Originally Posted by
DiabloScott
And it's our fault because we didn't spend enough money at the SF prologues (or the SFGP for that matter). Not enough people ate at the restaurants and stayed at the hotels and took the taxis - that's what gives promoters leverage with big cities.
Originally Posted by
FogVilleLad
Canceling the SF Gran Prix was then-supervisor Aaron Peskin's boffo. I'm sure he's heard from lots of folks re what a bonehead move that was and would hear from many more if word got out that ATOC was considereing an SF stage.
Yeah, but that's because some of our elected representatives are unable to think long term. What locales get from event exposure is buckets of free publicity. That carries long term benefits. Some letters to the supes and letters to editors should help to wake them up.
Originally Posted by
FogVilleLad
Canceling the SF Gran Prix was then-supervisor Aaron Peskin's boffo. I'm sure he's heard from lots of folks re what a bonehead move that was and would hear from many more if word got out that ATOC was considereing an SF stage.
You are vastly overestimating the relationship between rationality and SF politics. The two are rarely, if ever, seen together. Aaron Peskin is merely the worst of the bunch (worse even than Chris Daly, because Daly is pretty up front about what he is, as awful and out-of-control as that is.
The SFGP was killed off not because of the race itself, but because that extreme-sport ski-jump numb-nuts wanted to throw a ski=jumping birthday bash for himself on Filmore Steet. Some of the big money Pacific Heights locals, who were barely willing to put up with SFGP as it was, decided that this was enough, and NIMBY became their policy for everything. They demanded that their Supervisor kill not just the ski-jump stupidity, but the race, too. In SF, the Supervisor of the District that wants such things never does the dirty work him- or herself. Instead, they trade favors with each other for this sort of thing to give a patina of City-wide support. In this case, Peskin, whose district included North Beach, did the honors.
Make that dishonors. He did it through two bald-faced lies. Lie #1 - North Beach was hurt economically by the race. Are you kidding me? If you ever went, you saw how every single establishment that sold grub or grog was packed to the rafters during the normally slow (read: dead) weekend morning and early afternoon hours. Lie #2 - the organizers did not pay their bills for the extra police presence. The unpaid bill that Peskin & Co. waved around to show what deadbeats the SFGP folks were had been given to race organizers literally the day before. The City & County took months and months to figure how much the police overtime cost and what to bill to the organizers, and the Board of Supes blamed the organizers because they did not write a check in less than 24 hours.
True story.