RemyScalza.com: Independent Journalism

Olympic Winos: Great grapes at Vancouver 2010

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Vancouver’s Winter Games have an official credit card, cola and cold medicine, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there’s an official wine gracing Olympic tables.  Last week, I had a chance to cover the Olympic wine scene for Wine Spectator.  Among the highlights: discovering North America’s first Aboriginal-owned winery, tasting with Napa Valley wine royalty Margrit Mondavi and sampling the Olympics’ own brand of bubbly.   The reporting was included in a special Olympic Unfiltered column on WineSpectator.com.

Olympic Champion Lindsey Vonn says, ‘Cheese!’

WineSpectator.com

Inside the big Indian longhouse erected in the heart of downtown Vancouver, a bit of Olympic history is taking place. Vancouver 2010 marks the first Olympic Games ever in which an Aboriginal community—Canada’s First Nations peoples—has participated as an official host. Guests at the Chief’s House, as the quirky, postmodern Aboriginal Pavilion is known, enjoy traditional Inuit throat singing, buffalo burgers and wines from North America’s first native-owned winery . . . .

Click here for the full article on the Wine Spectator site.

Olympics for Procrastinators: So you still wanna come to Vancouver

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Like birthdays and anniversaries, Olympics tend to be the kind of thing that sneaks up on you.  Next Friday, the 21st installment of the Olympic Winter Games kicks off in Vancouver.  Now, I live here.  For at least the last five years, it’s been just about all anyone has talked about.  But I know that the rest of the world has had more pressing things to worry about than crowning the next Nancy Kerrigan.  The good news is that if you still want to come, there are plenty of flights, beds and tickets available (For a price, of course).  I broke it all down for The Washington Post.

Vancouver Snapshot: Last-minute travelers’ sprint is a quadrennial Olympic event

By Remy Scalza, Special to The Washington Post

So between slogging your way through the Great Recession and following the inaugural season of “Jersey Shore,” you haven’t had much time to think about the Olympic Winter Games starting in Vancouver, B.C., on Friday. But now, all of a sudden, those Morgan Freeman commercials for Visa — the ones with the slow-mo shots of Olympic glories past — have you in the spirit. You want in, front-row center, as the next generation of Apolo Ohnos is crowned.

Is it too late? Maybe not.

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.

Vancouver side trips: Eagle capital of the world

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Maybe Ben Franklin had it right.  Turkey booster until the bitter end, Franklin railed against the choice of bald eagle as America’s symbol.  “He is a bird of bad moral character,” Franklin wrote. “He does not get his living honestly.”  Up close, it definitely looked that way.  I had a chance to visit Brackendale, B.C., the world’s self-proclaimed bald eagle capital, while researching a story for The Washington Post.  A few eagles kind of looked like the majestic bird on the back of the quarter, but most were busy tearing into rotten salmon, which end up floating in the rivers after spawning is over.  One local lady called them nothing but big seagulls.  Still, it was pretty impressive to see dozens all in one place.

Vancouver snapshot: Bald eagles find a home in Canada

By Remy Scalza; Special to The Washington Post

The highway turnoff is easy to miss. On the rugged stretch of mountain road that connects Olympic cities Vancouver and Whistler, B.C., just past the midway point, is a small, handmade sign. Look hard and you’ll see a bald eagle in profile, beak painted a brilliant yellow, beady eye aglow.

Next stop: Brackendale, self-proclaimed World Eagle Capital.

“One year, we counted 3,769 bald eagles in one day,” says 40-year resident and avian enthusiast Thor Froslev. “You practically had to have a hard hat on to go outside.”

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.

The Dark Side of Japanese Dining: Izakayas

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There was a time, not too long ago, when the closest thing to Japanese food you could find outside Japan was Benihana.  Then the came the sushi craze, introducing North America to the wonders of the California roll.  Now Vancouver – long a pioneer when it comes to Asian cusine – finds itself in the midst of another culinary wave from Japan: the izakaya invasion.  A sort of Japanese pub, izakayas are rowdier and more debauched than any sushi joint.  I had a chance to check a few out for this article for The Washington Post.  

Vancouver snapshot: Japanese cuisine beyond sushi

Welcome to the dark side of Japanese dining: izakayas. Greasier and louder than a sushi joint, these Japanese pubs have invaded Vancouver, B.C.

