Locals Only: Olympic fever
If you’re anything like us, every four years you find yourself glued to a TV at 3 a.m. watching a couple of regular-looking folks sweep a patch of ice with brooms while thinking to yourself, “If that’s all it takes to be an Olympian, I’m there!”
On Saturday, you can experience curling and several other Olympic and Paralympic winter sports firsthand as the Road to Sochi Tour stops at the Orleans Arena, 4500 W. Tropicana Ave.
Besides testing your curling skills by measuring the distance of the stone to the house using the hog line (those are all real things, by the way), you can try your luck at cross-country skiing using roller skis or measure your hockey slap shot. You can even hurtle down a street luge ramp.
Figure skating, speedskating, snowboarding, ski jumping, bobsled and biathlon also will be represented in demonstrations or exhibits.
Former Olympians Dick Fosbury, Chris Klug, Willie Banks, Barbra Higgins Arana, Anne Warner Cribbs, John Naber, Jill Savery and Cindy Stinger will attend, too.
The Road to Sochi Tour is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Admission is free.
And if you catch curling fever while you’re there, stick around for the 2014 Continental Cup of Curling, which runs Thursday through Sunday at the Orleans Arena.
Talkin’ the Blues
Whether you feel like talkin’ blues or singin’ the blues, a free lunch-hour concert has you covered, as Toscha Comeaux and Woody Woods team up to perform blues music and spoken-word selections at noon Friday in the jury assembly room of the Lloyd D. George Federal Courthouse, 333 Las Vegas Blvd. South. For more information, call 702-229-3515 or visit www.artslasvegas.org.
Peking Duck Day
It may come as news to you (as it did to us) that Saturday is National Peking Duck Day. To celebrate, Poppy Den at Tivoli Village, 440 S. Rampart Blvd., is featuring the dish‚ the duck marinated for three days in ginger, salt, cinnamon, scallions, coriander and star anise and served with scallion pancakes, pickles and hoisin, for $23.
Disney on Ice
Youngsters only thought Christmas was over, until they see the merch stands lining the concourse at the Thomas &Mack Center when “Disney on Ice” is in town. This year’s “Rockin’ Ever After” edition is sort of a greatest hits approach built around favorite songs, with characters as classic as Pinocchio and as recent as Merida from “Brave” and Rapunzel from “Tangled.” Bring extra merch money to shows at 7 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, or matinees at 11:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday, 1 and 5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $23-$63; call 702-739-3267.
What a blast!
“Cowpunk” is a clumsy descriptor for the raucous roots rock of The Blasters, and yet that’s what the band’s pioneering sound has often been dubbed. Come up with your own way of describing the venerable band when it performs at 9 p.m. Friday at LVCS, 425 Fremont St. Tickets are $8 in advance, $12 day of show; call 702-382-3849.
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