When Mike and Brittney Gutierrez found their chairs, they figured to be settling in for a football game.
It turns out those seats were for a four-hour thrill ride.
The couple and other Seahawks fans bounced up from those seats often during Seattle’s 43-8 Super Bowl domination of Denver on Sunday.
They were among hundreds of rowdy fans at Big Al’s in east Vancouver. Aside from two tables of Broncos fans near the front, the crowd was decidedly pro-Seahawks.
Fans jumped and high-fived when Seattle scored a safety on the game’s first play.
Fans threw Skittles around the restaurant when Marshawn Lynch’s touchdown put Seattle ahead 15-0 in the second quarter.
And when the game ended, long-suffering Northwest sports fans rejoiced in the region’s first major pro sports championship since the SuperSonics won the NBA title in 1979.
Sunday’s Super Bowl was extra special for Mike Gutierrez. A Navy veteran, he was stationed in the Persian Gulf during Seattle’s only other Super Bowl appearance in 2006.
Read the full story here. See more game coverage here.
While sports fans across the country are gearing up for the most-watched football game of the year, Pat Kuiper is bracing herself for a wave of grief.
For the Vancouver woman, Super Bowl Sunday is the anniversary of the murder of her son, Donald Brown.
“Super Bowl, for most people, is a fun time to get together with family and friends, but for us it’s a trigger,” Kuiper, 66, of Vancouver said. “It’s a trigger that causes so much pain, from having that be the worst day of our lives.”
Brown was 39 when he was stabbed to death in his Vancouver house, 9704 N.E. 104th Court. His girlfriend came home about 11:40 p.m. Feb. 4, 2007, and found his body.
Clark County Sheriff’s Office detectives have been investigating the case for seven years, but have not made any arrests.
“It’s cold, but we’re still working on follow-ups,” said Sgt. Kevin Allais, who runs the Major Crimes Unit for the Clark County Sheriff’s Office.
Allais said he would not discuss potential suspects because doing so would hinder the investigation.
Onika Estrada has a few ambitions: doctor, lawyer, movie director, author. Or maybe just president of the United States. Her younger brother, Elias, has his sights firmly set on playing pro baseball.
The Estrada kids, ages 10 and 9, respectively, might just make it all the way to those big dreams. You never can tell.
Or can you? Maybe the deck is so stacked against the Estradas that they’ll always stay more or less in place. That means living in Rose Village, where they attend one of Vancouver’ statistically lowest-achieving elementary schools. Average income is low and the crime rate is high. Many families speak Spanish at home. The kids’ father, Miguel, is a native of Mexico who came to this country illegally but now works above board as a laborer and construction worker. He is making slow progress up the pay ladder — and using unpaid winter downtime to build his skills and improve his written English. Mother Crystal is a caretaker for elderly people. She’d like to finish her associate degree at Clark College, but she’s too busy working and mothering at the moment.
“We’re living paycheck to paycheck right now,” Crystal said. “We moved to this area because it was a good deal. It wasn’t really by choice.”
Containers full of green pickled apples, tomatoes and cabbage at Anoush Deli & International Food Market bring back a flood of memories for Galina Burley, a leader of Vancouver’s Russian-speaking population.
Burley grew up in Sochi, Russia, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics. She said she hopes foods from the region, like those sold at Anoush, can be used to introduce more people from Clark County to Russian culture while they enjoy the games.
“When you talk about Sochi, you’re talking about a vacation resort town for pretty much all of Russia (and the surrounding countries),” Burley said. “It’s on the Black Sea, next to Georgia, Armenia, Turkey and Ukraine. We’d have 300,000 population in winter, and over 1 million in the summer. It was this melting pot on steroids.”
The 38-year-old left her hometown for America when she was a teenager. Some of her memories have faded in the decades she’s been here, but with the games rapidly approaching, other things are flooding back.
“I’m excited,” Burley said. “It’s really cool. It gives me a way to personally appreciate where I came from.”
“The Winding Stream” won’t be Beth Harrington’s first film to premiere at the renowned South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, but it will be the biggest.
That’s because the Vancouver documentary filmmaker’s work on country music icons will play to a much larger audience at the music and film showcase, which has been growing as relentlessly as Johnny Cash’s guitar rhythms on “Folsom Prison.”
“South by Southwest in the last two years or so has just exploded,” Harrington said. “And it isn’t just a film festival, it’s also a music festival, so it’s a better fit all around for me.”
Her film, about the Cash and Carter families, will debut at the event, which runs from March 7 to 16, then hit the film festival circuit this spring and summer, she said.
“Now that it’s got the South by Southwest stamp on it, it’s a lot easier to get it into other festivals,” Harrington said.
Brassy sounds bounced off the walls of a packed Gaiser Hall around noontime Saturday during the 52nd annual Clark College Jazz Festival.
The college’s own jazz ensemble capped the morning’s AAA school performances, closing with a jazz standard: “I’m Getting Sentimental over You” by Tommy Dorsey. Richard Inouye, director of both the ensemble and the festival, said that students continue to gain more ownership over the community event.
About 200 students volunteer for the festival, and this year a student designed the posters advertising the event. Commercial arts students offered Inuoye about 12 designs that he had a tough time picking from. He said students will continue developing marketing materials for the festival.
Inouye gave a tearful send-off to student and first tenor David Floratos. He’s heading to Western Oregon University to study jazz composition after spending three years with the Clark College Jazz Ensemble.
Read the full story and see the list of winners here.
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