Thanks For Your Patience

Looks like we're all sorted out an back on the air in full force!  Sorry for the issues over the weekend.  New blog post soon with some Feast BC interviews, Orcas in the harbour and more.

Technical difficulties

So... We're on the air still but dealing with some minor issues. Tune in for some great music and we should be back to our usual thing soon. Sorry for any inconvenience. Links to weather and travel conditions can be found on the right hand side of the page.

Thanks for listening to Long Beach Radio

Bobby Lax's Tofino Food and Wine Festival Article

We referred to the following article during this morning's Friday Funky Food Hour.  It was originally published in Tofino Time magazine a few years back.  Written By Bobby Lax

"I love to eat. I am somewhat hedonistic in my food indulgence. When I am at a restaurant I coax friends into sharing dishes so I can try as many different flavours as possible. Tapas were created for people like me. For this reason I become giddy with the anticipation of a food festival. Having that many taste sensations in one place has consistently left me culinarily inspired, joyfully stupid and inevitably wanting more. In the last two years I have made a point of involving myself in more of these celebrations. Whether for work or play, these festivals have produced some of the best days of my life.


In Duncan at Feast of Fields last year, I had my first religious experience after eating a piece of pizza. It enhanced my perspective on food, traditions and life in general. It was a thin crust Margherita pizza with the softest dough only ever touched by human hands, a simple tomato sauce, rich specks of Buffalo Mozzarella and some deliriously fragrant basil. It was cooked in a wood-fired brick oven at 800 degrees for only 90 seconds leaving the outside crispy yet the middle supple and droopy. Needless to say, I ate a lot of pizza that day.

At The 2009 Playhouse International Wine Festival in Vancouver I endeavored to taste every single wine on offer from lightest to heaviest over a three day span. Thank you to whoever taught me that spitting was socially acceptable. Although I was not able to accomplish this Dionysian feat, I definitely collected some serious air miles while traveling the expansive world of wine. From the Vinho Verdes of Portugal, to the mouthwatering Rieslings of Germany to the Malbecs of Argentina, it was actually a pretty cheap around the globe trip. I must have looked crazy though charging across the room back and forth looking for the next wine to swirl, smell, sip and then ponder for a moment. In those three exhausting days I received an education in science, geography agricultural studies and flavour perception but mostly I learned that it is really important to eat something substantial before indulging in that much fermented grape juice, even when you are spitting a lot.

The best day of my food life, however, came at my first Tofino Food and Wine Festival in 2006. It was my second year in Tofino and my first time at any food festival. I was working but allowed 20 minutes to go learn. Learn about tasting, learn about passionate producers and learn about what made a couple hundred people so whimsically happy. I did not have time to waste. I promised myself I would not interrupt my eating to talk to anyone unless we were waiting in line for food/wine or were walking towards the next booth. I have since dubbed this strategy 'speed tasting'. It is not motivated by reckless consumption, but rather a sense of duty to use the allotted time for absorbing all that the festival has to offer. I was told to begin with an oyster. It was raw, fresh and sent a blissful shiver through my system. Then some bright sparkling wine was offered. I tasted it and realized that I was just a recipient of a very easy lesson in matching food with wine. It was simply explained to me like so: a raw oyster is light and fresh; sparkling wine is typically light and fresh tasting; therefore an oyster goes well with sparkling wine. I then wondered if all wine and food pairing was that logical.

I discovered a new booth around every corner of the Tofino Botanical Gardens. Even when I thought I was lost in the fun maze that is the gardens, I would invariably stumble upon another unexpected culinary delight. It was like Halloween and everybody was home. The purveyors smiled, gave me free tasty food and understood when I quickly dashed off to trick-or-treat from someone else. During that faithful chicken-with-my-head-cut-off run I remember a scallop sweetly slapping me of the sea, a pinot warmly blanketing my tongue and morels (they were my first) chewing me into the forest. At one point though I just stopped, looked around at all the faces full of delight, took a deep breath and smiled.

For the first time in Tuff City, I was home."

See you at Grazing in the Gardens!

Thanks for listening to Long Beach Radio.

Geoff Goes Fishing... and You Should Go A' Fishin' Too

Had a great May Long Weekend!!! Feast BC Madness has been great.  Iron Chef Rob Feenie said something to me in an interview the other day... something to the effect that the farmer and the fisherman are more important to the quality of a meal than the chef.  SOOOOO I went fishing, Big Thanks to Clayoquot Ventures for making it happen, here's a little video



Speaking of fishing. Ucluelet's Salmon Ladder Derby is underway and Brendan Morrison's Tofino Saltwater Classic is only 6 weeks or so away. Come on out and catch a fish, help some great causes and maybe win some cash.

I'll post some of the fun interviews from Feast BC soon. Bob Izumi, Rob Feenie and Shaun Majumder were among the interesting people I've been able to talk to lately.

Also, some great musical guests have been in the studio; Tim Hus, High Arctic, Sam The Jet, Shawn from the Sufferin' Bastards, and a lot more have been in recently.

See you live on location at the Feast BC dock party this Saturday and GO CANUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dock Party, Round One

Had a blast at the first of the Feast BC dock parties over the weekend. Here are some pictures and stuff.

Live broadcasting from the event was a ton of fun!! Thanks to the Long Beach Lodge for sponsoring our coverage.  We'll be there next week for the Crab party, too!!

There are a lot of other events going on for Feast BC including a few at the Long Beach Lodge.  Check 'em out!!!! Your taste buds will thank you for it.

