Picketing the Paralympics isn’t on the agenda of one prominent Olympic protester.
Chris Shaw, a member of the Olympic Resistance Network, said he doesn’t plan to protest the Paralympics nor has he heard of anyone else aiming to do so though potential for demonstrations remains.
“The reason I wouldn’t go out there because it’s just not the same organization,” Shaw said of structural differences between the Olympic and Paralympic Games. “This is really about more of the community and competition for its own sake rather than the same kind of stuff we saw last week, when we saw frenzied jumping up-and-down fits as Canada wins gold.”
Paralympics don’t bring with them the same commercialization as the heavily sponsored Olympics, which closed on Feb. 28, Shaw added.
Vancouver Deputy Chief Doug LePard's comments on questions raised during a debriefing on Monday about policing and police tactics during the Vancouver 2010 Games.
On protesters:
“First real challenge came on opening night when 1,500 protesters tested the police line outside B.C. Place. I can tell you now that really was our most tense moment. The criminal element within that protest group threw everything at us they could get their hands on. When they ran out of things to throw at us they spit on us. Through it all the blue line held and no one was hurt.”
"There were those who seemed surprised by our approach but they can be forgiven ince the fear-mongers and critics tried their best to convince the public that the massive police presence would lead to massive abuses and police brutality – even suggesting we would employ sonic canons. As we said then, how ridiculous.”
Vancouver police want to keep surveillance cameras rolling in the entertainment district.
“As a crowd management tool it was very powerful for our people working in the department’s operations centre because they could radio [officers],” Vancouver Deputy Chief Const. Doug LePard said of camera use during the Winter Olympics.
“Being on the ground you could only see a small piece of what’s going on. We would get reports from the operations centre who could look anywhere with the video, and say, hey look, there’s a problem developing here.”
Police, however, aren’t sure if cameras deterred criminal activity because their effect is hard to measure, LePard said at a debriefing on the Games Monday.
The mayor of Sochi, Russia, will leave Vancouver with more than the Olympic flag.
Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov said his city would be better able to meet goals for growing it’s housing stock and other municipal initiatives after learning the ins and outs of staging a hallmark sporting event from current hosts City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Organizing Committee.
“We are going to achieve and do everything in three years,” Mayor Pakhomov said through a translator. “If it were not for the Olympic Games it would take us probably 50 or 100 years to do so.
“I’m sure Olympic Games are not only sports competitions. It’s a festival of culture, patriotism and hospitality.”
NBC hatched an ambitious plan at the top of Grouse Mountain.
There, well before the break of dawn an army of cameramen, crew and news anchors - known to viewers as Meredith, Matt, Al and Ann - broadcast Today from a chalet turned soundstage to audiences across North America.
"At 3:30 in the morning, we all are kind of still rubbing the sleep out of our eyes," said Today executive producer Jim Bell. "We're a family, sometimes in many cases, we spend more time together than we do with our real families."
Camaraderie among the cast was evident Tuesday when Meredith Vieira teases Olympic correspondent Kristi Yamaguchi on camera by calling her Kristi "Yama-hoochie" before a girls' night out segment.
The cast shared a few yuks in a later segment describing Vieira as a "Van-cougar".
T he Olympic boom is a bit of a bust for some retailers in the entertainment district.
Katie Neilson, floor manager of skateboard shop Underground on Granville Street, said she's tempered her expectations for sales after examining the books from the first week of the Games.
"We were told thousands of people are going to be coming in and it'll be crazy," Neilson said. "It's not that it hasn't been good but it's definitely not what we were expecting with an influx of shoppers. It's almost like business as usual."
Restaurants are apparently raking in the cash from hungry revellers who have crowded Robson Square and spilled into surrounding streets over the first six days of the Games.
G oogle Street View hit the slopes just in time for the opening of the Winter Games.
The web search giant unveiled a revamped suite of web applications on Tuesday specifically designed for the Olympics, which features a Street View function for Whistler-Blackcomb captured by a panoramic camera mounted on top of a snowmobile.
“When you go inside of Street View and you look at all the pictures in there, whether it’s from the roads or the pedestrian pathways or the slopes, it’s going to be the same high-quality imagery that you’re going to find in those Street View pictures,” said Google senior mechanical engineer Daniel Ratner.
The mayor of the Olympic city's biggest suburb is ready to fly a flag of the Australian Olympic mascot should it be banned from the Vancouver athletes' village.
“We’re ready to welcome the world and we’d be honoured to recognize the Australian athletes who have come all this way to join us,” Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts said in a Friday statement. “I’m also going to ask mayors in other cities across the region to join us in flying the Australian team’s flag for a day and celebrate our friends from down under.”
The flag of a yellow kangaroo wearing red boxing gloves on a green backdrop has covered the balcony of two suites since Sunday.
Word of a potential flap over the boxing kangaroo flag broke Thursday after an International Olympic Committee official toured the Southeast False Creek village.
Olympic protestors from Eastern Canada have touched down in the Olympic city, according to the head of Games security.
“I have information that there is at least one group from Eastern Canada that’s here, that’s looking to participate on the 12th and 13th,” Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit chief Bud Mercer told reporters on Friday.
Mercer added there’s no intelligence indicating anti-Olympic groups have arrived from south of the border.
Vancouver Deputy Chief Const. Steve Sweeney, who joined Mercer at the morning briefing, said police estimate between 1,000 to 1,500 people would participate in protests during the first days of the Winter Games.
