In episode 23 of the World's Fair Podcast, Secretary General Vicente Loscertales is our guest.
Mr. Loscertales has been secretary general of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) through the last several world's fairs. We talk about his tenure, the importance of expos, and United States participation in the organization.
In Episode 9 of The World's Fair Podcast, hosts Urso Chappell and John McGregor talk with Jason Griffing about the former sites of world's fairs as well as memorabilia collecting.
I'm pleased to announce that Episode 0 of The World's Fair Podcast is now live.
In Episode 0, John McGregor of Foundation Expo 88 and I discuss world's fairs in general, the nomenclature, and the how world's fairs are still relevant.
The audio isn't that great yet (which is why this is episode "zero"), but subsequent episodes should sound much better.
I'd love to hear what people think. Please let me know what you'd like to hear in the future. In future episodes, we'll be interviewing both fans and professionals involved in expos in the past and future.
Sadly, I was not at Expo 2008 for closing day. But, by all reports, it was pretty amazing. Thankfully, we live in the age of YouTube. A kind soul posted the closing ceremonies performance by Philip Glass (incidentally, my favorite composer), who also performed at Seville's Expo '92.
Expo 2008, being a relatively small world's fair, and Zaragoza, being a relatively small city, made for an amazing atmosphere. I can't recall a city being and an expo being so integrated into each other. The Expo seemed to start way outside the gates. The videos from the closing ceremonies show that. The fireworks running up and down the Ebro River connected the Expo site to the historic center of town. Like many visitors to Expo, my hotel was there, so I had the pleasure of walking to and from the world's fair site alongside the river.
Apparently, Expo 2008 had 5.65 million visitors, just shy of their projected 6 million. Interestingly, they overbuilt their parking facilities. They were mostly empty when I visited in June and apparently went mostly unused with 40.1% taking buses to the site and an amazing 18.5% traveling by foot! It's a wonderfully walkable city and I hope to visit someday in the future and see how the expo site is woven into the fabric of the city.
Here's Aragon TV's coverage (in 5 parts), including a great round-up video at the end:
This week, I was interviewed by a reporter from the Chicago Tribune about the current state of world's fairs.
With Chicago bidding for the 2016 Olympics in a big way, apparently the reporters were asking why they'd never heard about world's fairs in recent years.
In discussing a couple of the biggest culprits (the bankruptcy of New Orleans' 1984 World's Fair and current politics), I was reminded of Chicago's 1992 Exposition. New Orleans might have been the last U.S. world's fair, but it was not the last world's fair awarded to an American city. That distinction goes to Chicago which was approved for a joint exposition with Seville to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus's sailing to the Americas. Ultimately, it was canceled when the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois couldn't agree on who would guarantee funds for the project. The "Age of Discovery" theme at Seville's Expo '92 was originally to have applied to both cities.
I was surprised the reporter had never heard that Chicago had been awarded the 1992 expo, but I'll keep an eye out for his report... and take time to think of all of the expos that might have been, including Tokyo's 1996 project, Expo '96 Budapest, and Toronto's failure to bid for Expo 2015 earlier this year.
With any luck, we just might see a 2017 or 2020 exposition in North America that won't be cancelled.
