Luge

The German athletes won four gold medals at the luge world championship in Canada.

Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin could not have come from more different backgrounds. Grimmette is from Michigan, where there is heavy ice and snowfall and he helped build a luge track when he was 14. Martin is from Palo Alto California, where the average temperature is between 10 and 20 degrees Celsius and there is no snowfall.

The luge was a block of ice, sometimes up to three-and-one-half feet long, which had narrow grooves etched into it. Alcohol was poured onto one end of the luge and as the alcohol traveled down the narrow grooves in the block of ice, it was cooled and then ran directly into the mouth of the waiting drinker on the other end.

Kegs of beer were set up around every corner. There was also a liquor luge—a giant block of ice, slanted at a 45-degree angle and carved with a convenient path for shots to be poured down and into the mouths of anyone who was thirsty.

From restaurant openings and closings to how to do a "Bone Marrow Luge," you'll want to check him [Dave Cathey] out for the latest on the gastronomic scene.

The Torres opened their first location in 2010 in Boyle Heights—the area squished between Downtown and East L.A.—and on their Chef's Night Out, we captured some quality father–son time as each Armando showed the other his generation's Boyle Heights. For Junior that meant creative-Italian appetizing at Bestia (technically in the "Arts District") and something called a "bone luge," where a sommelier pours sherry down your gullet via a recently scraped cow femur.

[Norman] Ollestad was only 11 when a small plane carrying him, his father and his father's girlfriend to a ski race slammed into the San Gabriel Mountains west of Los Angeles during a blizzard. […] After the girlfriend luged to her death halfway down the icy slope, Ollestad had to pick his way down alone, following the trail of her blood.