London 2012 Legacy Thread cont'd.

[JMarkSnow2012]

20 hours ago, zekekelso said:

Considering these guys filmed themselves breaking into the stadium and then posting the video for all to see, I don't think they have a proper appreciation of risk and consequences.  

Given that the Night Scape channel has been posting similar videos for a year or so now, it's possible that they have a very precise appreciation of risk and consequences. They don't seem to have "broken" into the stadium, just entered it without permission, which is a very different legal concept.

[timitimi]

Hello!

 

I would like to ask your support for my dissertation, It is about the Super Bowl and Olympics ads. Filling of the questionnaire is about 2 mins. Thank you in advance!

 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1bokWhbQ_bFhuTad4Ah71OOph3ZoOfPVwJonzgIKRYls/viewform?edit_requested=true

[JMarkSnow2012]

Another autumn, and another sunrise wander round the Olympic Park. Quite a lot of cyclists and joggers on the main routes; numerous parents & kids just starting to arrive as I left (around 9:30 am, just as the sun broke through the clouds of course). A few photos:

The "wild" areas are coming along quite nicely.

- though it'll be interesting to see what the park administrators do about informal human contributions to the semi-natural landscape.

That little gaggle of hi-vis types may be discussing progress on the mounting of the exterior video screen, or they may be wondering how they can get the radio system requested by the police installed as quickly as possible !

- and will the general maintenance budget for Park facilities prove higher than expected?

Here's another big capital investment in progress at Carpenters Lock

- and one of the biggest investments of all, starting with a little gentle public engagement.

Finally, i wonder if there's anything on at the Velodrome ...

[JMarkSnow2012]

Famously, the new Wembley Stadium received a huge amount of National Lottery money at the end of the 20th century on the understanding that it would be convertible from football to a 65,000 seat national athletic stadium for use in major competitions like the Olympics, only for it to be decided that the conversion process was so expensive and so time-consuming, it could never in reality be used. That consideration very probably guided the original decision to make the new Olympic Stadium a temporary structure, to be demolished after the Games leaving a simple athletics bowl with a realistic 25,000 capacity As we know, some were unhappy about what appeared to be a wasteful strategy, so a clumsy conversion of the structure for football use has been made, using moveable seating banks.

And now the Olympic Stadium faces its Wembley Moment. Once again, it is claimed that in practice, the conversion between summer athletics use and winter football use is much more expensive (£8 million as against a budgeted £300,000) and time-consuming (15 days as against a planned 5 days) than promised. The logical solution to this problem, as at Wembley, is to abandon the athletic fixtures ...

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/nov/03/london-stadium-chairman-david-edmonds-resigns-costs-investigation

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/nov/03/olympic-stadium-chris-baker-ravi-sharma

[JMarkSnow2012]

At lunchtime I commented in a thread about belated video coverage- and then this evening I found this, which was released in May this year, nearly four years late, in aid of the Gurkha Welfare Trust:

 

 

[JMarkSnow2012]

Continuing the "unexpected discovery of material that's been available for years but mysteriously hidden from searches"- I just reran a simple query for "olympic fireworks" to see if there had been any interesting additions from Rio, and I noticed a London one that looked unfamiliar. Some hours later, I find myself with around 40 videos, mostly uploaded within days of the 2012 Opening Ceremony, many of which have been viewed less than a dozen times (in one case, I seem to have been the first viewer apart from the uploader) and many of which are, perhaps significantly, the only videos uploaded by their makers.

Here are a couple of random examples (I was going to put in several, but I see the old "only the first two will be embedded" rule no longer applies).

 

[JMarkSnow2012]

Sorry, to clarify- these are additional to the very large number I already knew about. There are literally hundreds of videos of those two minutes of fireworks online, from all over east London (and indeed as far afield as the Northala spiral mounds, near Wembley).

[Rob2012]

https://www.facebook.com/officialcpfc/photos/a.10150416282795762.380453.168089120761/10154802982475762/?type=3&theater

[JMarkSnow2012]

1 hour ago, Rob. said:

https://www.facebook.com/officialcpfc/photos/a.10150416282795762.380453.168089120761/10154802982475762/?type=3&theater

That pic really does show the awkwardness of converting an athletics stadium to football mode. Yikes!

[JMarkSnow2012]

This year's almost-traditional Christmas update of my increasingly rambling study of the London 2012 Opening Ceremony, "By Strange Conveyance" includes shocking revelations about David Beckham's boat-ride, and a strongly-worded argument for banning national broadcasters from filming the Parade of Nations with their own cameras.

Available completely free as usual, in Kindle (mobi) and non-Kindle (epub), versions via:

http://www.pastpresented.info/marksnow/

 

PS: As the ceremony didn't feature Status Quo, I'll just say "Farewell Rick Parfitt" here.

