Red Bull Weekend Special Report

I trust you did NOT go to the Red Bull website to see that about 2/3 of the tickets were still available as at 11 AM Sunday

I trust you did not read the Red Bull press release that said this after Saturday's race:

• "WINDSOR, ON, June 5 /CNW/ - Britain's Nigel Lamb won the first Qualifying point of his career this afternoon by posting the fastest time in Windsor ahead of Sunday's fourth race of the 2010 season. Britain's Paul Bonhomme was second with Hannes Arch of Austria third and Canada's own Pete McLeod taking the sixth place position with his best flight of the season in front of a crowd of 48,000 spectators. Matt Hall's plane touched the surface of the Detroit River, with his wings and right wheel splashing off the top of the water. The Australian quickly recovered and returned safely to the Race Airport in his slightly damaged airplane."

Oh it's nice to get people to come to Windsor and spend. So do what you are supposed to do, believe the hype about why we spent $5M to give to a private company when numbers dropped from on both sides of the river from 750,000 in the first year to 300,000 last year to who knows how many really this year as local festivals were deprived of money for their events.

Read what could be the first draft of what is being prepared for Monday's newspaper. It is another one of those "Special to the Star" articles done by a freelancer I guess to justify what happened.

• "Security was tight at the Windsor waterfront today for the Red Bull air races. Thousands of police and military personnel from across the nation were brought into the City to protect against what was expected to be a mass demonstration by CUPE day care workers, parking enforcement officers and garbage collectors.
  
  An anonymous hard-liner stated "In fact, it did not matter whether they were there or not. We are going to say that we had great concerns while a couple of Star writers will say that we had every right to be prepared because after all we beat them during the 101-day strike and they were probably carrying a grudge.
  
  Blame it on the weather and blame any shortfalls in attendance on CUPE. After all, we need to keep those anti-labour fires going if we are going to use this as our way to be re-elected."
  
  Apparently, the security of the G20 leaders in Toronto may have been compromised by sending so many of the protective forces to Windsor. Government officials at all levels have refused to comment on the issue.
  
  Notwithstanding the cloudy skies, over 10 million people jammed into the waterfront. Mayor Edgar (aka Eddie) Francis exclaimed, “This is just like New York City's Times Square on New Year’s Eve. In fact, there are more people here than in Times Square, Trafalgar Square and Saint Peter's Square combined.
  
  Business has been so good at some of the downtown establishments that many of the owners have paid off their line of credit for the next 30 years.”
  
  Sources have told us that the Mayor was seen speaking to the race organizers to convince them to come back to Windsor again. The Mayor really did not care if they did or did not but wanted to ensure that he would get the credit if the Province was dumb enough to spend another five million dollars or more per year for the air races in the future.
  
  The Minister of Finance, Dwight Duncan, was ecstatic. “I expect that a trillion dollars or more will be spent in direct and spinoff purchases by the time this weekend ends.
  
  Over a gagillion people from across the Universe are tuning in to watch the big show in Windsor. I guarantee that there will be more UFOs sighted over Windsor during the next year than any other place on Earth!
  
  Trust me, if they say ‘Take me to your Leader,” they do not mean Dalton McGuinty.”
  
  Nodding yes to everything being said by Spanky, Ward 10 candidate, Dwight-Lite, said ‘If only we had introduced earlier the HST that I worked on along with the Minister, we could have paid off Ontario’s entire Budgetary deficit on the business generated this weekend alone.”
  
  Apparently, he was upset that the traffic lights were not synchronizing properly or another 5 million people could have made it to the waterfront in time to watch the races. Instead, they were shuffled off to the East End Arena to help boost revenues there.
  
  The President of Windsor Airport, Ms Nazzani, was very pleased with the business generated at YQG “We had so many planes land at the Airport that we had to turn away over 500 jumbo jets who wanted to come here for the big weekend.”
  
  The only one who appeared to be upset was the Minister of Economic Development, Sandra Pupatello. "Instead of being able to gallivant around the way I did at the Paris air show, Edgar and Dwight have me stuck in a kitchen making bacon and cheese quiches for all of the high-fliers who have come in for the races."
  
  All in all, the weekend was a huge success. Even if it was not, we are going to say it was and who is going to say that we are wrong.