Izakayas have reportedly been around for a few hundred years in Japan. Their patrons, mostly men, congregate after work to drink and snack on deep-fried tofu, chicken and savory salads — the buffalo wings and nachos of a parallel universe — before heading home, often roundly soused. But like the hibachi and sushi before it, izakaya cuisine has found a global following, and Vancouver, with its strong ties to Japan, is at the forefront of the izakaya explosion.

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.

Short on Hotels, Olympic City Vancouver Gets Creative: Tents, RVs and hostels to house fans

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If you’ve never experienced the build-up to an Olympics first-hand, imagine all the hype surrounding the Super Bowl, but  stretched out for years and years instead of just a few weeks.  In Vancouver, which is hosting the 2010 Winter Games in February, the Olympics have been front-page news since about 2003.  Officials have spent $1.6 billion on, among other things, the snazziest curling rink the world has ever seen.  One thing they may have neglected, however, is a place to put all the people expected to show up.  I wrote about the city’s Olympic accommodation crunch in an article for Sunday’s Washington Post travel section.

Vancouver’s hotel shortage sets off an Olympic scramble

By Remy Scalza; Special to The Washington Post

It doesn’t take a gold medal in arithmetic to see that the numbers didn’t add up.

About 250,000 spectators are expected to pour into Vancouver, B.C., for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in February. Yet according to the city’s Olympic committee, only a paltry 10,000 hotel rooms were available to them. With three months to go before the Opening Ceremonies, the pool of rooms at hotels in and around Vancouver — from highway HoJos to the Four Seasons — has essentially dried up.

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.

Aboriginal Tourism 2.0: Canada's First Nations Court Olympic Tourists

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Around Vancouver, several Indian bands are rewriting the book on Aboriginal tourism in the lead-up to the Olympic Games, moving away from tepee villages and kitschy gift shops and embracing more authentic and sophisticated experiences.  I checked out a few of the new Aboriginal offerings in an article for The Washington Post:

As hosts of the Vancouver Olympics, First Nations are ready to welcome the world

By Remy Scalza; Special to The Washington Post

It’s an Olympic first that has drawn few headlines. When the 2010 Winter Games open in Vancouver, B.C., in February, four Canadian Indian nations will be on hand — not as window dressing but as full-fledged hosts. “This isn’t just get out the drums and feathers for the Opening Ceremonies,” says Alex Rose, communications director for the Four Host First Nations, the society representing the four groups of Canada’s indigenous people who will host the Games. “Those days are gone.”

Largely gone, too, are the tepees, totem poles and tchotchkes that once defined aboriginal tourism in Canada. In their place has sprung up a new generation of indigenous travel experiences — from urban powwows to luxe native-owned wineries — aimed at courting the more than 250,000 visitors expected at the Games.

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.

Rolling Through Vancouver's Olympic-Size Sushi Scene

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Anyone who likes sushi – or Canadians – might be interested in this article I wrote, which appeared in Sunday’s Washington Post.

Rolling Through Vancouver’s Olympic-Size Sushi Scene

By Remy Scalza; Special to The Washington Post

It’s hard to say what was going through the minds of Vancouver’s Olympic planners when they came up with the mascots for next year’s Winter Games. To serve as one of Canada’s ambassadors to the world, they picked an earmuffs-wearing Big Foot that looks like Chewbacca. The city’s Olympic brain trust could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by recognizing a real symbol of Vancouver: a big piece of sashimi.

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.


Dodging Black Bears in Whistler's Olympic Village

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Host of the 2010 Winter Olympics, the village of Whistler in British Columbia is also home to glacial lakes and several provincial parks.


Bear bells are standard equipment for hikers in this part of Canada.  The bells – which look a lot like Christmas ornaments – are hung from backpacks and belts.  They give off a tinny jingle meant to scare off any bears in the area . . . unless they like Christmas music.

I always thought people with bear bells were a little paranoid.  Then I came to Whistler.  The site of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Whistler – which is just two hours by car from Vancouver – isn’t exactly a rugged wilderness.  In the swanky ski village, you’ve got your choice of five-star hotels, multiple sushi bars and plenty of alpine-chic clubs with techno music and antler chandeliers.

But just outside the village, the mountains close back in.  A network of provincial parks links snow-covered peaks with glacial lakes and huge tracts of unsettled wilderness.  All of which is great for hikers and also, apparently, for bears.   Driving to a trailhead on the outskirts of town, I see my first black bear of the trip.  It’s six feet from nose to tail, with a head the size of a toaster oven.   As I drive by, it ambles up a highway embankment with the unhurried walk of an animal at the top of the food chain.

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