Smoke Break #742: On Punk Not Being Dead In The Forbidden City

When the Olympics came to China the world spotlight turned to a country synonymous with human rights abuse and by any measure a totalitarian police state. But under the surface is a growing movement of punks and misfits, the irony of which is not lost on Jefford as he roams this rebellious sub-culture a scratch under the surface of bustling Beijing.

This trailer is blocked in China.

The Message To Vancouver City Hall From Anthony Bourdain…

My friend Miguel recently loaned me his copy of Anthony Bourdain’s new book Medium Raw. It was a bit of a rambler, jumping from his sordid past to his comparatively shining presence, but one passage stuck with me, ringing as it does very applicably to Vancouver in the wake of City Hall’s recent baby steps toward bringing street food to local curbs (led by Councillor Heather Deal). Let me preface it by saying that I’ve been pretty hard on them in recent months – perhaps even hysterically so in some recent media interviews, saying among a great many other unkind things that our municipal government’s “.22 caliber imaginations were insufficient for our .357 Magnum city”. What I haven’t been is very constructive, and I regret that. So I offer this Bourdain snippet in the hope that it might prove useful to them if they really do want to cement Vancouver’s reputation as one of the world’s most exciting food cities. In the middle of discussing the impact of the recession on restaurants in New York, Bourdain writes,

If any good comes out of all the pain and insecurity, I can only hope that the Asian-style food court/hawker center is one of them. This institution is way overdue for an appearance (on a large scale) in America. Scores of inexpensive one-chef/one-specialty business (basically, food stalls) clustered around a “court” of shared tables. When will some shrewd and civic minded investors (perhaps in tandem with their city governments) put aside some parking lot-size spaces (near commercial districts) where operators from many lands can sell their wares? Sharing tables, as in classic fast-food food courts? Why, with our enormous Asian and Latino populations, can’t we have dai pai dong – literally, “big sign street”, the Chinese version of the indigenous food court, like they do in Hong Kong – or hawker centers, like in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur? Or “food streets,” like Hanoi and Saigon? The open-to-the-air “wet” taco vendors and quesadilla-makers of Mexico City?

Food preparation areas could be enclosed, as they are in Singapore, so food handling and sanitation issues can hardly be an unsolvable impediment: Singapore is the most rigorously nanny of the nanny states – with the most vibrant hawker culture. The hawker center could be an answered prayer for every hard-pressed office worker in a hurry, every blue collar worker on a budget, every cop on a lunch hour, as well as obsessive foodies at every income level. “Authenticity”; artisanship; freshness; incredible, unheard of variety – and for cheap? All under one roof? This, let us hope, is at least part of our future – whatever happens.

I usually won’t reference Singapore as a positive (not least because one small narcotics offense comes with a mandatory death sentence), but if they can do it, we most certainly could, too. Indeed, why stop at mobile food trucks?

Cool Thing We Want #418: Office In The Middle Of The Forest

While Scout’s new office in Strathcona offers some pretty cool perks (one can skate off writer’s block on a 10ft wide half-pipe), I can’t help but envy the setting enjoyed by those working for Spanish architecture firm Selgas Cano in Madrid. Theirs is built right into a forest’s floor. Check out more images of these desirable digs by Iwan Baan after the jump… Read more

Field Trip Photo: On Packing Up And Getting Back To Work

Our annual late-summer winding road trip through the Okanagan Valley and across the breadth of Vancouver Island to Tofino has come to a close. However much I tried to regularly post via iPhone, reception was pretty spotty in most of the places we went. Admittedly, this was largely by design, plus I was having too much jolly fun to bother. I’m glad to report that dear Westy (pictured above at our Tofino campsite) survived its 21st long haul under our broods’ care and is still not the least bit worse for wear (400,000kms and counting). We have hundreds of lovely photos to compile for a post on our journey (coming soon), but in the shorter term it’s back to the magic grindstone of print deadlines and daily updates right here on Scout. Thanks for sticking with us.

