Something interesting is happening this holiday season in the world of Real Estate. As reported by the New York Times today, a huge number of Europeans and tourists from other countries are taking advantage of the weak dollar to purchase their U.S. second home.

While the article’s focus is the sale of real estate in Manhattan I would think that our wonderful ski resorts would be a great target as well. So as our dollar continues to plummet the rest of the world looks at our prime spots as one big investment opportunity. Too bad it’s not the other way around, I’d love to pick up a nice Italian villa on the ocean or a crash pad in Paris.

But this isn’t about what I want.

It’s about the holiday season and to a certain extent a move towards world peace. As the world becomes more global and we criss cross our homes, vacations, friends and experiences from one continent to another we also build understanding, relationships, and a foundation for communication. Maybe someone from Europe loans their Manhattan condo to some friends who have never been to the U.S. They have a great time, tell great stories, and the flow of people back and forth increases. It’s alot harder to be grumpy towards a country you have visited and one in which you have made friends.

Let’s continue the global spread of travel and second homes (note the term home, that certainly implies a stronger relationship). If we can get this flow of travel and experience going back and forth between the most strained of relationships who knows what we could to to build friendship.

Now just make sure you greet the next international neighbor you meet with kindness.

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Ski Trip
Winter Park
Ski Train (no driving)
Apres Party

Do I really need to say any more… (well maybe)

I was at a little Holiday Party last night chatting about an upcoming Riverfront Park Ski Trip on January 26th. The bullet points are that a car has been rented with only 62 seats available, several sponsors have signed up to give some perks to this first time trip crew that will be taking the Ski Train up and back followed by an Apres Party and a very close and cool spot downtown (Another wonderful sponsor).

No fighting traffic and it will be fun and social!! Siri at East West Urban Management is managing the rapidly growing list of folks who are snagging the seats for this inaugural event. You can email her if you are interested in learning more or if you are a homeowner in Riverfront you can
sign right up.

Think snow!!!

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I love snow.

The past two days have been spent skiing the fresh powder of Vail and I can tell you that it is wonderful. Sunday I was doing some training for some volunteer work I signed on for. I’ll fill everyone in on this in a later post but in the meantime check out these pics. All of Monday was spent in Blue Sky Basin and the back bowls and it was NICE!!

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Yep, the mountains are getting the big dump we have all been waiting for.

Okay, I just skied Vail for two days and here are the runs that rock right now.

Dealers Choice
Northwoods
NorthStar
Lodgepole

And the rest of Game Creek Bowl was filling up with snow when I left. Sorry these are mostly cruisers but they are well covered and as soon as this storm is done I am sure there will be a ton more.

And after chatting with some of the locals working in the restaurants in the Village I also learned some additional scoop. First, many many tourists canceled their plans to hit Vail due to the terrible snow reports. Hotels have space and those same folks can’t react quick enough to fill up those rooms with bodies. So that means so much more room for skiing with less people.

Not bad.

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Okay, Okay, I need to get in better shape for the ski season. The lack of snow has bought me a little time to get myself tuned up and since there are so many runners out there I thought I’d throw out an idea for a Runners Group down here in the CPV, meet at the plaza and take off from there. It just needs some folks to take the lead and volunteers would be great. Here is a link.

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In a fun twist the blogging on the recent Colorado Rockies ticket snafu got noticed by some folks involved at Bernstein Crisis Management PR Firm.

These folks have taken an interesting angle on blogging with regards to the immediate availability of news through the blogging community over status quo news agencies. Basically if you want to find out what is happening you might be better off doing a google or technorati search instead of just hitting the standard news channels. The reasoning is simple, with cell phone cameras (both photo and video) and sites such as youtube or personal blogs regular joes like you and me can be giving the rest of the world news faster than organized news channels. Interesting and fun for this blog to have gotten a little press so I hope you don’t mind my sharing. [Read more →]

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I got a chance to attend a very small affair at the new Museum of Contemporary Art space on 15th and heard about the great new plans that have gone into the museum. I’ll save a great deal of those tidbits for the Museum itself to roll out but did want to share a few neighborhood tidbits.

The first ties into art. They have an artist who works in an almost Comic Book/Sin City sphere who has created some video pieces for display. They are going to be positioned in such a way that they will be visible from outside the Museum through one [Read more →]

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After returning from Tokyo and loving the train system there, whether local subway style across town or the speed trains out of Tokyo Station, i reminded myself how much I love train travel. Kick back, have a beverage and lunch, read a book, look out the window, and arrive relaxed. [Read more →]

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Early to bed, early to rise… and my jet lag made sure of that.

