By Chris Spindler
ADELAIDE — Grand Prix time has to be one of the most wasteful, stinking, noisy, dangerous and hateful weekends to spend in Adelaide.
There are fly-overs of air force planes, every shop displaying "their" car manufacturer's emblems, the constant screaming of engines heard across the city.
Burglaries, sexual harassment, rents and prices (despite the Grand Prix bargains) all increase.
For all this, South Australian taxpayers are required to pay $3.5 million, to cover the loss on this Grand Prix. This brings the cumulative loss to $15 million.
But don't worry, we're told: there is $20-30 million in "spin-offs" from hosting the Grand Prix. And so, only the average, everyday taxpayers will be out of pocket. Those who own the city and those who actually run the show are doing very nicely. It is rumoured the boss of the Grand Prix is paid $300,000 per year. After all, it's hard work losing $3.5 million.
Of course, the riffraff have to be cleaned off the streets and out of the way. Police harassment of homeless people, and in particular of Aborigines in Victoria Square, steps up.
The Adelaide City Council is even talking about making Victoria Square an alcohol-free zone, with the express purpose of keeping Aborigines out of the square and away from tourists' eyes.
One cannot just ignore it. The choice is not one of whether to go down to the east end of the city to savour the atmosphere, or to stay away from that end of town and the Grand Prix, but one of whether to flee into the country for a week or two to escape the event.
3.8 km of the city's streets are blocked off to form the actual track, as well as all access roads for the track, amounting to an entire section of Adelaide's busy streets being closed to the travelling public for a week leading up to the race and for weeks afterwards. This results in traffic jams on all the main roads around the area.
Even the peace and quiet of the local pub are shattered by noisy, drunken revellers, high on the sniff of petrol and the excitement of watching little pieces of fibreglass go past at 300 km per
hour in a flash of colour and a hell of a lot of noise.
Hindley Street, the centre of most of Adelaide's night-life, gets taken over for large drunken parties, making it a particularly unsafe area for women to walk around in on their own.
Adelaide's Rape Crisis Centres report an increase of sexual harassment over this period, a fact that does not get considered by the organisers or the commercial media.
The Advertiser, Adelaide's only and well-named daily newspaper, is full of news of the latest Grand Prix ace to sneeze. Its pages are taken up by huge pictures of Nigel Someone, who happens to have relatives here and who has been made the home town hero, even though the only reason he ever comes to Adelaide is to make lots of noise.
The Advertiser pushes the news back a few more pages at this time of the year to make way for huge pictures of airborne pieces of expensive and resource-wasteful machinery about to go sideways very hard into a concrete wall.
TV news in the evening is full of the pictures of the best crashes of the day.
What is not talked about is the waste of resources or the amount of noxious gasses given off by each vehicle or airplane. The invisible cloud of carbon monoxide that hangs over, not only the East End of the city, but the suburbs as well, must be enormous. The effects of this on the health of the population, not to mention the contribution to greenhouse effect, can only be guessed at.
The "spin-offs" are that big business and "entrepreneurs" make a lot more money. From selling T-shirts with "Blue Thunder" or "Get pissed", flags or anything else, to advertising for big business consumer items, the wheels of capital go round and the profits increase with them.
Possibly the only good thing to come out of the event is the increase in street entertainment. Buskers from all over take up their little circle of Rundle Mall as they try to make a living in front of the crowds who flock in for the weekend.
However, even here the machinery of capitalism catches up with them. Every person who dares to assume that they could provide entertainment for the crowds has to pay the Adelaide City Council an enormous sum in licence fees for the privilege.
And they call it "sport".