Smoke Break #741: Visualising The Number Of Threats To Earth

Gulp. This new and exquisitely unnerving animation is a view of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids and Near Earth Objects “discovered” over the last thirty years.

As asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones. The final colour of an asteroid indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system. Earth Crossers are red. Earth Approachers (perihelion less than 1.3AU) are yellow. All others are green

Notice how the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You’ll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter. These are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.

As the video moves into the mid 1990’s we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you’ll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.

At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that’s tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.

Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates snow no sign that we’re running out of undiscovered objects.

But not to worry, darlings. Jupiter has all our backs.

Field Trip Photo: On Camping For Food And Throwing Up Rocks

(posted via iPhone) We’re still in Tofino, enjoying the last throes of this, our final expedition of a summer that has been blessedly full of them. Yesterday, after watching the kids try in earnest to dig to China and a healthy twirl through the skateboard park, we spent hours at the beachfront cabin of a friend enjoying a marvellous spread of barbecued spot prawns, freshly shucked oysters, beach-fire smoked chicken, sweet corn, addictive flatbread, local sockeye, cold beer and crisp wine. This was followed by a game of “Welfare Skeet Shooting”, a very sporting endeavour that sees one person throwing up a large rock and the rest trying to boozily pick it off in mid-flight with stones of their own to giggled yells of “pull!” (despite a few close calls, no one was injured). Sated and long-shadowed, we then went on a seriously tripped-out jaunt through the Botanical Gardens for this small but always enthusiastic town’s annual Lantern Festival. The citizenry really get deep into it with costumes, stunning mobiles that look as if they’re about to burst into dangerous flames, and enough rolled and aromatic recreational fun tubes to steer a herd of elephants into forgetting where they put their trunks. Today, everyone in my party is either going surfing, kayaking or engaging in something called yoga, which leaves me largely alone at our beach camp to drink hot coffee and write by an omnipresent fire that seems to have an appetite equal to my own. The weather, which has been drearily reported since we arrived, dawned mercifully wrong once again. The sand is warm and the crows are well-fed in a blue sky that is, at noon, nearly free of clouds. Beyond them, oppressive billions of stars float in waiting. When they pop for this one last time, we will quietly obscure them with our smoke, drinking long and happy and smelling of the place we loathe to bid goodbye.

Field Trip Photo: Smoky Arrival On Tofino’s Mackenzie Beach

(posted via iPhone) Finally seated and cooking cheddar smokies for the kids while my friend Bobby tends to ears of fresh corn in the fire. A food writer colleague and her family are next to us, and we’ve joined our two campsites together for optimum enjoyment. We’re going foraging for chanterelle mushrooms today with cold beers. Good times are in the offing.

A Random Thought From The Road On The BC Ferries Book Ban

The outstanding book “The Golden Mean” by Annabel Lyon has been banned for sale on BC Ferries because the committee of asshats that decides such things believes children shouldn’t be exposed to the naked boy’s bum gracing the cover. I’d be a lot more interested in their moral dipshittery if they had a problem with making money off kids playing video games that include running pedestrians down in Hummers and blowing away lines of people with machine guns, but they don’t, so screw them and their self-righteous idiocy.

Score A Pair Of Tickets To The Lower Mainland Feast Of Fields

We’re a proud sponsor of the kickass outdoor roaming feast that is going down this Sunday, August 29th from 1-5pm out at Wellbrook Winery on Delta’s Bremner Farm. We have two tickets to give away to whoever can relate for us in the comments below their best food experience so far this summer. It could be as simple as scarfing back barbecued salmon on a beach or feasting in some far secluded field. The more you can make our mouths water the better…

If you don’t win, there are still a few $85 tickets left to purchase online. Read more

Field Trip Photo: On The Dirt Road Back From Elephant Island

(posted via iPhone) Leaving Naramata’s Elephant Island winery down a dirt track this afternoon after buying a bottle of their Pink Elephant bubbly.

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