Olympic Preview: Calgary Stirs Up A Warm Welcome

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An effort to get restaurants to hold the line on prices and avoid the black eye earned by greedy gouge artists in Lake Placid eight years ago has met with only mixed success. "We are not going to raise our prices in any way, shape or form," says Wayne Bullard, a partner in a group that owns four restaurant- bars along the city's liveliest strip on "Electric Avenue." But only 91 of the area's 1,300 restaurants have pledged to comply with voluntary restraints.

Other prices have escalated. Last winter an adventurous tourist could have had a bone-rattling ride down the Olympic bobsled run for $20. Before the ride ! was closed to tourists last month, the same 60 seconds of terror cost $39. A simulated bobsled run at the Olympic Center downtown is free but is a pale imitation of the real thing. The equally free simulation of the 90-meter ski jump, however, is realistic enough to discourage all but the most demented from thinking about attempting the actual hill. Fortunately, that is a thrill forbidden to foolish amateurs.

One welcome thrill for visitors carrying U.S currency: the greenback goes 27% further in Calgary. Despite the battering the dollar has taken virtually everywhere else, Canadians still refer to it as "real money." A few other measurements differ as well. Nostalgia buffs will be able to buy gasoline once more at Esso stations, but it is sold by the liter, not by the gallon. And then there are the speed limits, which are delineated in kilometers per hour. Calgarians, like most Canadians, are unusually law abiding by American standards. When it comes to speeders, the Mounties almost always get their man. Visitors should slow their pace and accept that Calgary is a small town in spirit. Says Mayor Klein: "People here still say 'Hi' to strangers on the street." By that measurement, whatever the weather, everyone seems certain to have a warm Winter Games.