Times puts the entire weight of the world on our shoulders

Philly? I think Philly is great and all, but whatever Philly did to become the city it is today we want to do the opposite.

"Let's go to Philadelphia, where the Revolutionary War began!"

--no one ever

First prize was a week in Philadelphia. Second prize was two weeks. - WC Fields.

Philly, by their own account, receives 38 million domestic visitors and roughly 600,000 overseas visitors (Nat'l Travel and Tourism Office numbers). Boston receives around 18,000,000 domestic travelers by their own counting and over 1,200,000 (NTTO) from overseas. I would doubt that the 20,000,000 extra domestic visitors to Philly is due solely to Colonial fandom, but their pull is certainly stronger than our with the rest of the country - probably something to do with it's proximity to New York. We're far better with internationals however, who generally spend more money than domestic visitors.

My opinion on the Olympics is negative - not because I'm not enticed by the idea, but because there is a lack of any idea. It's a bunch of half-plans, "we might be able to's", "it would be nice", etc... I'm not changing my view until I see hard evidence as to exactly where the events and temp stadiums are going up, I'm just going to take them at their word. I want to know how Boston2024 is going to work a stadium into Widett Circle and what the effect of that is going to be on the MBTA - who's been trying to expand their layover yard into the same space to deal with increased CR headways. I'm not keen either on the thinly veiled "well if you want a reliable mass transit system, support us..." - tying MBTA restoration to the Olympics would be a disaster, it's too important a facet of life here to get dragged into the Olympics.

I'll give the Olympics a chance when they've given the public a chance to look over their proposal in it's entirety.

You have something good in the last part of your post about the virtues of Philadelphia.

Opponents of the Boston Olympics should at least give the Olympics idea a chance and not just, as many have done, decide it won't work. What do Boston residents want, many are constantly whining about the Universities that are here that employ so many people and the sporting events (marathon, red sox etc.). If there was a blank slate, would Bostonians vote for anything other than freeways and free parking?

Too bad people aren't going to respond to it due to the cheap shot you took in the first part of your post. I agree, the problem with Boston and the Olympics is that people have unwarranted negative views about what this city can do. It would be interesting to see what people think Boston can achieve, then we could have a discussion about how such things resemble or differ from the Olympics idea.

Faneuil Hall is one of the top tourist attractions in the country:

http://consumertraveler.com/today/forbes-americas-top-tourist-attractions/

Nothing in Philadelphia even ranks.

Boston doesn't need the Olympics. We're too good for them.

I wonder. Is there any way this could work? It seems as if the anger is directed towards the organizers and their track record of lying to and keeping everyone from knowing what the truth is.

Is this all about tax payers footing the bill? Is there any way that this could be handled by an outside, impartial organization that would pay for it? (advertisers like a Nike or Converse)

If there was an all inclusive plan that addressed the concerns and made sure the greed, dishonesty and elitist mentality was eliminated couldn't we figure out a way to actually benefit from this?

As a retailer and a business owner I would love to have thousands more people buying from me. Coming out of this winter and watching businesses dropping like flies, the thought of a huge event designed to put money IN my pocket would be a good thing.

Is it too late? Is it even possible in a state like this?

http://cappyinboston.blogspot.com/

Right. But I don't think we can reasonably expect the IOC to realize they have a public relations problem on their hands.

In a perfect world, we'd go to our elected representatives and tell them that the US should boycott the olympics until substantial ethical / regulatory / corruption reforms are instituted.

In practice, I think we've seen these same elected representatives just leap off a cliff, because the USOC told them to.

I went to school with the son of one of the current members of the IOC. I petitioned him that we should permanently move the olympics to Switzerland or Athens.

As long as we hold he Olympics in Boston every year for about a hundred years.

Apart from Greece, how can any city or country feel like they own the Olympics in anything but a very temporary way?

It's sort of funny that Davey is invoking the future memory of the event as a selling point; a lot of the concern people have is that they'll be paying for (and regretting) hosting the Olympics years after it and the IOC have moved on to the next rube-filled city.

Future generations of Bostonians may indeed feel like they own the Olympics, if they keep seeing bills for it.

"Mr. Davey said one of his goals was that someday residents will feel they own the Olympics the way they own the Boston Marathon."

As much as we will pay for it if it does happen, we should own it.

This movement only appears every two years. It's huge.

But the MBTA's all cracked and broken

The linked articles showing post-Olympic-desolation in Athens and Sochi should really inspire us to hand our city (and our wallets) over to the Olympics boosters.