DEIGHTON CUP ADHERENTS JUST DODGE A DOUSING
CUP ALMOST RUNNETH OVER: For nine years, Deighton Cup organizers Dax Droski, Jordan Kallman and Tyson Villeneuve have gambled on the weather rather than the thoroughbreds at Hastings Racecourse. With many lightly dressed, highly heeled, sketchily hatted women and their escorts attending, rain could result in what regular railsiders call a mudder. This year, showers turned to drizzle, then evaporated before the second race (Fetisov paid $3.20 for the win). The conditions were a warning to Social Concierge principals Kallman and Villeneuve, whose sixth annual outdoors Diner en Blanc on Aug. 24 should draw 6,000 white-clad participants. Back at Hastings, clement weather has always gifted Parade Agency owner and former punk rock guitarist Droski, who co-founded the Deighton Cup partly as a 27th birthday present to himself. This year, it favoured flamboyantly attired sponsor David Bentil, who again corralled high-value horseless carriages from his Mile’s End Motors showroom. While admiring them, Sunan Spriggs noted more than 30 women wearing ultrasnug dresses and toting vividly coloured bags from her CityLux boutique. Taking a different couture tack, actress-dancer Keilani Elizabeth Rose draped gauze over an abbreviated bodysuit and relied on a broad-brimmed chapeau to fend off the early drizzle and chill. Many followed suit by ditching their once-ubiquitous Kate Middleton-style fascinators for larger, florally adorned headgear. Maybe next year will bring the “fruit basket” hats worn by singer-movie-star Carmen Miranda. Then again, those beside the paddock might have them bitten off by racereadying nags. Better than rain, though.
BOTTOMS UP: You’d expect Deighton Cup patrons to favour brandy-based horse’s neck cocktails. In fact, champagne from sponsor Piper-Heidsieck is the tipple of choice, and champagne-cocktail-mixing is important enough to warrant its own day-earlier competition. The Vancouver Club’s Michelle Medwin won this year’s tourney with Romaji, a concoction named for the system of spelling Japanese words with Latin-alphabet characters. Medwin’s Romaji, though, is made with plum liqueur, shiso leaf, ginger, bitters and, of course, plenty of PiperHeidsieck. As for the Deighton Cup paying true bibulous homage to its namesake, “Gassy” Jack Deighton, it could do what that pioneering hotelier did on Sept, 28. 1867. Landing at what is now Gastown, he hauled a barrel of whiskey from his canoe and began selling straight-up shots — no fancy cocktails — to the parched connoisseurs working at Captain Stamp’s nearby sawmill.
STONE UNROLLED: If ever-biting Frank magazine still existed, its front-page headline might be: Donald Trump: Why can’t he be our prime minister?
BREAKING OUT: Vancouverbased architect Bing Thom died Oct. 4, 2016 while visiting Hong Kong, a city he’d left at the age of nine in 1950. “He was a true visionary who demonstrated how architecture impacts and enriches our communities,” Architectural Institute of B.C. CEO Mark Vernon said while opening a free exhibition of the Bing Thom Architects firm’s works. “It is a celebration of … the journey we have shared with him,” BTA principal Venelin Kokalov said of the Building Beyond Buildings exhibition at 440 Cambie St. running until Aug. 21. Fittingly, given Thom’s birth and death there, it includes a model of the University of Chicago Center under construction in Hong Kong. Barely touching its steep, treed slope, the curving structure will emblemise higher learning’s freedom by incorporating two former military and political prisons.
ROLL ON: Diners at 29-year-old Tojo’s restaurant may soon see something new accompany the world-famous California Rolls that proprietor Tojo Hidekazu invented. It would be a view of downtown and the North Shore mountains from a restaurant now topping a mixed-use, midrise tower on its West Broadway site. BTA technical director Shinobu Homma will handle the development. “He said Tojosan’s location very good for a legacy project,” Tojo said. Then, superfluously given his devoted following, “I like the city to be happy.”
OPUS 15: Yaletown’s Opus Hotel, home of the glass-walled washrooms, marked its 15th anniversary with an art-installation party titled Love Me. It wasn’t as radical as a three-month project in 2010 when graffiti artist Vincent Dumoulin stripped the hotel’s bar-restaurant and resprayed it daily as a pop-up spot named 100 Days. This time, former fashion designer-manufacturer and TV-series personality Jason Dussault showed the aluminum-shard mosaic portrait of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau he debuted but didn’t sell at New York’s Hoerle Guggenheim gallery. Cathy High produced the event’s Love Me theme painting installed outside and, inside, a mixed-media work from her West Coast totemic series titled Oh! Miriam Alden, the scion of a newspaper-publishing clan who sensibly launched a garment-biz agency and later the Brunette fashion designing manufacturing firm, had young men and women model T-shirts emblazoned Brunette or Blonde. Nothing for redheads yet, it seems.
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Although those aged under 35 will get more Bach with less bite by paying half-price when the Vancouver Bach Festival launches at Christ Church Cathedral Aug. 1, they’ll receive no such discount for Lady Gaga’s Rogers Arena concert that night.