As if I don’t have enough to complain about, FIFA‘s coming to Vancouver to fuck us all up. I’m really not as much against fun as I seem, but I’ve cancelled all reasons to go into Downtown Vancouver this summer. Family and friends know this. I left the country when the Olympics came to town in 2010. I did buy a pair of red mittens from some Olympic vendor before I left (The Bay?), but that’s about it. It’s the only souvenir I have.
On the other hand, unless you consider roadwork to be “excitement”, there is no excitement around here. World Cup? What World Cup? It’s wall-to-wall roadwork to double your travel time to anywhere. Events have had to be cancelled or moved city-wide if they conflict with FIFA. Anything that FIFA could mistake for competition is not allowed, so don’t even think of putting something up that might indicate you you’re excited, because the FIFA police will make you take it down.
And if you’re the BC Sports Hall of Fame, well, you have to move out of your premises because FIFA needs them as a media centre. How fucking ironic. If you’re a sports hall of fame, you have to shut down, move everything into storage lockers and forgo your revenue during the most sports intensive time of the year because of the almighty buck. There’s nothing you can do. Propose that FIFA do something with the Hall to promote sport in BC? Not a fucking chance. What’s in it for FIFA? Goodwill with the local Vancouver sports community? How much is that worth? Unless it’s a few million dollars to contribute to Gianni Infantino’s bottom line, no thanks. Just move into a storeroom for a couple of months, don’t complain, and keep your nose clean.
And then there are the admission tickets, the last thing you can blame on FIFA. They’re reasonable, right? Because after putting Vancouverites through everything they’ve put us through and fleecing our governments, at least the ticket prices are reasonable, right? That’s the point of living here, right?
Nope, not a chance. News stories show that they’re in the tens of thousands of dollars each. A year’s salary for your average person each! For that kind of money, I’d expect a lot more for ninety minutes, and you know what I mean. I get more out of watching a local football team; I get nothing from watching Alphonso Davies, Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, not a damn thing. Unless you want to pay me for a year at the rate at which Gianni Infantino is paid? Then I’ll be able to afford a FIFA ticket, and to pay someone to drive me down there and park the car.
I have zero respect for the Olympics, FIFA and any other massive sporting body that just rides roughshod over the locations that they pick to milk dry of our tax-payer dollars. Zero. Nada. Nothing.