My first morning in Tokyo I bounced out of bed, unable to sleep, at 4 am. I quickly showered and dressed then headed downstairs to catch a cab to the famous Tsukiji Central Fish Market. The Tsukiji Central Fish Market is the largest fish market in the world, and a recommended sight in Tokyo by every book, website, and person I checked with. The auction officially starts at 5:30 am and it can draw huge crowds, especially on the weekends. My lonely planet review offered the detail “About 2246 tonnes of fish, worth over 1.8 billion yen (US $15.5 Million), are sold here daily”. Thats alot of sushi.

I thought I was getting a good jump on the day but from the look on the concierge’s face it was too good of a jump as she politely suggested I find a cup of coffee to bide my time before taking a taxi. Maybe there is nothing going on at the Fish Market at 4:30 am so I took her advice and wandered the quiet, very quiet, streets of Tokyo to find an early morning beverage. Outside of a few salarymen heading in early there are actually times that Tokyo is all but motionless. It was kind of peaceful considering the buzz I had witnessed just the night before. It only takes a few blocks to find a convenience mart and pick up some oj and then return to the Hyatt a short time later for my cab.

If you are asking why I didn’t use Tokyo’s awesome subway lines; it was just too darn early for the trains to be running.

My cab whisked me over to the fish market and soon I emerged from the cab in the middle of a busy frenzy of men buzzing around on buzzing carts. It was still just around dawn on an overcast morning and the grey illumination showed me stacks and stacks of styrofoam boxes, crates, tanks, and trucks on a wet stone street. My taxi driver pointed the direction of more activity and some larger trucks and then zipped away as a truck behind him began honking.

I saw no other tourists and it may very well be that I was seeing a little bit of the pre show. As I walked in the direction i had been pointed I had to wait and watch at every step for the activity of these funky little motorized carts going both directions. They had a round tank like engine in the back and sat up a little high and they were moving fast.

Continuing past a area with many parked trucks I entered the main tents of the Market. Here I found hundreds and hundreds of booths and alleys with an array of every type of fish being set up. My arrival was right in the middle of set up and while I wandered around merchants were laying out their items and setting up their displays. And they were doing it fast. Now the carts were buzzing along in tight alleys, men and women in jeans and tee shirts smoked cigarettes and laughed with their colleagues as they worked. A few offered kind smiles or waved but most were so busy, and probably either used to or annoyed by the tourist crowd, that they just kept working at a quick pace. Some of the booths were larger, well lit and had big display counters. Some had tanks with eels or fish squirming back and forth probably recognizing their fate and looking for an escape. And some were dark alleys where men with huge machete style blades or big electric saws waited for the next fish to cut up.

It was amazing. Many fish I recognized and many I did not. Sometimes the display booth had many different varieties in piles of fish where you could see them still moving, wriggling from being only recently taken from the sea. These guys were the supermarket booths that had many things to choose from. Others might be a specialty store where there was just alot of one thing. One booth had every type of mollusk and clam under the sun. bins of fleshy white squid or a mountain of bright red shrimp and prawns. My favorite was a stand with nothing but octopus of all sizes and a very stoic man standing there waiting for his customers. A warning sign asks the tourists not to touch or you have bought the Octopus and to respect the ways of Japan while in Japan. Sounds like a few of the tourists haven’t been so well behaved.

I weaved my way through the booths for I don’t know how long, amazed at every turn until I noticed some activity in the back in a large open shed like area. I headed that way and heard loud rapid speaking and the sound of a crowd responding. This was the auction. I walked right into the center of the Tuna auction surrounded by the huge and glistening bodies of some monsterous fish. If you have ever seen a Tuna body it is one big fish. And surrounding the fish were various men going about their tasks of the day. There were main auctioneers who would ring a bell to signify the start of an auction and the various buyers would be gathered in a circle around him. Just like the stock market, the auctioneer would start rapidly speaking and shouting out higher and higher prices (that I couldn’t understand) as the buyers around him raised hands for their bids. The energy of the event was high and the momentum was fast. While the auctioneer was yelling out the bid prices buyers or their assistants were checking on the fish for quality. Each fish had a slice in the tail to expose a flap where the buyers bent or knelt down and checked the lines of fat. Perhaps to determine how how much O’toro versus toro they would be able to recover as O’toro goes for as much as 5 times the amount (Fatty tuna sushi sells for much more). These inspectors carried flashlights and were studying each of the fish in turn.

