culture
All the Pan Am Games Apathy Fit to Print
America noticed us! And how we are pretty *meh* about the Pan Am Games!
Photo by g026rfrom the Torontoist Flickr Pool
Toronto has a case of Pan Am Games apathy, and the New York Times is on it.
In America’s paper of record, Canadian correspondent Ian Austen writes that Torontonians just aren’t that into the sporting event that has taken over the city:
But too few spectators seem to care. Only about 800,000 of the 1.4 million available tickets had been sold by Monday afternoon, despite a last-minute discounting program offered by a major bank. Local news media reports found that hotel rooms were still available in abundance. And the public discussion, such as it was, focused not on the events but on the disruption caused by blocking certain lanes on the city’s already congested expressways for the use of official games vehicles and high-occupancy vehicles.
If there’s anything that puts the Pan Am Games into perspective, it’s that Toronto is more into #DeadRaccoonTO, which was the subject of a Washington Post article today, than it is into the Pachi Games. Poor, misunderstood Pachi.
Who knows, maybe that will all change tonight with the opening ceremonies?