In its quest to host the Olympic Games for a fifth time, in 2024, the United States Olympic Committee has chosen the best and brightest candidate city this country has to offer: Boston.
For reasons known only to people who have never lived there, many have taken the opportunity to do some good old-fashioned Boston-bashing. Residents of the city have also expressed dismay at the idea, but everyone is always grumpy about the Olympics at first, aren’t they? Aren’t they, London? And while the Massachusetts capital doesn’t have the friendliest reputation – and sure, the Big Dig was a mess – Boston has a lot to offer as an Olympic host. The city on the harbor known as the hub of the universe is an unassuming, beautiful American classic. Here’s why.
History
If you were paying close attention during Danny Boyle’s London 2012 opening ceremony extravaganza, you would have seen a small group of people being persecuted and subsequently leaving on a boat. This is where Boston’s opening ceremony will, presumably, begin. That’s because, as the home to a little something called the American Revolution, Boston is all about history and American pride.
It has the most American spirit of any US city (check any Massachusetts license plate if you don’t believe me), and over the summer we celebrate this country’s very first instance of victory over a foreign aggressor. Oh wow, sounds perfect for the Olympics.
What better place to stand and reflect on a USA victory over Great Britain in, say, fencing than at the site of the Boston Massacre? Or the Old North Church, where Paul Revere signalled the famous “one if by land, two if by sea” to tell us the British were coming? If the Olympics were in Boston, there would be more American pride surging out of the place than people would know what to do with.
Sports
I love the Red Sox, so I’m really writing this for the benefit of people who I’ve heard don’t love Boston sports fans, because they can get a little rowdy. OK, that’s fine. But if the Olympics were there, people would be watching sports in Boston, the best sports city in America, but wouldn’t have to sit next to Red Sox or Patriots fans. They wouldn’t have to sing Sweet Caroline in between rounds of archery. Or chant “Yankees suck” in the middle of the 1,500-metre freestyle swim (though part of me still wants to believe this could happen).
Olympics attendees from all over the world would get to experience being sports fans in Boston – a true privilege, with its energy, its sizzle of sausage and onions, its soaking up the late stages of a game as the sun sets and the Citgo sign lights up. And if all that American spirit I prophesied comes true, visitors from all around the US can experience the Boston sports tradition of winning.
Besides having the Red Sox’s Fenway Park, the oldest baseball stadium in the country, the Bruins’ and Celtics’ Garden and the Patriots’ Gillette Stadium, a Boston Herald mock-up of Olympic venues proposes beach volleyball on Boston Common, fencing at MIT, sailing in Boston Harbor and field hockey at Harvard. These are all storied, classic and beautiful places to watch events. And if you do want to flip a car over when Russia wins gold at gymnastics, I’m sure you can find some really nice BU students from New Jersey to help you out.
International cuisine
If there’s one thing Massachusetts is known for, it’s for being the birthplace of the best donuts in the universe – and, like, liberty or whatever. While Dunkin’ Donuts chains exist on most of the east coast by now, in Boston it’s different. Not better, just different. Because people actually like the place, for its unsnobbish take on coffee and doughnuts and an array of unhealthy flavor syrups. Just trust me.
If some variety in food is needed, the North End is home to some of the best Italian food in the country, including pizza that is even better than New York’s. It’s true! Pizzeria Regina, which will be nearly 100 years old when 2024 rolls around, is a Boston classic and just as good as anything you’ll find anywhere.
Boston’s true forte, though is its seafood. Its clam chowder and its lobster and its oysters brought up from the Cape. If you want to stick international, try El Pelón Taqueria, always a classic but newly crowned the best burrito in the American north-east, according to FiveThirtyEight’s exhaustive “burrito bracket”. To top it all off, liquor stores are open on Sundays now, for the most part.
Atmosphere and ambience
Amid complaints that Boston is too small and crowded a city for such a global event, the Boston Redevelopment Authority has big plans for the city’s gorgeous and historic waterfront. It’s expanding at the Charlestown Navy Yard, home of the USS Constitution, and the Fort Point Channel, where 11 new acres of public space are planned.
Add to that the serene Boston Common, the Arnold Arboretum and Public Garden, with its famous swan boats and lovely willow trees, and there are plenty wide open spaces to escape the influx of visitors, like a true Bostonian would.
Native sons
Boston has produced sons of liberty, great thinkers, record-breaking athletes and award-winning musicians. Some of these natives who would no doubt return for an Olympic Games and a potentially hilarious melange of an opening ceremony, include Louis CK, Conan O’Brien, Ben Affleck, Michael Bloomberg, the Wahlbergs and the Kennedys, for God’s sake. It could bring Taylor Swift out of the woodwork.
To be from Boston is a point of true pride, and while its residents are a bit huffy at the moment about the prospect of opening doors and wallets to the one of the biggest events in the world, the city would be remiss to pass up an opportunity to show the world, and the rest of the country, how great it really is.
Something that is, apparently, a well-kept secret.