[JMarkSnow2012]

Happy New Year, and also Oops.

There's a little tweak that I always forget when inserting images into files for conversion to ebooks, which results in very odd things happening. Revised, slightly less odd versions of the mobi and epub ebooks of "By Strange Conveyance" now available (still free of course):

http://www.pastpresented.info/marksnow/

[alicebrown111]

Hello, I am a final year university student studying at Sheffield Hallam University and I am currently completing my dissertation on the London 2012 Olympic Legacy. I am collecting opinions and data on the subject and would really appreciate any feedback on the topic. Below is the link if anybody would be interested in completing the survey and helping me with my research project.

https://surveyhero.com/c/f700ab8 

Thank you in advance. 

[JMarkSnow2012]

Another early morning before-anything-else-opens visit to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park yesterday.

The usual theme of big cranes and mountains of concrete ingredients still continues of course:

But the good news is that the greenery is definitely maturing- alongside an increasingly eclectic selection of lamp-standards:

The maintenance / janitorial work is being carried out with zeal:

Although some places are out-of-bounds even to staff:

[Rob2012]

Guide dog sleeping at the side of the London Stadium track ahead of World Para Athletics Championships....

https://twitter.com/craigspence/status/885454111533039616

[Rob2012]

From West Ham on Twitter

[JMarkSnow2012]

The weather over the Olympic Park on 27 July 2017 was almost the same as on 27 July 2012- totally random. The Park was geared up for a major sporting event again, but much else had changed. Apart from the redesign of the stadium, what's noticeable is how the landscape is maturing into a strange mix of robotically manicured lawns and wildness:

Early morning views above, evening below:

[Rob2012]

A few from tonight:

[mr.bernham]

New video posted by the B1M on London's olympic legacy five years on from the game. Great video: 

 

[Rob2012]

An "innovative retractable seating system" was NOT installed in the stadium, despite what this (otherwise very good) video says. They wanted to install one but the company hired to do so went bust, so they ended up installing basic scaffold seating which takes longer and costs more to move.

[JMarkSnow2012]

11 hours ago, Rob. said:

An "innovative retractable seating system" was NOT installed in the stadium, despite what this (otherwise very good) video says. They wanted to install one but the company hired to do so went bust, so they ended up installing basic scaffold seating which takes longer and costs more to move.

Good spot! There are other uncomfortable issues which the video touches on but could have explored in more depth, such as the definition of "affordable homes".

[Rob2012]

Well yes, but you could make that point for pretty much every development in London.

[JMarkSnow2012]

13 hours ago, Rob. said:

Well yes, but you could make that point for pretty much every development in London.

Yeah, sorry. I'm just permanently irritated by misleading labels. My belief is that the news media have a responsibility either to avoid using such glib official terminology, or to put it in context.

[yoshi]

So, Birmingham confirmed as probably the only bidder for the Commies 2022, with UK Athletics moving into the Alexander Stadium - a dedicated venue with more than enough seats for anything they'll regularly need. Meanwhile, West Ham are stuck at a venue that somehow seems to be getting LESS popular as it matures, that's badly compromised by the need to be available for athletics... How long before West Ham float the idea of making the OS football-specific? Or even moving back out to a new football-specific ground of their own?

[JMarkSnow2012]

10 hours ago, yoshi said:

So, Birmingham confirmed as probably the only bidder for the Commies 2022, with UK Athletics moving into the Alexander Stadium - a dedicated venue with more than enough seats for anything they'll regularly need.

Something like the London Stadium is useful for non-regular needs though.

50,000 capacity would not have been enough for the peak demand in this year's World Championships, and having a larger capacity encourages ambitious marketing; for example, this year's World Para Athletics Championships had a bigger attendance than all eight previous WPACs combined.

[JMarkSnow2012]

Launch event coming this week for a book which was publiched last month:

https://pagesofhackney.co.uk/event/dispersal-picturing-urban-change-in-east-london/

Event: Dispersal – Picturing urban change in East London

October 5 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm   £5

*Please note that this event will take place at Pages of Hackney, and not at Sutton House as previously advertised*

Join Marion Davies, Juliet Davis and Debra Rapp as they discuss their new book, Dispersal: Picturing Urban Change in East London, with Hackney resident and former Guardian journalist, Dave Hill.

Unparalleled in its detailed investigation into the impact of the 2012 Olympic Games on London’s East End, Dispersal paints a dramatic picture of the people and businesses displaced and affected by the development of the Olympic site, through documentary photography and investigative reportage.

 

See also these articles:

http://sites.cardiff.ac.uk/architecture/research-projects/dispersal-picturing-urban-change-in-east-london/

http://spitalfieldslife.com/2017/09/26/remembering-stratfords-lost-industries/