While I typically shy away from the obvious topic in my biweekly blogpost, writing about the Grand Prix thrills me. To think, the City of Baltimore annually extends itself through one of the most logistically intensive disruptions to the city for an event that many of us couldn’t be less interested in attending.[1]
In truth, I have no idea if the Grand Prix is a big deal in the world of car racing. Usually, when there’s a somewhat big sporting event, I overhear enough chatter about it that someone is always willing to explain how awesome it is to a doubting bystander: Yankees v. Red Sox, The World Cup, March Madness. For goodness sake, I once found myself in a forty-minute conversation at Fraziers as someone explained the history of MMA and cage fighting. I didn’t come away loving the event of which I was newly enlightened, but I knew it affected someone and had a science behind it. I respected it more.
I have yet to hear anyone defend the Grand Prix and enlighten me of its grandeur and history and the athletic prowess of those athletes who drive those advertisement-splattered vehicles. Therefore I can only assume its justification is so widespread that it needs to go unspoken, or that there is simply nobody around to defend the race. But let’s get beyond my need to understand the purpose or the placement or the importance of this event and move on to curiosity. ‘Let’s just go and see! It will be fun,’ we’d say. But we don’t say that. We leave town, we avoid street closures, and most of us simply don’t care.
The Grand Prix has a focus on tourism. Attracting outside individuals and their spending power is enough of an incentive to warrant the disruption to many of our daily routines in this pre-planned city. If our aim with the Grand Prix is to retrieve tourism dollars, and we do that successfully, then there’s really no justification for the complaints of the residents. If the event were geared towards the entertainment of the Baltimore resident, and we derive no satisfaction from it’s execution, then yes; we’re warranted in our bitching – the objective has failed. However, the Grand Prix is not put on for our enjoyment; the objective is to capture the spending power of others by way of their entertainment to benefit our City’s economic development. If that’s the objective, and we achieve it, then who cares if the average Baltimore resident is happy. If the City is making money, then the outcome fulfills the vision. As the host city, we choose to have our lives disrupted for the benefit of others knowing that we’ll receive some sort of return or bolstered financial stability. Of course, if we reap no economic benefits from the event, we can once again question the validity of having our lives disrupted, but lets put economics aside for a minute.
If we ignore the economic income, or lack thereof. If we ignore the potential of the target audience to capitalize on our hospitality industry. Look at the potential. For a city I often criticize for being too risk averse – Baltimore, look what you’ve done? You’ve committed yourselves to restructuring the traffic pattern, repaving roads, disrupting days of pre-planned commute times and paths for something that majority of your residents don’t care about. Baltimore, this is huge. This shows me that you are capable of doing the unexpected and the initially unfavored. Of temporarily disrupting our lives to execute what you consider to be a worthwhile event. Never mind the event has failed to achieve the projected economic benefit, you did it. It shows me you’re hungry for change and willing to do the initially uncelebrated to get there. It makes me want to stand up with the lost boys and through a glazed look in my eyes, whisper ‘I believe in you, Peter. I believe in you.”
Baltimore, your failure to please people with the Grand Prix and your insistence to keep trying is such a step in the right direction. As much as we may bitch and moan about inconvenience, we want you to succeed. We want you to keep taking risks and doing the unprecedented. Like Sailabration. Sailabration was amazing! There would be people lining the waterfront by the time I got down to my water taxi at 8am. Tourists and residents went down to the water from the suburbs and checked out the boats. My office found itself dispersed on the promenade every twenty minutes for three days- watching the Blue Angels practice or waving to the ships that arrived.
Baltimore, the harbor was alive; that was magic, and you didn’t even have to close any roads. But the willingness you have to change our patterns of movement – think what this could do. We could close Pratt Street during summer weekends to mimic New York’s Summer Streets program- opening up the Harbor loop to cyclists and runners instead of restricting them to side lanes. We could get kids into the streets with sidewalk chalk. Install a slip n’ slide on Federal Hill. With all the hype around the Grand Prix and the fact that nobody likes it, imagine what it could be if you chose an event that people did like. Baltimore, do you realize what your willingness to do to the broken allows you the ability to fix?
[1] I throw a footnote in here because I have no quantitative evidence to support this claim. Rather, the observation indicated by “many” correlates with a three-year audio confirmation of complaints, disinterest, and phrases like I’m participating in the Grand Flee to avoid the Grand Pricks at the Grand Inconvenience.”
