The Wild Sushi: Red Bull Flugtag Vancouver 2006

This post contains interviews, videos, photos and mentions that Sushi Gone Wild received over the course of the 2006 Vancouver Flugtag experience. Please note that I will remove any media articles/videos if requested.

(Note: If the PDF links below fail to load, try pressing “Refresh” in the new browser window).

TV Spots

• CityTV’s Breakfast Television interview posted on SushiGoneWild’s channel on YouTube
  Breakfast Television website teaser
  
• CTV News segment with visual of the flight of The Wild Sushi posted on SushiGoneWild’s channel on YouTube
  
• Urban Rush interview segment posted on SushiGoneWild’s channel on YouTube
  

Print Media Spots

• Sing Tao – Jenny interview
• World Journal photo
• Richmond Review mention
• Vancouver Courier mention
• Globe and Mail mention
• L’Express du Pacifique mention
• Surrey Now – “Sushi Suprise”

Internet Spots

• MSN Germany photo
  MSN Germany – translation from AltaVista
• Yahoo.com photo (photo source Reuters)
• Yahoo Blog with Chinese Reuters Caption
  Chinese Blog link
  Another Chinese Blog with Reuters photo
• Japanese blog with Wild Sushi photo
  Japanese blog with Wild Sushi photo – Babel Fish Translation
  Japanese Blog link
• Beyond Robson – blog mention
• Red Bull Flugtag 2006 blog mention courtesy of Loren Li
• Damselfly’s Delights blog – Flugtag entry found here
• Photo on MySpace page of Red Bull girl
• themarina1’s Yahoo photo album
• Photos from bobandeileen.com
• Flickr search results for “flugtag sushi”
• YouTube: Courtesy of schmidt4brains (Sushi Gone Wild at 0:59)
• YouTube: Courtesy of brandondeepwell (Sushi Gone Wild at 1:41)

Flight of The Wild Sushi

• Video posted on SushiGoneWild’s channel on YouTube
  

What’s a contest without results?  Here’s how the hardware was handed out at Canada’s first Red Bull Flugtag event:

Grand prize: The Big Shooter
Second prize: Pirates of False Creek
Third prize: Spadflyer
Farthest flight: The Big Shooter
People’s choice: Ballerz Club Ghetto Club
(Click here for the official Flugtag Vancouver results)

The Big Shooter flew to a North American Flugtag record of 86-feet (which is still a lot less than the world Flugtag record of 195-feet).  What’s mind-boggling is how much money was spent on The Big Shooter: $100,000.  That’s $1163/foot flown.  (Compare that to The Wild Sushi: $400/20-feet = $20/foot flown).  Considering that the prize money was only $7500, let’s hope that the remaining $92,500 bought a lot of pride.

Anyway, one of the best things about being a part of the Flugtag experience is what I’ll call l’esprit de Flugtag – the mutual admiration the teams had for each other’s handiwork, creativity, and ability to work duct tape.

The best way to capture l’esprit de Flugtag is through photos:

Leonard is no Marty McFly.  (Back to the Flugtag)

Arrrr!  (Pirates of False Creek)

Mmmm.  Poutine Wagon and Sushi Gone Wild like to think about the same things.

Sushi Gone Wild plays Air Guitar.

Summer Nights were hot with Grease Flightening.

Egg Man incubates with the help of the Blow Tronic (Suicide Blonde) in the background.

The Red Bull girls pose with Sushi Gone Wild.  (Had to post Leonard’s favourite photo).

At 1:45pm on Saturday, August 19, 2006, on the Red Bull Flugtag flight deck in False Creek in Vancouver, it was Sushi Gone Wild’s time to give’er.  In the span of 3 minutes, everything Sushi Gone Wild had worked towards for two months came to an end with a glorious second of flight.

The 300 lb Wild Sushi needed a little help going down the ramp to the flight deck.

The first thing that all teams did when it was their turn to take the stage was to talk to the MCs, MuchMusic VJ Matte Babel and The Beat‘s Nira Arora.  Pilot Elizabeth Shrimp did the talking (and was très fab!), while the rest of the team hurriedly set up the props – the stool, chopsticks, and chopsticks rest.  Katherine Wasabi also put her cat-like reflexes to use when she held back The Wild Sushi from prematurely rolling into the Creek!

Katherine was constantly distracted by fans who screamed, “WASABI!”

