Chicago's Party Over Before It Started

CHICAGO -- The party hadn't even started. The Daley Plaza downtown was packed with thousands of fans surrounding the huge Picasso sculpture, whatever it is, that's an iconic point of the city. By 9 a.m. Friday, the three big screens set up were showing early Olympic stuff. Across the street, a banner draped on a building with a the word "Imagine."

This was going to be the day Chicago got the 2016 Olympics.

Announcement at 11:57 a.m. The city waited. Well, it was planning to wait, anyway. Because it was around 10:15 or so that word from the first-round of voting came out.

Chicago was out. That's it. All this time, all this worry, all this talk, Oprah and Obama, Chicago's two biggest Os, in Denmark wooing the International Olympic Committee while Mayor Richard Daley presumably was doing what he and Chicago politics are known for. And just like that, Chicago was done.

"We were hoping to get here before the final announcement," said Laura Minard of suburban Arlington Heights.

"We got off the train and people were already walking away."

Nearly two hours later, thousands of people were still there, just waiting, not understanding. Frozen. Some people brought champagne.

Felipe and Betty Mota of suburban Elgin brought their 6-year-old daughter, and pushed their 1-year-old twins in a double-stroller.

The twins wore t-shirts that said "I was there."

By 11:30, they showed a video of Chicago, with the city's blue legend, Buddy Guy, singing "Sweet Home Chicago," while pictures of the skyline and of kids playing in Millenium Park went up.

Everyone clapped. They needed a little civic pride.

Just before noon, it was announced that Rio de Janeiro had won the Games. There would be no recount, no stolen election.

You hear the term "jaws dropped," and know it's just a cliché meaning surprise, disappointment.

In this case, people's jaws actually, literally, dropped. People sitting in the front row were crying. Some people walked off in a daze while others stayed and hundreds more piled into the place thinking the party wasn't starting for a while.

When the announcement came, "People were just like, 'Ohhh,' " said Daniel Sudijanto of Chicago, leaning in and staring toward the TV.

"Everybody was like, 'Gasp. Is that real? Is that true.' "

" 'Re-count. Re-count.' "

This is not going to sit well with Chicago. I think more people here wanted the Olympics than didn't, but there was fear, too.
My own concern, as a Chicagoan, was a discomfort over Daley and the state formerly run by a governor, Rod Blagojevich, who allegedly likes to sell Senate seats for personal gain, getting its hands on roughly $5 billion, at least. Five billion new, virgin, unlaundered dollars that could have gone to the schools.

"Do you really think that money would have gone to schools anyway?" a teacher asked me.

Good point.

At the same time, no one should be able to grease a palm like a Chicagoan. Mayor Daley, apparently, is not his father. The original Mayor Daley, still known as Da Mare, would have pulled this off.

"It's disappointing, and hurts our political reputation," Minard said, tongue in cheek.

Fourth place. What kind of palm-greaser gets that?

And we know this wasn't going to cost just $5 billion. Everyone in Chicago knew. At first, the Olympic planners, and the Mayor promised that tax dollars would not be used to guarantee cost over-runs.

And then -- surprise! -- it was announced that tax dollars would be used to guarantee over-runs.

This is a city on the grab. And even the people who didn't want the Olympics were a little disappointed to see fourth place.

Chicago didn't even get the bronze medal. But its reputation sure was tarnished.

By 11 a.m., an hour before the party was supposed to start, TV news here was already invading elementary schools with shots of crying children.

One person called into a radio station and said that if Bush had still been president, Chicago would have gotten the Olympics, as Denmark would have known that we would have sent troops otherwise.

Someone else called into a local sports talk station and said the push to get the Games uncovered all of Chicago's real needs. Now, he said, it's clear that no one cares about those needs, so school children will be killed every day and the government won't care.

I didn't make that up.

"They must really hate us," some guy said, talking to a buddy. "To kick us out that early? Hate."

He wasn't talking U.S. politics or the country's image, but Chicago.

This was an insult, an embarrassment. This isn't a city filled with the biggest of celebrities, and takes more pride in a football team wearing short sleeves in the brutally cold wind off the lake than it does in its glitz.

But it likes to do everything big. And sending Obama and Oprah to Copenhagan was meant to show that the city has bright lights, too.

All of that goes in your face when Obama, Oprah and Daley get fourth place.

A funny thing came with the signs throughout the Daley Plaza. Dozens of people had re-purposed Cubs fan signs, now that baseball hope this summer has been long lost.

The big blue W for Win, and the "It's Gonna Happen." A popular thing was to add "Not" before "Gonna," or "Never."

Chicagoans know all about losing.

And one guy even asked if the Billy Goat people had jinxed the Olympics bid by taking their goat to the Daley Plaza. If you don't know, there's a tavern in a basement under Michigan Ave., called Billy Goat's, and legend is that in 1945, the old guy who owned the place was kicked out of a Cubs World Series game from fans complaining about the smell of a goat he had brought in.

So he put a Greek curse on the Cubs that they would never win the World Series again. Of course, they haven't. Was the goat there Thursday?

No.

"Yeah, yeah 100 percent I wanted the Olympics to come," said Sam Sianis, nephew of the Original Billy Goat, at the tavern Thursday afternoon after talking me into a triple cheesburger instead of a double. "Already, India called me today, CNN called, Europe, Spain maybe. Reporters asking how Chicago was taking this.

"I (had) told the Mayor that, 'If we get the Olympics, Mr. Mayor, you and I are going to walk onto the field (at the Opening Ceremony) with the Greek flag.' "

Politics at work, one woman told me. That's the Chicago Way.

Trust was an issue for the politicians on this in the first place. Now, having been out-flanked, respect is gone, too.

Email me at gregcouch09@aol.com