Carbo-NationBy David Fleming
JUST WHERE exactly does one begin chronicling the biggest sporting event in
the history of mankind? Thankfully, the answer came quickly as we approached
Atlanta for the first time earlier this week. While our driver circled the
downtown area for an hour or two trying to get her bearings, she was kind
enough to point out a giant red structure near Centennial Olympic Park. As we
drove up Spring Street, I sat right up in my little shuttle-bus seat, eager for
my very first Olympic moment, squinting for a glimpse, camera at the ready. And
there it was . . . yellow star, purple star, blue star and then the rest of the
familiar Olympic torch logo of the 1996 Atlanta Games came into focus. Oooh. It
was huge. Had to be, like, 200 feet in the air. But wait, madame bus driver
from hell, what the heck is that thing perched on?
"That there's a giant Coke can, honey," she said beaming with civic pride, her map of Atlanta, clearly up-side down. "It's 11 stories high." There stands a 165-foot bottle of soda--with an FAA-approved light at the top to alert low-flying aircraft--marking the center of Coca-Cola Olympic City, a 12-acre park full of shops, soda, theatres, soda, interactive games and, some more vats of soda, accessible for just 13 bucks a head.
Indeed, it was the perfect place to start our Olympic adventure. What I didn't need to know, but was alerted to as we entered the park, was that if our colossal bottle of pop here was filled it could hold roughly six and half million ounces, enough for 829,446 individual servings, or enough belching power to inflate the Georgia Dome for a year. The only sodas available inside the gates, however, are from vendors at $2 a pop, so to speak. And whatever you do, do not smugly ask the sweaty teenager behind the counter earning video game money, if you can have a Pepsi. "Ah, hah. Yup. That one got old the first day, sir." The park, by the way, opened in May. When we asked another helper to tell us the security procedure for someone drinking a Pepsi, she brushed her forefinger across her neck, "Off with their heads," she said. I'm no fool, so I scored a few sodas and wandered past the Coca-Cola misting area used to cool some of the 8,000 visitors here each day. Around the corner is the obstacle course, where patrons bounce off bean bags and trip over barriers in our talk show society's never-ending quest to embarrass itself in public. On a global Olympic scale, I'd say this park does the trick.
It was on past the retail store where one can purchase cola underwear or an Olympic gold medal ($12). Next we visited the Discovery Channel bungalow full of some pretty cool stuff on loan from the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. Parked inside are a pair of track athletes from the African country of Burundi signing autographs for a throng of wired tourists. Burundi being the neighboring country of Rwanda, this scene begs the question: Are these athletes in greater danger at home near the genocidal land of Rwanda or here, in this tent, surrounded by fidgety tourists geeked up on artificial flavoring? It was here, and then down at the interactive tent, where I began to notice the effects of a city filled with Children of the Corn Starch. Waiting in line to play hoops with a virtual Grant Hill, race a digital Jackie Joyner Kersee or hurl pitches at a two-dimensional Cecil Fielder, you notice four and five-year-olds swinging from hand rails and bouncing off display cases with glossy, bug-eyed stares like some kinda wind-up Woody dolls gone berserk. So I stepped into the pitching cage to face Cecil, mostly to get away from the Coke kiddies.
I bring the heat. Ball one. Knuckler, ball two. My slider then bounces twice before hitting the screen. Cecil, I think, is giggling at me. Or is it the Coke kiddies? My only recourse is to bring a little virtual chin music that actually beans Fielder in his ample midsection. I leave quickly, my numb pitching arm cradled in my left hand, thankful not to be pitching against Albert Belle. As I close my eyes briefly upon returning to the daylight I can see the Coke insignia on the inside of my lids. Note to the PR people, who spent millions upon millions to plaster insignias everywhere in this city, including on huge billboards overlooking the park, blocking out the sun: Mission accomplished, you weenies. Park helper Florence Lasure disagrees. She doesn't drink Coke (hand in your badge, Flo) and she admits, as a member of the medical profession, that the soda is not exactly, uh, good for you. Flo, by the way, is passing time in the shade by repeating the name of Turkey's Olympic weightlifting champion Naim Suleymanoglu in a sort of sing-song rhyme. "Sooo-leee-man-ga-looo . . . Soooo-leeee-man-ga-looo wooo-woooo. Oh I just love to say his name, please, say it with me," she begs passing park patrons before defending her employer.
"I think with all the junk they've put up all over the place recently, Atlanta looks like a carnival," she said. "But Coke, oh I think Coke has been rather conservative, doing everything in good taste." Flowing behind Flo is a 30-foot bottle of Coke with a giant straw leading out of the bottle top, connecting life-size portraits of people enjoying the soda at the Olympics. The nightmarish straw, which is the size of a sewer pipe, is piercing each person right through the heart. Welcome to the Atlanta Olympics.
photographs by Peter Kay
SI Olympic Dailies
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