POT TOWN BETTER THAN INDY CITY

For years I have lived a couple of miles from the Indy track and suffered
through the noise.

At four different workplace locations in the past decade, I have always
been within a block or two of the Indy site and suffered its accompanying
inconveniences. In one office, we couldn't even work on the Friday before
the Labour Day weekend because of the wailing engines. In another case, our
office was made essentially inaccessible to customers for four days.

In short, I was hugely disappointed that CART and the City of Vancouver
have agreed to continue the Indy here until at least 2004. I wish Indy had
never come to this city-and I wish it would leave.

But don't misunderstand me. Despite my admission that I have been
personally and deleteriously affected by the Indy, this isn't one of those
Not In My Back Yard situations. I'm not a NIMBY.

I'm a snob.

I equate the city centre with positive, enriching cultural celebrations
like the Jazz Festival, the Fringe Festival, even the Comedy Festival, as
well as the library (when it's open), numerous galleries, theatres and
countless gustatory offerings. The Indy doesn't belong here. It belongs in
Indianapolis, wherever that is.

I know it's only a couple of days a year. I know it's a big draw and a
source of an estimated $26 million in direct and spin-off revenues. But
it's the principle of the thing. It's no more an athletic event than video
games are, and it has the potential for great human destruction, as we saw
when a pit crew member died tragically a decade ago and as Greg Moore's
family could attest.

It even has a grotesque element of bear-baiting. Don't tell me that, in
those throngs of yahoos who parade to the site for the annual race, there
isn't a significant portion of them who hope-consciously or
unconsciously-to live a little history, to be witness to a catastrophic
pile-up that they can recount in gory detail to their knuckle-dragging
descendants in years to come.

I know we're accused of becoming a no-fun city, but is the Indy really the
thing to save our rep? Noisy, environmentally destructive, at odds with the
natural world around us-the Indy is the antithesis of what we cherish about
Vancouver and this region.

But money talks. Twenty-six million dollars is nothing to sneeze at. The
bottom line really is the bottom line. Ignore the inherent lack of logic in
the whole matter.

Everything about the Indy is illogical: the downtown traffic snarls, the
abrupt revocation of peace in several neighbourhoods, the piercing noise on
the last long weekend of the summer, the pollution, the litter, the risk to
human life. But, in this bottom-line world, money makes everything logical,
though I wonder if that $26 million figure takes into account lost income
from businesses that lose work time and customers during the long weekend.
For $26 million, we will hand over our city centre.

So here's another piece of bottom-line logic.

If we are so desperate for cash, why do we continually hound the small
entrepreneurs who are offering a bit of hash or a toke of weed in the
casual surroundings of a downtown cafe?

If we will do anything for the almighty tourist dollar, why do we become
Miss Grundy when the opportunity presents itself to be seen as a
destination for a little pot?

It's worth noting that marijuana is much more in keeping with this city's
history and its natural surroundings than speed-car racing.

Tourists lolling year-round with a hash brownie or a hookah would cause a
lot less disruption to our city than the squealing tires of Labour Day.

And when it comes down to it, I would far rather this city be known as
Amsterdam on the Pacific than Indianapolis on False Creek.