BIG SISTERS LOVE GRAPE JUICE
Bentley showroom plays host to gala
The wine flowed in Vancouver Bentley’s auto showroom when the 10th annual Grape Juice gala reportedly raised $100,000. The money will see Big Sisters of B.C. Lower Mainland add 50 girls to the 775 served in 2016, while still leaving 107 on the waiting list.
McNeill Nakamoto Recruitment group founders Cheryl Nakamoto and Sarah McNeill and her husband Cam McNeill chaired the event.
Now her firm’s sole principal, Nakamoto sampled another driver’s seat in a Bentley Bentayga SUV that can cost well over $400,000. Regarding daughters, not sisters, she once recalled how her firm’s name prompted potential Japanese clients to say: “Ah, you must work for your father.”
“No,” she replied regarding part-time comptroller Kaz Nakamoto.
“He works for me.”
HEADY STUFF: Grape Juice patrons also sampled Steamworks beers. It’s hardly surprising that brew pub founder Eli Gershkovitz is married to Big Sisters executive director Brenda Gershkovitz. Bucking a craftbrewing craze, the former lawyer avoids giving his beer more hops than a Bugs Bunny episode. He also owns a car that reflects his enterprise and is rarer than most Bentleys. It’s a 1913 Stanley Steamer, with a boiler that could brew limited batches of a truly exotic beer — Stanley Steamworks, say.
TO THE METAL: Bentley calls its Bentayga “the world’s fastest SUV.” No kidding. With 600-horsepower, the 3,250-kilogram bruiser reportedly hits 301 km/h. The slogan also echoes race car maker Ettore Bugatti calling the big, heavy Bentleys that won 1927-30 Le Mans 24hour races “the world’s fastest lorries.” Maybe the Bentayga name will inspire Lamborghini, Ferrari and Pagani to launch Lambago, Ferrago and Paganaga SUVs — even a compact Paganini, complete with replica Stradivarius violin.
DRAWN AWAY: After 41 years, Norman Hotson retired his partnership from — but not his involvement in — Dialog, the architectural firm that he and Joost Baker founded.
Having honoured Hotson at that firm’s recent San Francisco debut, Bakker did so again as staff, colleagues and clients filled Bridges restaurant.
That’s literally old home for the two who undertook Granville Island’s master plan and located their office there for six years. Reflecting his extensive work for aboriginal clients, colleagues presented Hotson with a blue heron mask by Kwakwaka’wakw carver and hereditary chief Simon Dick.
TAKING CARE: Cause We Care founder Andrea Thomas Hill, event chair Vandana Varshney Lecky and 200 women raised a reported $85,000 one recent rainy lunchtime in the Sutton Place hotel’s Boulevard restaurant. It will benefit single mothers and children at, or reliant on, the YWCA’s 21-unit Cause We Care House that opened April 21. The foundation (causewecare. org) earlier raised $1.5 million to join the city and Vancouver Public Library on that project. Lunch over, Thomas Hill and others left to work on a Mother’s Day carepackage drive for 500 recipients.
WORD FROM THE WISE: Some 27 Naramata Bench Wineries Association members served new releases at the Four Seasons hotel when the Wine for Waves gala benefited Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre’s Ocean Wise program. That sustainable fishing initiative is supported by 5,000 Canadian restaurants, said aquarium executive chef and Ocean Wise ambassador Ned Bell.
Fans from his days at the hotel’s Yew restaurant await Bell’s fall-releasing first book, Lure, with 100 recipes for 40 species from California to Alaska.
More imminently, Aquarium CEO John Nightingale awaits May 15, when a bylaw amendment enactment is due regarding Vancouver park board banning the importation and display of live cetaceans in parks.
“The question is: When is a deal a deal?” Nightingale said regarding the aquarium’s lease with the city until 2029 and its possession of a development permit for an expansion, on which the park board signed off.
WATER COLOURED: Like the commuters he carried, tug-boat-turned-SeaBus Captains J.G. (Greg) Freedman got time to think. Retiring in 2001, he began painting things seen during a career afloat. His oil-on-canvas Twilight, English Bay is the only Canadian work in an American Society of Marine Artists’ juried exhibition to open May 11 in Oxnard, Calif.
NO ROUGHING: Occupy Vancouver protesters were removed from the Vancouver Art Gallery forecourt in 2012. This week, another tent went up and down briefly across the street in the Hotel Georgia ballroom. It was from the Clayoquot Wilderness Resort, and it was ritzy enough to cost two occupants $5,400 each (including return air) for a three-night stay, general managers Bradley Goian and Antonella Puglisi said.
ON THE ROAD: Look for supercars on the Sea to Sky Highway on Saturday. At 10 a.m., Hublot Diamond Rally director Nadia Iadisernia will start dispatching 150 teams from Brian Jessel’s dealership to Whistler. They’ll pause at Squamish’s Chances Casino, where some cars may change drivers or even hands.
The event will benefit 30 charities from Alzheimer Society of B.C. to Wounded Warriors of Canada.
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un could strengthen a putative relationship by trading haircuts.