Results tagged “granitecurlingclub”

BEE: Re-Bar's spelling bee is back after last month's finals. Seattle Weekly writer Gavin Borchert won last time around, spelling words like "festschrift," "cockalorum," and "samadhi" correctly.

SUPER BLOW: A bunch of big guys grabbing each other while wearing skin-tight clothes, with ass-slapping and Prince songs. No, it's not Comeback, its the goddamn SuperBowl. Sorry editor Dan, but we're rooting for the Colts.

SPORTS OBSESSION: Any longtime Seattlest reader knows that we can't get enough of curling, whether it's watching on the CBC or playing ourselves at Seattle's Granite Curling Club, the only dedicated curling facility on the West Coast. Our obsession is often met with odd looks, but a curling open house is honestly one of the best ways going to spend your time/money.

On this date in 1918, the worldwide flu pandemic hit Seattle, as 700 cases were reported among the sailors at the University of Washington Naval Training Center on Lake Union. The disease primarily struck those between 20 and 35.

As with any other Winter Olympiad, perennial favorites took most of the focus. Figure skating (at least the falls were funny), speed skating (had its moments), and the skiing events (*yawn*) received the bulk of NBC's melodramatic coverage, but this year could prove to be the breakout year for Seattlest obsession curling, just added to the Olympic roster in 1998. With the help of some nudity (and some unprecedented US success), the sport managed to break free of the late-night coverage ghetto and have some time in the spotlight.

Oh were we ever excited about December 1st.

Seattlest is pretty fond of our neighbors to the North--this much you probably already know. But despite our weakness for Canuckery, we can't avoid mocking curling as a sport, albeit an Olympic one. As luck would have it, a bunch of Seattlest's co-workers went curling and we got dragged along. Research, we rationalized, just research.

What draws Seattlest to the sport of curling? Maybe its that movie we once saw on the CBC where Leslie Neilson plays a psilocybin-munching curling guru. Maybe it's the similarity to the shuffleboard we enjoy so much at the Eastlake Zoo Tavern (if we can wrestle the table away from the frat-set). Perhaps it's the mysterious fume de Canada that surrounds it? Who knows? Who cares? We just love it, despite the fact that we've never played it.