Saturday in the 'Hood

It’s too hot to write outside on my balcony's plastic table. I’ve retreated into my air conditioned room. I've been here more than two weeks and as I came back inside I had to navigate around piles of dirty laundry and empty water bottles. There are stacks of old show formats and paperwork everywhere. It was time to clean up this place . . . a virtual reset as we head down the home stretch to the Closing Ceremony.

There's no figure skating today!

After a brief tidy-up session and some breakfast I decided to power walk on the promenade. Within minutes I was shvitzing like I'd been in a sauna. Obviously I was not dressed appropriately with a long sleeve tee shirt.

I ran into Jenna Bush (The ex-prez’s daughter) before I started. She knew what to wear out there . . . a tank top! She packed it to wear in the gym and never dreamed she would need it outside.

A few years back she showed me “secret” pictures on her phone swearing me to silence. Her dad had become an oil painter, and like most of us fledgling painters, didn't want the world to see what we do until we are ready to share.

I did get to see his first few efforts. A few months later the press found out. Political writers became art critics but George was non-plussed. He is possessed by painting these days. His latest project is a series of paintings of world leaders.

I had not consumed any alcohol in 11 days. . . . until last night. After the worst men’s skating competition I have witnessed in my 30+ years of covering the sport, I abandoned my temporary teetotaling ways. The bad influence, oddly enough, was my new health coach Scott Hamilton.

“After THAT competition . . . we need a beer,” he instructed.

Scott has consumed 2 glasses of beer in the past two years. It was a rough night. We belted down two giant Baltikas. We lamented that the Men's competition had set the sport back to the lowest level ever. No one wanted to win. Scott was disgusted.

With five more days of skating ahead, I decided this morning that I wanted to be prepared if the bar was closed when we returned late from the compound. So I set off into our little neighborhood in search of a small bottle of vodka.

During the week the streets are quiet. But this morning the neighborhood was alive.

About 100 yards down the street I met Lyudmilla at the local “Produkti” story. In Russia there’s no such thing as “Ivan’s Market,” "Olga's Hair Salon" or “Seabreeze Convenience store.”

As a throwback to the USSR days, stores still have generic names. Food stores are simply “Produkti” which is an idiom for Groceries. Strictly translated it means, “Products.” Down the street is a store selling “Goods,” another says “Produce,” or “Beauty Salon” or simply, “Hardware.” In the old days Coca Cola would have been banned (Brezhnev loved Pepsi).

Larissa at the "Vegetables" store told me that every store on the block got a fancy new sign for the Olympics. Although, it's generic, the vegetable store has an interesting logo inside the  "O" letters. They better hope no one in Cupertino is reading this blog.

We have no “liquor” store in our ‘hood.

Lyudmilla’s “Produkti” store is like a deli. But, alas, no vodka. And no refrigeration either.

Not sure how long these fish have been living in the glass case.

Another 100 yards away at another “Produkti” store I met Irina. Eureka! There were 50 kinds of vodka. She picked one and said in English “This best, you will like.”

I'll test it out tomorrow night after the Short Dance event. I always need a few shots after a night of Ice Dancing.


Lots of people are wondering about the beaches here. Sadly they lack sand. But the fishing is good. This man was catching some fish which bore a striking resemblance to the guys inside the glass case at Lyudmilla's place.

Before the Olympic construction began, this was just a small town 20 miles from Sochi. It was way out in the country. Lots of funky houses with do-it-yourself remodeling and communal vegetable gardens.

Now it borders the biggest single project Russia has ever undertaken. It is surrounded by upscale condos and the giant Radisson Beach Resort is at the end of what was a small country lane 5 years ago.





But it still feels rural. Like Saturdays everywhere there's lots of moms, dads and kids out shopping. Tatina and Marina had persuaded their dad to buy them some sweets. He had a shopping list but doted on them.

Inside the store everybody knew each other. The Russian they spoke wasn't the rough language I had been experiencing of late. The Russian words sounded sweet like a lovely opera.

Out on the promenade the families enjoyed the glorious day. Granika brought her doll to the beach and came ready to cheer for the home team in today's hockey showdown with the USA.

Now let's jump ahead.

It's currently 10:30 at night here in Sochi and my ears are literally still ringing from the US-Russia hockey game. It was one of the greatest games I've ever seen. The crowd was 90 percent Russian yet we felt free to scream like banshees for the USA. The deafening roar of "Russ-See-Ya, RUSS-SEE-YA, RUSS-SEE-YA" was scary in its intensity. The final shoot-out was pure magic. It was everything I love about sports . . .

Our little pockets of American fans were going nuts but we were a mere drop in the bucket of the deafening silence which surrounded us whenever our boys scored.

When it was over and the USA triumphed, the crowd left as if they were leaving a funeral. It was only a first round game. Both teams will contend for the medals. But for Russia it was a night of mourning. The build-up for this game was insane. This was the toughest Olympic ticket to get for the average Russian fan. Our Russian translators said the prices for a ticket were astronomical.

A final thought for the night about the immense changes in our world. When I grew up, at the end of every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur service, there was always a prayer for Soviet Jewry. They were oppressed and were objects of intense discrimination. And they weren’t allowed to leave the USSR.  When the Commie superstate collapsed in 1991 we still looked at this place with a jaundiced eye. We prayed hard for those Jews.

Even today, my current High Holiday Mahzor still has the prayer in it. Despite the fact that the systematic killing of Jews (Pogroms) stopped after the October 1917 Commie revolution, Russia was never a really good place for Jews.

Has it changed? I can’t say for sure.

I know it’s merely anecdotal evidence, but a pop-up advert on a Russkie search engine caught my eye today. We’re on a Russian ISP used by Russian people.

Пляжи Израиля

www.goisrael.ru

Собираетесь в отпуск? Огромные скидки на отдых в Тель-Авиве!

It says "Beaches in Israel . .  Going on Vacation? . . Huge discounts on accommodations in Tel Aviv."

In a strange way, maybe those prayers worked.