Thursday, April 13, 2006
Of Gay Games Iceberg and Keeping Agendas Hidden from Crystal Lakers - Top of the Story
Talk about the tip of an iceberg.
Or, if you prefer, the nose under the camel’s tent.
The Crystal Lake Rowing Club appears to have used last Sunday's Greater Chicago Junior Rowing Championships as an entering wedge to obtain $7,000 in city hotel tax money without revealing that they had the July 16th Gay Games contest sewed up.
Lori Phelps puts it this way:
It looks like the Crystal Lake Rowing Club used this harmless off-season high school regatta to obtain equipment to run not only the high school event, but also the unmentioned mid-summer Gay Games Regatta...with the hope many others to follow.
The Crystal Lake City Council gave the rowing club $7,000 of a requested $14,900 in Hotel Tax money at its February 7th meeting. (See page 8.)
In return the club
Sunday’s regatta was so lacking in news value or so poorly promoted that not a single media mention occurred outside of McHenry County Blog’s articles one & two, except for this snippet at the bottom of Northwest Herald high school sports columnist Joe Stevenson’s Sunday column.
For the rest of the story, click here.
Or, if you prefer, the nose under the camel’s tent.
The Crystal Lake Rowing Club appears to have used last Sunday's Greater Chicago Junior Rowing Championships as an entering wedge to obtain $7,000 in city hotel tax money without revealing that they had the July 16th Gay Games contest sewed up.
Lori Phelps puts it this way:
The Gay Games and Crystal Lake Rowing Club claim that they seek inclusion and tolerance. However, it would appear that their actions of deception and dishonesty contradict their statements of wanting to benefit the good people of Lakewood and Crystal Lake.Last Sunday’s Greater Chicago Junior Rowing Championships certainly seems to epitomize both iceberg and the camel's nose analogies. (Marvelous pictures are on on it web site from Sunday's races, including this one.)
It looks like the Crystal Lake Rowing Club used this harmless off-season high school regatta to obtain equipment to run not only the high school event, but also the unmentioned mid-summer Gay Games Regatta...with the hope many others to follow.
The Crystal Lake City Council gave the rowing club $7,000 of a requested $14,900 in Hotel Tax money at its February 7th meeting. (See page 8.)
In return the club
promised to “raise awareness of Crystal Lake as the premier rowing venue for the upper Midwest, which will attract larger regattas in the future…which will draw many visitors to Crystal Lake’s hotel, restaurant and shopping businesses.”It said it would do so through
its “web site, on rowing websites, mailings, posters, flyers and word-of-mouth. It is expected that an event of this magnitude would garner newspaper special interest articles before the race.”The rowing club failed miserably in using the high school event to raise awareness, if media coverage is any measure of success.
Sunday’s regatta was so lacking in news value or so poorly promoted that not a single media mention occurred outside of McHenry County Blog’s articles one & two, except for this snippet at the bottom of Northwest Herald high school sports columnist Joe Stevenson’s Sunday column.
For the rest of the story, click here.
# posted by Cal Skinner : 10:51 AM
