Vandalizing the VANOC clock?

by Kaitlin | February 23, 2007 at 12:28 pm | 421 views | add comment | 0 recommendations

2010 Countdown Clock presentation at the VAG

Beyond Robson posted a link to this story today, which indicates that there is a definite notion of public distress/distaste/dissatisfaction with that damn countdown clock at the Art Gallery. We posted a few stories about this when it was first unveiled:

From the Downtown Eastside Enquirer

From clorenz1 and the CBC

Now it seems that the bad feelings are leading to sideways encouragement to vandalize...or are they?

The latest issue of Vancouver's Georgia Straight contains a poll asking "Is VANOC encouraging vandalism by placing the Countdown Clock in such a prominent place?" This came out in response to the placement of the Olympic countdown clock outside the Vancouver Art Gallery. The underlying implication of the poll question is that anti-Olympics residents are the type of people who would deface or destroy public property - and might very well be entitled to do so.

Fortunately, the Straight had the integrity to publish the following comment from professor and associate director at the SFU school of criminology, Neil Boyd: "There's a constituency that supports the clock. To ask, 'Does that encourage vandalism?' is to say that if you disagree with something you ought to be entitled to vandalize it, and I don't think that's a reasonable assumption."