Perspiration condemnation for N.Y. Games

By Rob Morse, SF Gate.com

October 30, 2002 -- The 123 members of the U.S. Olympic Committee are about to choose between San Francisco and New York as their candidate for the 2012 Summer Games. Before they vote on Saturday, they should hear from some of us who attended or competed in Olympics in the two cities.

That's right, there already have been Olympics in San Francisco and New York. Gay Games I and II were held in San Francisco in 1982 and 1986 and Gay Games IV were held in New York in 1994.

Founders Tom Waddell and Rikki Streicher called them the "Gay Olympics," but just before the opening ceremony in 1982 the USOC sued to remove the name "Olympics." Never mind that they had never sued the Special Olympics, the Diaper Olympics or the Rat Olympics.

But bygones are bygones. The organizers of the Gay Games (the latest edition opens in Sydney this weekend) and the local Olympic organizing committee are on good terms. Let the game for the Games begin.

Those of us who were at the Gay Games in New York always will remember three things:

First, the games were huge, the biggest sporting event in the world, with 10,864 athletes competing in dozens of events all over New York City. We traveled from the questionable neighborhood around Columbia University to the questionable neighborhood around Yankee Stadium. We traveled to a questionable island that looked like a body dumping ground to watch women's softball.

Second, everyone was warmly welcomed by New Yorkers. No one got mugged, as far as I know. Third, it was beastly hot.

It was so hot the tattoos of Team San Francisco's fast and colorful sprinters were running down their unitards.

It was so hot that city grit stuck to sweat the way feathers stick to tar. Spectators sweated only a little less than athletes.

It was so hot that fog developed above the ice of the Coney Island rink where hockey was played. There won't be any skating at the 2012 Summer Olympics, but if the games are in New York, spectators will regret the absence of Zamboni-intensive sports. They'll need something cold to huddle around besides Italian ices.

In San Francisco, we have running weather. During the Gay Games of August 1986, a participant from New York was quoted by Herb Caen as saying, "You people have the strangest weather -- three seasons every day, not one of them summer."

At the 1994 Gay Games in New York, we had two seasons every day -- steam bath and barroom air-conditioning.

New York may be the sentimental favorite to win the 2012 summer games because of the Sept. 11 attack, but USOC members should remember that the summer of 2012 is a long way off. The only certainty is that it will be hot, perhaps even hotter than before because of global warming.

The USOC should imagine standing in a 95-degree station waiting for a subway to arrive in a cloud of grit to carry them to an event in some borough where they'll find the same heat and more grit.

In the Bay Area, they can board a BART car in 60-degree San Francisco and travel to an invigorating dry heat in Santa Clara County -- when BART is extended there, that is.

New York is ahead of San Francisco in an area that used to be one our strengths -- NIMBYs. No one in the Bay Area has said "not in my backyard" to the 2012 Olympics, so far, although this may be because we have trouble looking beyond our next restaurant reservation. New York, though, already has neighborhood opposition to its Olympic proposals.

Many New Yorkers smell real estate speculation, whether it's on the West Side, where the Olympic Stadium would be built (eventually going to the Jets) or in the future whitewater kayaking neighborhoods of Queens -- where Archie Bunker must be capsizing in his grave. New York is a great city, but when you get on a subway in Manhattan and travel 30 minutes to another borough for an Olympic event, you're still in New York -- but not as interesting a part of New York as Manhattan.

When you travel 30 minutes from San Francisco, you enter different worlds like Berkeley or Palo Alto, which have different charms -- and different weather.

All parts of New York are venues for the same weather. If the USOC wants a sweatathon, that should be its choice.