial today.

Crain’s goes on to describe Huberman’s initial blame-passengers-first response as a “Lee Elia moment.”

“Until Tuesday’s meltdown on the Blue Line, passengers had been giving Mr. Huberman the benefit of the doubt, hoping he had the right stuff to fix the CTA’s deplorable service. But that goodwill evaporated in the heat of downtown subway tunnels, where hundreds of riders were trapped for hours while thousands more stood on train platforms along the Blue Line waiting for trains that never came.”

And that was before this news: On Sunday night, a Red Line trained derailed at Howard.

“[H]undreds of passengers were forced to get off the train and walk back along the tracks to the platform,” NBC5 reports.

Maybe the CTA ought to start handing out these T-shirts to aggrieved riders.