Superbowl XL and Sin City

It's surreal around here. We're located just across the river from Detroit, Michigan - home of Superbowl XL. My hometown of Windsor has always had a reputation as a "place to party". The Casino built in this city was the first in Ontario, and was probably the final straw that broke the camel's back when Detroit city council, after countless failed attempts to get public approval for casinos, realized they needed to build some to stop the flow of American gamblers to our fair Canadian city.

We have lots of licensed massage parlours, where, for a fee, you can basically get anything you want - completely legally, by the way, as long as you are properly registered and licensed by the city. And the strip clubs in this city rival anything you've ever seen in Las Vegas. Oh yeah, since Canada has excellent trade relations with Cuba, Windsor is also home to many cigar parlours - catering to the American crowd that crosses the one-mile-long bridge (or tunnel) that links our two countries.

Still, with all that Windsor has ALWAYS offered to our guests from America, the media somehow got locked into this "Sin City" moniker in relation to the Superbowl. Our reaction has probably been a bit mixed. While nobody wants their city to be referred to as "Sin City" (except maybe cities in Nevada), the tourism business in this town has gone absolutely bonkers these past few days. The local papers carry stories of the many rumours circulating about people such as Tom Cruise, Ben Affleck, and Jessica Alba - some or all of whom may be somewhere in our city.

Blue-collar town Detroit, meanwhile, seems to have aligned itself with like-minded Pittsburgh; with many on-air radio personalities openly supporting the Steelers. At least here in Windsor, our local papers are trying to provide equal and balanced coverage.

But back to the surreal atmosphere... each year for the July fireworks, we have several hundred thousand viewers camped out on both banks of the Detroit River to watch the show. A good portion of the crowd take their places on the Windsor side of the border, where the legal drinking age is lower, the Canadian dollar is (still) worth less than the American dollar, and there is virtually no crime. That crowd is gathered for only one day. The crowds around here lately have been building for the past week - to the point where the number of out-of-town license plates is rivaling the number of local plates.

I'll actually be a bit sad to see the city go back to its own, normal, obscurity after Sunday's game. Still, for those fleeting moments when some football viewers get to see Canada "up close", and seem so surprised when they find we talk the same language, dress like they do, and even have temperatures above the freezing point in the middle of winter, I get to smile a wide, proud smile in the knowledge that each one of us Windsorites did our part to welcome the world.