Before we knew it (really!), our arrangement of the song Born to be Wild (Steppenwolf) started and off we went.  (Born to be Wild ~ Wild Sushi ~ Sushi Gone Wild.  Get it?  Clever, no?).  Sushi Gone Wild used our minute-long skit to the max as we strutted our bulky stuff for the crowd and judges – one of whom was apparently Brendan Morrison, currently of the Vancouver Canucks.

Our skit was an umm…interpretive dance about an independent shrimp who was “looking for adventure” and found it in the wrong place.  The shrimp had thought that the cool soy sauce, wasabi and sushi rolls were having a rad time ‘soul training’.  But she was sadly mistaken, as she was forced by the others to take the plunge on The Wild Sushi.  There’s a life lesson in there somewhere for kids, I think.

Sushi Gone Wild prepares to ‘soul train’ for the masses.

When the music gave the final bellow of “Booornnn to beeee wiiild”, a salmon roll, soy sauce bottle, wasabi and avacado roll frantically pushed a shrimp and The Wild Sushi off a pier.  That moment of flight was fantabulous – the lift…the splash…the floating.  Watching that perfectly round circle merrily drift atop False Creek was an image Sushi Gone Wild won’t forget; it brought the brilliant ridiculousness of the event to a tranquil close.

Sushi – meet Creek.  Photo courtesy of pokedyoureyeout on Flickr.

Suddenly, there was booing!  Apparently the masses were disappointed in how the rest of the team hadn’t taken the plunge.  Leonard, however, swears they were saying Boo-urns.  I didn’t mind the booing much – I mean, how many people can say they’ve been booed by a crowd of 30,000?  Heck, even Brendan Morrison gets booed live by only 18,000 people on any given game night.

Anyway, Sushi Gone Wild is wildly happy to report that Pilot Elizabeth is in one piece, after having recovered from belly-flopping upon impact on The Wild Sushi.  And for those who care about such things, The Wild Sushi officially flew 20-feet.  Not too shabby!

Feel free to email Sushi Gone Wild: wildsushi@lotus-land.ca

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Friday was supposed to be set-up day for all the teams, but Sushi Gone Wild got to set up on Thursday night because we were going to be on Citytv’s Breakfast Television on Friday morning!  At 7am!  7am…

Setting up the sushi was quite the rush, even with the extra forces (ie. available family members) that we called in for help.  Much yelling and stressing ensued that night as we tried to get The Wild Sushi to look TV-ready.  There was a lot of frantic shouting from our team that must’ve entertained the Red Bull production crew: “Get me a nut that fits!”, “I need a screw here!”, “Glue it!”, “Zip it down!”, etc.

Friday, August 18, 2006: Set-up Day 

Sushi Gone Wild was back on-site at False Creek bright and early (6:30am!) as we continued to prettify The Wild Sushi for its TV debut.  Since the team had called in sick to our bosses, we hope that they weren’t watching our live TV interview with Breakfast Television’s Tasha Chiu!  Five other teams were interviewed that morning, as well: Egg Man, The Blue Collar Bomber, Pirates of False Creek, Free Moustache Rides & Ballerz Club Ghetto Club.

The rest of Friday was spent putting yet more finishing touches on The Wild Sushi, watching the other teams set-up, doing more media interviews, and relaxing at the BBQ.

The Wild Sushi looked delightfully fluffy in front of pillow-like BC Place.

The Wild Sushi looked tasty to The Butterfly team.

Planes!  Lest we forget that Flugtag is a flying contest…

            

Not many people get to be on an empty Flugtag flight deck.

Sushi Gone Wild would leave their mark on this deck on Saturday.

Saturday, August 19, 2006: Event Day

It was another gorgeous day to be at False Creek – Red Bull really lucked out on the weather.

Sushi Gone Wild started Event Day by blowing up more red balloons as roe on The Wild Sushi and as stuffing inside of Jenny’s and Katherine’s soy sauce and wasabi costumes.

The doors opened to the public at noon.  This was Sushi Gone Wild’s cue to work it for the crowds in our hangar.

Left to right: Leonard as an avocado roll, Katherine as wasabi, Jenny as a soy sauce bottle, Elizabeth as a shrimp, & Adrienne as a salmon roll

We handed out some red helium balloons to people (read: cute kids) who stopped by our hangar in an effort to bribe SMS votes for us!

At 2pm, it was time for the teams to get in parade formation.  Sushi Gone Wild was #11 in line for take-off. 

Pretty soon, it was time for us to be on deck…