Thanks for listening to Long Beach Radio

Ready to Feast?

Feast BC is underway.  If you don't know what that means go HERE.

To give you a basic idea, all sorts of folks are partnering up to bring great food, cooked by great people to great places.... "Great" can be replaced by "local" in most cases but there are also international celebrity chefs and other goodness on the menu.

One of the partnerships we're most happy about is Long Beach Lodge working with us here at Long Beach Radio to bring live coverage of the Dock Parties every weekend in May.  Tune in from noon-3 to be part of the party, or better yet come down to the dock.  Here's how they explain it on the Feast BC website.

Location: 4th Street Dock, Tofino
Time : 1:00pm-3:00pm
Tickets : FREE public event
Event Description:
Saturday Dock Festival- Salmon Week
Come on down to Tofino’s beautiful working inner harbor and enjoy an afternoon of free tasting!
Visiting acclaimed Chefs Peter Zambri and Duncan Ly, will be  along side our own local talented chefs to bring you the freshest samplings from our own coastal waters!
Experience the freshest of seafood tasting, educational tours of sustainable seafood processing and preparation demonstrations on Tofino’s working 4^th Street Dock! This is a "car free" event!

Seems like a silly amount of fun. We'll be blasting tunes, interviewing chefs, fishermen and partiers as well as FEASTING and a lot more down on the dock so come and say "Hi"

If you can't wait 'til Sunday, Long Beach Lodge is one of many local eateries with fantastic set-price tasting menus this all through Feast, See the menu HERE

Thanks for listening to Long Beach Radio and we'll see you at the dock Saturday.

New Road Signs and Mysterious Surf Boards

Information about the Ride To Conquer Cancer Fundraiser is at the bottom of this post

Just a quick update with some fun things.... First a road sign I spotted this afternoon.

That's what I'm talking about

And Some video from the Mystery Surf Board Challenge that was held on Sunday May 8th.


More exciting stuff regarding Feast BC!!! coming very soon. Long Beach Radio and The Long Beach Lodge will be bringing all sorts of fun live coverage... stay tuned for details!!!

If you were listening Monday morning you may have heard the following chat.  If you would like to contribute to a local effort in the Ride to Conquer Cancer email liquiddonut@gmail.com, call 250 730 2999 or drop into Tuff Beans

Some Thought On Mothers' Day

Not to seem like some sort of "Holier Than Thou" type but I like to think of this upcoming "holiday" as Mothers' Day, not Mother's Day.  It's just a little ' but where you put it means a lot.  I have an amazing mother, somehow her and my father were able to instill virtues in me, teach me skills and a basic level of personal hygiene (very basic if you ask my wife.)  She was also the "mother" when the phrase "A face only a Mother could love" was applied to me.

Now, that may not seem like much but that's basically who you are.  Your sense sense of virtue and values make the framework of your decision making process and your skill set allows you to act on those decisions. Everything else is secondary.

Sure you come to learn a lot of those things from other places, TV, radio, books, friends, and (my personal nemesis) school. But Mom was there first, telling you not to put pennies in your mouth and helping you wrap your head around big boy pants.  If not for those 2 bits of parenting we'd all be in real trouble.

Anyway, I guess I should go back to the point.  There are lots of Mothers in the world, almost all of us have one in a biological sense.... or 2 and I think it's important that we never forget the sacrifices (thought Mom would never call them that) perhaps Enormous Efforts that Moms have put in for eons to get us where we are today. All sorts of mothers

There are of course Biological Mothers, who provide a safe warm place for us to grow in our soft, squishy foetal stages.  Parental Mothers, often, but not always our biological mothers who take care of all the learning-too-poop stuff.  Spiritual Mothers, perhaps artists, politicians, religious leaders, neighbours, teachers or whatever who manage indirectly to fulfill a Mothering roll, possibly without even knowing it. Grand Mothers, for those of us lucky enough to have had time with our grand parents it's never enough and wisdom takes a long time to sink in.... maybe grandma's words didn't make sense when you were 15 but they'll probably come in handy when you're 75.  There are a lot of other more abstract Mothers out there; Mother Earth, Mother Nature, Mother Ocean, Mother Mother (a great band), Necessity (The Mother of Invention (The Mother's of Invention are another great band)) and I love almost all of them (Mom from Futurama is sort of a bitch, and OctoMom, remember her?).

What I'm saying in a roundabout, nearly unreadable way is that I love Mothers' Day and days like this in one way.  If you take it in it's well meaning sense as a day to take a minute and say "Thank You" to the Moms of the world you've done something important.  If you use it as a day to make a 5 minute phone call and order some generic gift so you can feel OK ignoring Moms all the rest of the year you've missed the mark.

It's natural to love "your" Mom above all others but if you only take one day to honor her and all the Mothers that make up your world; your family, your friends, your work place, your community and ultimately the planet itself you're missing out on being a part of a great well-spring of love that is at the heart of the most beautiful aspects of life. Life that we all owe to Moms 

So from me, and all of us here at Long Beach Radio, Happy Mothers' Day to every mother and everyone that loves a mother somewhere.

Thanks for listening to Long Beach Radio.

Federal Election Monday May 2nd, Poll Locations and Times

The local polling stations for the 2011 Federal Election are as follows; 

The Ucluelet Community Center on the corner of Matterson and Marine Drive in Ucluelet.

The Royal Canadian Legion at 331 Main Street in Tofino.

Both Polling locations are open from 7am to 7pm

For information regarding identification and other Elections Canada information click on the link below

http://www.elections.ca/home.aspx