I lived in Austin during the period when Musk was choosing what city was going to have the dubious privilege of hosting the Cybertruck giga-factory. While it wasn't as intense as this, I remember there being all sorts of local businesses flashing Tesla branding and trying to play into the hype, even if most the population was less than thrilled about the prospect of it. I even recall Tulsa, which was another top contender, painted their landmark Miner statue to resemble Elon Musk. At the time, I saw some tweet that said, "In the future cities will be going into the economic equivalent of gladiatorial combat to flatter billionaires into setting up sweatshops in town", or something to that effect. Hyperbolic? Maybe. But I definitely remember thinking that it was the way of the future. Seems like I wasn't mistaken.
That seems entirely plausible. I also imagine we'll have actual corporate cities, a la Disney--the most extreme for the most wealthy would a la Storyliving concept which they announced a few years ago.
"Cleaning" up homeless people before a big event is unfortunately pretty common. I think the first time I heard about it was the Super Bowl in Detroit. The city rounded up homeless folks and gave them a "super bowl party" which I'm pretty sure was a shelter or block of hotel rooms where they probably weren't kept against their will, but strongly encouraged not to go back to downtown until all the TV cameras and out of state fans and media had left.
Yeah, they did it in New Orleans and Edinburgh as well for this tour from what I read. In this case it doesn't help that the mayor (Olivia Chow, if you want to look this up) had a fiasco last year where asylum seekers were left wandering the streets.
I'm passing through Toronto right now and this has been really striking me. The weirdest thing to me has been all the signs around Union Station and elsewhere *advertising* the shows, "brought to you by Rogers". Like, it's not just that anyone who's remotely interested surely already knows she's in town - it's that even if somehow you *hadn't* known that, the information wouldn't even be relevant because the shows would have sold out long ago.
Yes, I've noticed the Rogers advertising push has been quite aggressive. I guess they might be trying to absorb some sort of goodwill from the public, since they're not exactly beloved...
The "moving the homeless for their safety" thing really smacks of "yeah we cleaned up San Francisco for Xi Jinping."
Definitely.
I lived in Austin during the period when Musk was choosing what city was going to have the dubious privilege of hosting the Cybertruck giga-factory. While it wasn't as intense as this, I remember there being all sorts of local businesses flashing Tesla branding and trying to play into the hype, even if most the population was less than thrilled about the prospect of it. I even recall Tulsa, which was another top contender, painted their landmark Miner statue to resemble Elon Musk. At the time, I saw some tweet that said, "In the future cities will be going into the economic equivalent of gladiatorial combat to flatter billionaires into setting up sweatshops in town", or something to that effect. Hyperbolic? Maybe. But I definitely remember thinking that it was the way of the future. Seems like I wasn't mistaken.
That seems entirely plausible. I also imagine we'll have actual corporate cities, a la Disney--the most extreme for the most wealthy would a la Storyliving concept which they announced a few years ago.
"Cleaning" up homeless people before a big event is unfortunately pretty common. I think the first time I heard about it was the Super Bowl in Detroit. The city rounded up homeless folks and gave them a "super bowl party" which I'm pretty sure was a shelter or block of hotel rooms where they probably weren't kept against their will, but strongly encouraged not to go back to downtown until all the TV cameras and out of state fans and media had left.
Yeah, they did it in New Orleans and Edinburgh as well for this tour from what I read. In this case it doesn't help that the mayor (Olivia Chow, if you want to look this up) had a fiasco last year where asylum seekers were left wandering the streets.
I'm passing through Toronto right now and this has been really striking me. The weirdest thing to me has been all the signs around Union Station and elsewhere *advertising* the shows, "brought to you by Rogers". Like, it's not just that anyone who's remotely interested surely already knows she's in town - it's that even if somehow you *hadn't* known that, the information wouldn't even be relevant because the shows would have sold out long ago.
Yes, I've noticed the Rogers advertising push has been quite aggressive. I guess they might be trying to absorb some sort of goodwill from the public, since they're not exactly beloved...