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The Belly of the Beast (long)



Well, a couple of people on the list have asked me for an update
from Olympia, as SLOC has renamed the city (not really, although
a lot of buildings have been temporarily renamed, like Rice-Eccles
Stadium is now Olympic Stadium, and the Delta Center is the Salt
Lake Ice Sheet. Actually one of my staff is with child and right at
her due date; a girl, so I told her she should name the baby
Olympia.  Didn't get far with that suggestion!).

However, before I do that I want to comment on some of the
comments on my comments (whew!) about sampling and the
Archival Imperative.  No, we aren't blessed with unlimited space; in
fact I've probably spent more years tripping over boxes and shuffling
overcrowded collections around than some on this list have been in
the profession, and I deal with the hassles of having collections in
remote storage all the time.  That does not change my feeling
about sampling and tossing items from collections (I said this was
a pet peeve, which is by definition not necessarily rational).  Our
philosophy here has always been: don't let the space shape the
collections, let the collections shape the space.  I've been fortunate
to spend my archival career working under someone who is a good
fund-raiser, and who believes that our legacy should be sound
historical collections, not neat aisles.  One of the first big
collections I did was a ranching family's papers, including box after
box of cancelled checks from the turn of the 19th century.  I kept
every one of them, over the objections of my then-supervisor (I just
didn't tell her I was doing it until ex post facto).  At the same time I
was working on that, others of the staff were finishing off a big
political collection which in the name of sampling and saving
space, was gutted.  I disagreed with it then and I disagree with it
now.

Anyway, as I said some have asked for a report from the belly of
the beast, to borrow that unfortunate phrase, so here goes.  I've
been writing my family a series of messages about the experience,
but didn't want to burden the archives list with things not archival.
But since they asked, you can blame them!  If you don't care to
read it, stop now, if you haven't already stopped above!  Otherwise,
here we go.

2/14/02

We went downtown last night, into, to borrow a phrase, the
Belly of the Beast. Save for the crowds of Russians, Finns,
Hungarians, Austrians and French (and Australians, interestingly;
lots of Australians), it's like going to a giant version of the home
show or the annual arts festival, without all the neat booths.  The
ones that are there are gigantic but all commercial: Samsung, ATT,
Chevrolet, Coca-cola (where I was disappointed to learn that they
don't give away free Coke!), "Bud World," a giant, open-air bar
which was pretty dull, considering you have to pay $5 (!) for a 3.2
Budweiser (I refused), and where you can not only see real horse's
asses in the form of the Clydesdale's but symbolic ones in the form
of bleary drunks.  Since you can't get into the medals plaza to
watch a ceremony without a ticket, and I'm not about to pay $30 for
that, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat seemed pretty
distant in that orgy of the crassest kind of commercialism.   We're
going to go up and see some of the competitions next week,
maybe it will spark some olympic spirit.

The rumors about the downtown being deserted in some parts are
true; we drove right to the Rio Grande Cafe, a favorite restaurant,
which is about two blocks from the Olympic plaza and save for
some interesting traffic manuevers getting around the shuttle bus
hub, it was no problem.  We talked to the server and she said this
was the first night that business had approached anything like
normal, and indeed, I've seen the place a lot more crowded on any
number of nights.  I was glad to note that this place had not jacked
up its prices.  I haven't run into that yet, although I've heard lots of
stories about it.  If I do, before I stomp out I'm going to tell the
manager that I live here, and not only will I never come back but I'll
tell all of my friends.  The mayor of Salt Lake set up a big public
gathering place with booths, concerts, acts, and so on, down on
Washington Square, which is the City-County building, about four
blocks south of Olympic Plaza. Apparently it's practically deserted;
either there are not enough people, visitors and locals, in the state
to support two big parties (three if you count Park City), or people
are scared off by the weeks of dire warnings about traffic, road
closures, and so on.  The Olympics are affecting people in lots of
ways differently than everyone thought it would.  It's the case with
us; last year I thought we would be swamped with requests, but
none of us have ever seen the library quieter, and in fact we're
laughing up our sleeves at our colleagues who took up all their
vacation to flee the building, thinking it would be a madhouse.  It's
been great and we've all been catching up on all sorts of back work.

2/11/02

Greetings to everyone from the dark heart of the O's.  Actually it's
kind of quiet here on campus just now, as the troops have
advanced to different fronts up at the venues.  Everything going
along pretty well and everyone fine, save for my Olympic volunteer
wife, who's getting run down, poor thing.  After being retired for a
year or two this workin' a regular schedule is wearing her out,
especially since it's a tough one: 2-10PM several nights in a row,
or one day they had her work 2-10 and then expected her to come
back the next day by 7AM.  Not the best scheduling.  Right now
she's worried about getting jerked around by SLOC, as they have
dropped her off the last couple of days of the schedule, thereby
ensuring that she won't have enough time in to get that Seiko
watch.  The suspicious side of my nature would say they are doing
that on purpose, trying to save some money on the backs of the
volunteers.  You don't hear about SLOC or IOC big cheeses not
getting their Seiko watches, now.  Plus they won't count all the pre-
games time she put in.

