It is the best of times, it is the worst of times.
The Olympics have turned London into a tale of two cities, with shops, hotels,theaters and restaurants in the center suffering a tourist drought while crowdsthrong to the games a few miles to the east.
The huge Westfield Stratford City shopping center, smack beside the OlympicPark, is bustling with people visiting the games or simply catching some of theOlympic buzz while they shop. Cheerful London volunteers in pink and purplehave been using megaphones to help marshal the crowds at Europe's largest mall.
But across town at the West End — London's main shopping and entertainmentdistrict — it's eerily quiet. There's plenty of space at restaurant patiotables, no need to elbow others out of the way on the sidewalks, and unusuallyattentive staff in the stores.
"It's a fiasco," said Peter Forrest, a street performer in CoventGarden, an area of shops, pubs and restaurants around a piazza that's normallyteeming with tourists.
Forrest, painting whiskers to his face for his role as Doggie Man, said it'sbeen "the worst two weeks ever for business."
"It's because of Boris," he added grumpily. "Boris toldeverybody not to come."
Many businesses blame London Mayor Boris Johnson, along with London transitbosses and games organizers, for scaring people away from central London.
Anticipating a huge strain on the city's transit network from a predicted extramillion travelers a day, they have been warning Londoners for months to planahead, seek alternative routes or work from home.
The message has got through — but too well, tourism chiefs say.
Tom Jenkins, chief executive of the European Tour Operators Association, saidLondon normally sees 300,000 foreign visitors and 800,000 domestic ones a dayin August.
"These people have been told implicitly that they should stay away, andthey have done so," he said.
In Leicester Square — usually so chock-a-block with tourists that locals giveit a wide berth — a few families sat enjoying urban picnics on Wednesday, whilesales people tried to drum up business for theater ticket booths from a trickleof passers-by. Olympic volunteers, deployed to give directions, did not findthemselves in huge demand.
One American college student from Topeka, Kansas, who was traveling aroundEurope for the summer, was surprised at London's tame atmosphere.
"We thought it would be more crazy, with people everywhere, clubs packedand a frenetic sort of vibe like other cities we've been to in Europe,"Jenny Logan as she walked near the Houses of Parliament. "But so far, thenight life has been pretty tame and the little restaurants we wanted to explorein the cobblestone alleys have been deserted. What's going on?"
The gloom is repeated across London's major tourist attractions. The London Zoosaid it had 40 percent fewer visitors last week than during the same period ayear earlier. The Natural History Museum said its galleries were unusuallyquiet.
Theater producer Nica Burns told the Evening Standard newspaper that her venueswere "bleeding."
"For my six theaters, last week was the worst this year," she said."I think the Olympics are great — but I feel like I've been the bulls-eyefor the archery competition."
And there's even evidence people are postponing their nuptials until after thegames. Christopher Woodward, director of London's Garden Museum, said there hadbeen a steep drop in the number of wedding receptions being booked during theOlympic and Paralympic games. That period runs from July 27 to Sept. 9.
"No one is getting married in London in August," he said.
The ghost town effect is all the more galling to businesses because thepredicted transit chaos has not materialized.
Subway operator Transport for London says passenger numbers are up a modest 7.5percent. On Wednesday it discontinued much-mocked loudspeaker announcements insubway stations featuring the mayor warning travelers that the network would beunusually busy.
Olympic organizers say road traffic is lighter than usual, and many of thecontroversial "Games Lanes" reserved for official Olympic traffichave been handed back to regular use.
The slump is not confined to the West End. Greenwich in southeast London, hometo the Olympic equestrian competition, usually draws hordes of tourists to itslovely riverside park and historic sites including the Royal Observatory andthe tea clipper Cutty Sark.
Peter Vlachos, a marketing expert at the University of Greenwich, has beensurveying local businesses about the impact of the games. "One word cameback: Disaster," he said.
"There are 23,000 people walking past (local shops) in the morning to getto the grounds, and at the end of the day the same 23,000 people rushing backto their hotels," he said.
"The Olympics were sold to the business community as if it was going to bea huge windfall, and it hasn't materialized."
The government insists the situation is less bleak than business are making itsound.
"We are getting record numbers of people coming to London and overall thepicture in the East End of London is very encouraging," said OlympicsSecretary Jeremy Hunt.
And he insisted West End numbers also were holding up.
"It may not be quite as high as they hoped for, but there are businessesthat are marketed really effectively around the games that are seeing a bigboost and actually the West End is doing very well in the evening aswell," Hunt said.
Johnson, the mayor, was similarly defiant, insisting that "many, manythousands of people are flowing into London, the hotels are busy, the Olympicvenues are attracting huge numbers."
"These games are a one-off, an opportunity like no other to show London tothe world," Johnson said.
If the world shows up, that is. But for Londoners, at least, there's an upside.
"It's a bit relaxed," said teacher Sonya McCullough, standing in ashort line at the half-price theater ticket booth in Leicester Square."It's brilliant."