This is the only good story I've heard about the America's Cup

[starlady]

Note how the article, however, omits to mention that there are only four teams competing in this year's Larry Ellison Fest Billionaire Shindig.

In San Francisco, It's Rich Club, Poor Club

I have so many ridiculous Larry Ellison Fest/America's Cup stories. I wouldn't even know where to start.

Comments

[eruthros]

But it's going to ~bring life to the waterfront~!

Ugh it's so ridiculous I can't even deal.

[lilacsigil]

The only thing I know about the America's Cup is that Australia won it for the first time in eleventy billion years in 1983 and we all got the afternoon off classes to watch the final race on a tiny TV that was wheeled into the school corridor. (I couldn't see a thing so I secretly read a book because I was jammed in next to a bookshelf!)

[starlady]

The saga of this year's America's Cup is totally ridiculous. Where to start? With Ellison suing to be declared the winner of the last one? With his promising the city of San Francisco a 17-team competition that only has four? Because the boat design he selected is so expensive that only billionaires can finance a team, and so dangerous that it's already killed one person in practice? With the fact that Louis Vuitton can get $2 million refunded but the city of San Francisco is footing the bill for races for which tourists haven't come? With the fact that there is America's Cup crap in every museum in town and on the buses? With the fact that Larry Ellison is a monumental asshole who tried to privatize the Java programming language by lawsuit? Where, indeed, to start?

[legionseagle]

Those Americas Cup boats are insanely dangerous and ugly.

[starlady]

I actually saw the USA and NZ boats in practice on the Bay in June on the way to Alcatraz. They do look nice in the water, and they are hella fucking fast, but I am not the sailor in my family.

No matter what, though, it doesn't justify the "speedy water creatures" display in the Cal Academy of Sciences atrium that culminates in…the Americas Cup boats, and a pop-up gift shop with Americas Cup squid plushies.

[legionseagle]

Their speed is one of the reasons I'd say they were blitheringly unsafe; assuming the accounts of their speed I've seen in the press are accurate (up to 40 knots, yes?) they are going significantly faster (100%) than many cargo vessels which mean that the usual perception/reaction/assumption issues around on-board safety go by the board.