Anyway, dang! those pesky Ruskis, eh?  Stealing the gold medal
from the Canucks.  Quite a stir in the international community over
it, although locally no one has said a whole lot; either keeping their
heads down and holding their collective breath until this is all over
with,  or making too much money.  Gold, ka-ching!, Silver, ka-
ching!, who cares!  Actually only the merchants who are either A)
official vendors, or B) right down by the Olympic square--which in a
former life was a big parking lot owned by the Mormons, the use of
which they donated to SLOC for the duration--that are rakin' in the
dough, and by all accounts its a goldmine for them.  But lots of
merchants and restaurants in the whole downtown are complaining
that far from the windfall they thought this would be, their regular
customers are scared off by the security and road closures and
many of them are standing empty.   After all the news about
security and no parking and roads closed, Salt Lakers are staying
home in droves.

Things have quieted down quite a bit here on campus, it's like a
ghost town, or actually more like a rear area in a battle zone (which
makes all of us REMFs).  You can't escape the military metaphor
because of the security; cops and troops everywhere, helicopters
circling overhead, grim-faced guards everywhere you go.  Even to
go see the Declaration of Independence, on display at the State
Capitol (that one that was found in an antique store behind some
print a decade or two ago); you have to be magged, bagged,
buzzed with the wand.  A pretty irony that!  The unsmiling
cops at the entrance didn't appreciate the irony; or they might have
but I wasn't about to bring it up.   While we were up at the Capitol
on Sunday last, I had to go back to the security station when we
left to retrieve my little swiss army knife (forgot the main rule of
Olympia: don't carry a bag or purse, don't carry any weapons, even
a 1.5 inch pocketknife that you use for the fingernail file or to open
letters; and don't joke with the guards.  Their sense of humor has
been surgically removed.)  So the woman in front of me had this
great big bag full of all kinds of junk, every whit of which had to be
gone through.  While I was waiting, my eldest daughter  was
standing aside and up to her comes little Asian couple, obvious
Olympic tourists.  They pointed at her and asked "Mo-man?  Mo-
man?"  Her blonde hair, blue eyes, and pig-tails must have
convinced them she was a Mormon, but she had to say no, to their
disappointment.  "I've had a real Olympic experience," she gushed.
Then we went downtown to one of the malls, where there is a pin-
trading center set up; I was looking for some my wife wanted but
couldn't find, although I did find the fabled Fry Sauce pin for a good
price. In fact, that's one of the astounding things I've learned, the
absolute fanaticism of pin traders.  I had no idea it was such a big
deal but believe me, it is.  The place was packed, elbow-to-elbow.

We've heard a couple of good stories; the British reporter who went
to Temple Square and asked for a map showing all the polygamist
enclaves, and the guy at the train station, who happened to be
standing by a group of women, who was approached by a tourist
who asked if he could take a picture of him and all of his wives.
But there has been a darker side to it too, as evidenced by some
recent reports.  Some schmoe in First Class flying into SLC the
other day had to go pee-pee, unmindful (so he says, the terrorist!)
of the new FAA rule that says no pee-pee half-an-hour before
arriving in an Olympic venue city.  So he goes, frowns at the
stewardess when he comes out, and is immediately bounced by
no less than three armed marshals when he sits down. Now he's
facin' 20 years in the slammer for going pee-pee when he shouldn't.
The rest of the passengers, while this guy is getting rousted by the
marshals, are forced to sit with their hands on their heads, like a
bunch of prisoners headed for the gulag.  Then a few hours after the
opening ceremonies, the life flight wanted to take off to go get a
heart from a donor; all of the pilots were cleared in advance, all had
extensive background checks, but the SS (who are in charge of the
overall security for the games) said no can do, so either the guy
died or the heart went to someone else, and the poor soul is still
waiting for his transplant.  In fact, given that one of Osama bin
Laden's goals was to make America a different place that it was on
Sept 10, then unfortunately I have to think that he suceeded.

I can't say I mind the crowds of tourists; I've always maintained that
tourism is a happy industry if not a completely clean one; people
on tour are generally in a good mood and always willing to spend
money. In fact I've always thought, when I hear the Moabites
[people in Moab, Utah, a tourist town in the SE corner of the state]
complaining about the lycrads, "better than a uranium processing
plant!"  And downtown SLC is transformed, it's like a real city
instead of a quasi-vatican it's becoming.  Crowds day and night,
smoking, drinking, carrying on.   All sorts of interesting people and
things going on.   In fact I wouldn't even mind if the tourists come
back; just leave the storm troopers at home, please!

So tonight we're going to go downtown and poke around, go to Bud
World, the ThuringiaHaus (excellent beer there!); the big Samsung
expo, and I'm going to hit the scalpers and see if I can scare up
some event tickets, although Sunday might be the best day for
that, with the events on Monday.  We're have some for
the women's slalom finals on the 22nd, but if I could find a scalper
desperate enough (and again, by all reports a lot of them are losing
their shirts on ticket sales) to sell me tickets for the K120 jumping
on Monday for face value or less I'd sure go see that.  Apparently
the concerts on the medals plaza are going begging; Dave
Matthews was all but empty the other night.  I'd like to see a
medals ceremony but they've made it where you can't get into the
medals plaza without a concert ticket, and those were lottery only.
I don't care about the concerts, but I would like to see the
ceremony.  We'll see what happens tonight.  The real par-tay is up
in Park City, they've closed off Main Street and I guess it's just a
huge drunken brawl every night.  Sounds great!  We're going up
there on Sunday.

And that's the latest from Olympia.  My apologies to the list for the
length but then as Mark Twain said, if I had time I would write a
short letter, but I don't so I'll write a long one instead.






Roy Webb, C.A.
Multimedia Archivist
Special Collections
J. Willard Marriott Library
295 South 1500 East
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
(801) 585-3073  //  fax (801) 585-3976
rwebb@library.utah.edu

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