On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 4:34 AM, Adam Bowie <[email protected]> wrote:
> I suspect you're right, although many of those spaces are for live media > coverage rather than, say, newspaper reporters. > > I was in the swimming venue today, but my position was such that I > couldn't see the media positions. (No spoilers from me incidentally, but > these were only heats). > > I'm at the fencing later, so we'll see how busy that is! > > Incidentally, you can't move for NBC folk. They and their guests have > people with little signs to get them guided around the park. I believe they > have nearly four times as many people here as the BBC! > > And yes, I am making the most of these home games :-) > So glad you are having a good time. I was a young student in Los Angeles during the 1984 Olympics. LA is a much different kind of city than London - so large and spread out that the Olympics made very little detectable footprint on every day life. As the saying goes there is no "there, there", and there was no Olympic village either. I lived in Pasadena, only blocks from the Rose Bowl, the center of the soccer matches. Even there, we only got a small hint of Olympic fever. By all reports it is much different in London. My daughter has been to several events already, but says that even though there are empty seats (for spectators, not media) at many of the venues, it is not easy to buy them now. She said there is a bit of a controversy (at least among her set, which is to say poor, somewhat demanding college-aged students) about this, as it seems that the empty seats have mostly been purchased by large corporate groups, and to a large extent are just not being used until they get to high profile events. My daughter took fencing this last spring term, and was keen to attend a fencing event. I guess she stubbornly kept hitting repeat on the Olympic site for several hours until she was able to score seats to the saber event (which is her favorite), I think quarter finals, this Thursday, so she is excited about that, and I think they only cost something under 20 pounds. Her seats in Cardiff for the Brazil soccer match turned out to be excellent - she was sitting very near the field and got to hang out and party with the Brazilian fans - in her pictures her face is painted in their colors, and she is having more fun than is comfortable for a father to see. She also reports that watching the events at the pubs with the locals, and with partisans from the various countries, is as fun in its own way as having tickets for the venues. I encouraged her to get up and go watch the cross country bike races over the weekend, since they were free, but she was not as keen on doing that. She will be there through this weekend (then going to spend a few days in Paris seeing the sights there before flying home), and is having a fabulous time. One of her main testimonies is how warm and friendly the British people are (I think I use the adjective correctly, as she has been in both London and Cardiff). She expected them to be polite, but not so outright friendly and welcoming. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
