I’ll See Your Eiffel Tower and Raise You the Great Wall of China
It’s a charming custom: there is a Big Game of one sort or another and the mayor of one town makes a public bet with the mayor of the other.
Most usually they bet some food or other for which their town in justly famous, say a slab of ribs if the town is one of those famous barbecue type towns, or a steak dinner if it is one of the stockyard towns.
Nice. Perfectly nice!
But a custom that has been worn smooth over the years and now seems lacking in impact.
I’d say first that you never see this outside of mayor circles, which tells me that it never really caught on with the working man.
You will look in vain across the wide floors of our emporiums of gambling for windows staffed by friendly hostesses inviting you to bet a well-cut Kansas City strip against a player across the country who has offered a ham and cheese on rye against any and all competitors.
It would be frowned upon to walk into the casino carrying a platter containing pickled herring, a helping of weinerschnitzel, a full dollop of mashed potatoes and gravy, and a pineapple upside down cake for dessert, slap it down on the table, and tell the dealer to bring a bottle, a pile of betting chips, and a deck of cards.
If it hasn’t spread to the masses perhaps the only thing to do with these bets is to crank up the intensity.
“Mayor,” the one mayor, let us say of New York City, might offer to the other mayor over the phone. “Those are some fine boys you have on that football team of yours but I’m willing to bet that they can’t hold a candle to our local lads. I’m willing to back that up by betting the Chrysler Building.”
Now this is a bet that is going to get the attention of the media.
The Chrysler Building!
This is a man who is so sure of his team’s dominance in the upcoming contest that he is willing to wager a major piece of urban real estate.
Such a wager puts the other mayor into a sticky position.
He cannot say under the circumstances, with the cameras rolling and the reporters taking down every word, that he is willing to meet The Chrysler Building with a full platter of his town’s world famous burnt ends.
This would have a flattening effect on the members of the audience and seem a letdown.
Their feeling is that these burnt ends may indeed by worthy of their high reputation among natives, but falls pretty short of The Chrysler Building.
The Mayor of the Second Part, thinking quickly, says, “well, mayor, it doesn’t seem fair to take your money like this if you insist on betting The Chrysler Building, which I must say is going to look mighty pretty in our very own downtown once we find a place for it. But to keep this a sporting wager, I’ll meet your Chrysler Building and raise you The Grand Canyon.”
Well, now you hear a sharp intake of breath from the assembled multitude. While this first mayor has only offered a thing of concrete and steel, the esteemed Mayor of the Second Part has put a Wonder of the World on the line.
This is a bet!
It is the type of thing that gets the blood of the average citizen stirring.
Not everyone is going to like it. There are naysayers to every new scheme that shows any spark of genius at all.
There will be a number of people who have jotted down the address of The Chrysler Building and don’t want to go to the trouble of changing every blessed rolodex card and cell phone address book so as to keep them up to date.
There’s signage and promotional material at stake as well, with every “this way to the Chrysler Building, three miles ahead” having to be rooted out and disposed of, and brochures in all the hotels in the region having to X out The Grand Canyon with a black magic marker should the bet go south.
By the same token, a large number of people have grown fond of The Grand Canyon being exactly where it is right now.
If the Golden Gate Bridge is put into play there will be an entirely reasonable objection from some commuters who now wonder exactly how it is they are expected to get across that bay of theirs.
These are details that can be worked out by committee after the fact.
The point I would like to get across is that now we are talking. Now there is something at stake in this athletic contest. Now these cities have some skin in the game.
On the international scene the foreign minister of a competitor country will know that we mean business when we bet The Washington Memorial that we can too have peace in our time, and the Capitol Building that our beet exports are better than their beet exports. This tells these foreign governments that play time is over and it is time to either put up or shut up.
Perhaps this scheme isn’t practical as I’ve laid it out here and it needs more thinking through. I suppose in reality you’d want to start with smaller stakes such as Municipal Sewage Station #2 against the opponent’s branch public library, but you take my point.
Raising the level and the quality of these bets between cities in this manner will instill the sporting spirit like no other, and will make the world of difference in viewership.
In addition, moving all these monuments and natural wonders of the world is going to be a windfall for the moving and U-haul industries, which can use a shot in the arm as much as any of us.