As the auction progressed and wrapped up and the fish were purchased the runners would tag each of the fish and a man with long paintbrush would mark the body of the fish with bright red paint. They didn’t seem to be doing an auction fish by fish, but more row by row with 8 fish going at a time in almost mini lots. And there were multiple auctions going on at the same time creating a moving flow of activity as buyers flocked from one crowd to the next. In the midst of it all men with pull carts and huge hooks were running through grabbing the sold fish and then racing them off to their destination. Most of these fish were huge and them men would swing all their weight to rock these weighty monsters up and onto their cart.

I wandered in and clicked more than a few photos before spotting a huge sign saying that I wasn’t supposed to be there. I am sure this is not only to help keep their business from being slowed down but also to make sure I don’t get myself squashed by some swinging fish or rolling cart. Fortunately this was the earliest auction and no other tourists had arrived so my presence was barely noticed and I began looking for a proper roost to take in the views. The tuna auction was wrapping up and most of the activity was done by the delivery carts who sped away through the alleys of the market with their cargo. At this point a very nice man in bibbed overalls came over to me and began pointing and saying “Salmon”. Turning I noticed a sign for visitor passage (A-ha) and off I headed.

The folks at the fish market were wise and had created an alley between two of the large warehouse style areas for the tourists to gather and click away with their cameras. While I was expecting a big crowd, there were probably only about 20 or 30 folks there but from every spot on the globe. Surrounding us on both sides were rows and rows of Salmon carcasses. These were clearly frozen and must have just been unloaded from their icy cargo holds. It had a surreal effect of creating a lingering mist across the floor of the auction hall as the rows of frosted fish gave off their chill. This auction was more of the same although it seemed to be bigger. Maybe Salmon is a bigger market. Either way it was fun to watch this from start to finish and I followed the visitor passage from one warehouse to another and spotted a few other fish along the way. The most interesting part was watching the different styles of buyers and the auction’s energy. Some were older, more traditional men who looked very sage like as they conducted business while others ran around in corporate jackets and looked like they represented the big boys of business.

After watching this auction for awhile I decided to head back to the market and see where those deliveries were going. As I headed back the carts of recently purchased fish flew by me everywhere. I soon found that the booths I had recently seen busy setting up were now pulsing with the activity of selling. In some areas I saw the same fish bodies recently bid on being divided for sale to their various customers. In France you see folks picking up their morning bread at the bakery, here they are picking up their morning fish. Some bought over the counter and kind little ladies and men walked around with individual purchases. Others placed orders at little booths within the booths, like mini cashiers which were almost always manned by ladies. My guess is these were the restaurteurs placing larger orders for the day. And everywhere small, medium, and large styrofoam boxes were being filled with different size fish and sealed for delivery to different locations. I recognized the same packaging I believe I saw at Sushi Sasa once, and imagined that a fish I saw today might just be eaten in Denver tomorrow. Cool.

I again weaved my way (again for a long time, so much to see) through the booths again watching this new activity and then headed to see what else was going on. There was a bustle of cargo heading for the trucks and more mechanical carts running to and fro as I cleared the both area. There were also a number of ice machines I had missed notice of on my way in. These guys had the wonderful job of sitting there and reading the paper or smoking until someone ran up with a bin. Then they flew into action grabbing a block of ice and putting it into this very, very, very old and scary looking machine that blew out chunks of ice from a metal chute. Then the ice fetcher shot off to restock someone and the ice make returned to his relaxed post.

By this time it was almost 7 am and my stomach was growling. Watching all this fish was making me hungry and another tip I had heard was there may be no fresher sushi in the world than the small sushi stands surrounding the Tsukiji market. Sure enough in the first outer ring of booths I found a scattering of small sushi bars and other vendors. Looking in from door to door I tried to pick the right one. The first had no customers, the second looked too touristy, but the third was perfect. It was a tiny sushi bar with maybe 10 seats and the wall was filled with photos, writings in Japanese, and was, simply put, cozy.

it was the perfect fit and the gentleman behind the counter made sure I was welcome. He recommended the Sashimi bowl and I have to say it was the absolute best bowl of Miso I have ever had.

Just outside the market other fish were headed for trucks.

Aw heck, this is taking a long time to write and I need to get out and keep exploring so here is a quick link to a Flickr dump of the photos from the first couple sights. Enjoy.

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The first time I took my new Electra Cruiser Bike on a ride I dang near wiped out. I was coming up to my first intersection and started grasping for the hand brakes.

There are no hand brakes on a cruise bike. It is far simpler than that. You pedal forward, you move forward. You pedal backwards, you stop. But it is taking my brain a little time to let go of all the years of using hand brakes on scooters, bikes, mountain bikes and pretty much anything on two wheels.

But other than that.. I love my new Cruiser bike. And here is the scoop on where to find them. [Read more →]

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