Souhan: Cheap (and good) eats

By Jim Souhan, Star Tribune

Last update: August 10, 2008 - 5:57 PM

According to China Daily, local meteorologists fired more than 1,100 rockets into the air on Saturday here to forestall potential rain. They must have run out of rockets Sunday.

It rained, and the rain did this city some good.

When the sun is trying to eke through the polluted fog, this city looks like the site of a bad science fiction movie. Today, the rain made this feel more like Seattle, a lush, green place.

And it is green. This is a vast city, and it is the strangest combination of oppressive pollution and landscaped greenery I've ever seen. The roads are lined with beautiful trees, birches and willows, and landscaped flower gardens and bushes.

Which doesn't help the air quality much.

The cyclists who competed in the road race on Saturday complained about the air quality and humidity, and these are people conditioned to race in the torturous Tour de France.

Saturday did give me the opportunity to see more of Beijing than the media villages and facilities. I ventured to the beach volleyball venue, 45 minutes from the main press center, and during a break a few of us found a cab and headed toward a nearby street known for its restaurants.

We settled on Muse, a French-Vietnamese restaurant, and it was excellent. And cheap. We ate like kings for about $10 bucks apiece, and cabbies and restaurants here don't seem, as a rule, to accept tips.

The locals continue to make a good impression. They are, to a person, polite and friendly.

•••

From a writer's perspective, covering the Olympics has given me a new insight into covering pro sports.

We've got it pretty good.

Certain pro athletes can be difficult, certain teams can be difficult, but most of the pro athletes you encounter are pretty good people to be around. I didn't come up with this saying, but I agree with it -- 90 percent of the players are good 90 percent of the time.

I've been amazed at how little access we have to many of the Olympic athletes, even those in sports you would think would be doing everything they can to promote themselves.

Then I covered the U.S.-China basketball game, and every NBA player made himself available. Most were downright funny and charming, and talked until the last question had been asked. And most of them were asked to go station-to-station, from TV interviews to multiple print interviews along a row of barricades known at the Olympics as The Mix Zone, meaning that's where athletes and reporters encounter each other in a non-press conference setting.

Yes, the pro athletes known as prima donnas are the best people to deal with at the Olympics.

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