The residents in Vancouver, Canada’s host city for the 2010 Olympics, are not impressed by the costly structure and “corporate rollout” of this year’s Olympic games. 

NPR has more. 

In British Columbia, eager crowds have turned out to watch the Olympic torch make its way to Vancouver for the opening ceremony on Friday. Canadians can't turn on the TV without seeing commercials telling them how excited the country is getting. But while fans and athletes are enthusiastic, the overall mood in the host city is a little more ambivalent.

Mark Cooper is one of the critics. He sits outside a Vancouver Starbucks, nursing a coffee and yelling his unsolicited opinion at anyone wearing an official Olympic jacket.

"Veto the Olympics!" Cooper cries. "Burn Olympics! Trash the Olympics!"

He says he thinks the Olympics are a waste of taxpayer money. Cooper's crankiness is extreme, but what's remarkable is how little back-talk he gets.

In fact, recent polling shows enthusiasm is declining: Only about 50 percent of British Columbians now see the games as positive for the province. Margot Young, a University of British Columbia law professor and longtime Olympic critic, says spiraling costs are partly to blame, but it isn't just the money that's souring the public mood.

Young says the "corporate rollout" of the Olympics is also to blame. Vancouver is Canada's San Francisco, and the city's liberal tendencies have run headlong into the Olympic organizers' increasing control over daily life.

"They want everybody to be smiling hosts, and you know, gladly not drive their cars for two weeks and put up with their business suffering for those two weeks, all for the greater good, which is the Olympics," Young says. "And for many people, the greater good isn't good enough."

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