Little Man, as he suggested I call him, is the type that makes a good bartender wary. He is old enough, so that despite being clean-shaven, he still looks rough. He has thin, smoke-yellow hair that curls out the back of a tight fitting ball cap. And the red in his eyes suggests a hard day’s work or a long night out. He doesn’t look at a menu, he just wants a “rum and coke – short.” He orders the next drink before he takes the final sip of his last. And he averages twenty minutes and two cigarettes per round. Otherwise, he says and moves very little. So, it’s difficult to tell whether he is drunk or not. If I cut him off now I risk a scene. If I don’t, I risk having to call the paramedics to pick him up off the bathroom floor.
To the disappointment of many Vancouver business owners, the Winter Olympics and the associated Olympic Party have been mostly contained to a small section of downtown. Record numbers for restaurants within the designated areas have meant empty seats for those of us on the outside. It feels a lot like when nobody shows up to your birthday because everyone opted to go to the cool kid’s party, which unfortunately, was planned for the same day. This uncharacteristically warm and sunny Winter Olympics has felt particularly chilly on the south side of the bridge.
As it turns out, Little Man was also feeling the chill. When he overhears my boss and I lamenting about the drop in sales, he cuts in, “it’s the worst Olympics I’ve ever seen.” To my surprise and relief, Little Man is coherent and well spoken. He tells us that he is a scalper from Toronto, in town to do some business during the games. He says he did good numbers in Nagano, Atlanta and Salt Lake but he is finding it remarkably difficult to offload his tickets here. As I understood him, fewer tickets than you would think were actually released during the lottery. Many seats found their way onto the black market as sponsors and games-associated people (including athlete’s family members) sold their allotted shares to ticket brokers rather than attend the events. “You have no idea,” he explained, “most of it came out the back-end.” Because of VANOC’s pledge (and to my knowledge, total lack of follow through) to hunt down those who would try to sell tickets above face value, public perception of availability and price is completely skewed. People are scared to sell and scared to buy, and oblivious as to how many tickets are actually available for half decent prices.
Little Man drinks rum and cokes at my bar for three hours. He talks about brokers losing millions and blocks of tickets and software programs called spinners, which eat up seats in online ticket sales. Somewhere in our conversation, he admits that the economy is partially responsible for the downturn in his business – so maybe it’s not all our fault. We talk about other things too: what he did before scalping, how Vancouver’s transit system compares to Toronto’s and how his daughter wants him to cut his hair. He doesn’t get drunk and he doesn’t pass out in the bathroom. After his last round, he tips me well. I buy him one more for the road.
I confess that I was skeptical about how much the games were going to do for our small operation kilometers away from any Olympic venue. The hockey is good business for now, but by the time this article gets posted, I might have lost a few shifts on account of Canada being knocked out by Russia in the quarterfinals. I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen. If not only for my sake or for Canada’s but also for Little Man’s – out there on the pavement for twelve hours a day, voice hoarse from yelling and cigarettes, trying to get rid of the lower bowl seats he bought on spec, for the Finland vs. Sweden gold medal game.
– A. Vice
