As the rain pours, a group of eclectic people gathered at the stunning Chali Rosso Art Gallery on Howe Street downtown, among them, BMO executives, Chinese business tycoons, interior designer and architects, among artists and collectors.
The first speaker Peter Szeto who is a very accomplished financial wizard warmly welcomed the 83 guests packing Chali Rosso Art Gallery for coming and showing their interest in this talk. He proclaims that he is not an art expert, but shared with everyone the top investor in the world clearly states that the two best things to invest in is real estate in New York, L.A. and Vancouver and Art! He displayed graphs showing that investment in art is comparable to other types of investment such as real estate and stocks. This sentiment was shared with the second speaker Andrew Fisher, who enlightened us that not all artist dies poor. Salvadore Dali's family due to taxes donated $550 million dollar US worth of art to the government of France after his passing, which would be past $2.31 billion dollars in today's worth. Andrew was saying that new artist's work is like start ups while the famous artist like Rembrandt and Dali, etc are like blue chips. Once these artwork is for sale, it gets snatched up and rarely ever come up for sale and their values only go up. People enjoyed the art, and learned about the different types of art. The atmosphere was one of curiousity as the crowd asked many questions including the demand for folk art, etc. The networking portion was very lively as people mingled while drinking delicious wine generously sponsored by Winestains, and taking photos in front of these master pieces from well known artists of Europe. The Art Talk was a hit so keep your eye out for future ones. You may also visit this gorgeous art gallery in your free time at 549 Howe Street, downtown Vancouver. More info at www.chalirosso.com
Photo courtesy of John Gurcharan Nijjar
Go Find and Seek
Two weeks ago on Tuesday night at 6pm, 10 bloggers of varying stripes gathered outside Go Find and Seek on the second floor of Tinseltown and met one of the five owners Kevin for a 45 minutes game. Kevin was very generous to explain this is a more Asian style puzzle game and an evil wizard has been unleashing terror in the world, and it's up to us to find a pendant that will stop him in his tracks. He also shared the Go Find & Seek's Genesis story which are a group of friends who are exit game enthusiasts for the past 6 years and they wanted to create a game where everyone is not addicted to their ipad but playing and interacting with one another. They have played online exit games, played exit games around the world and have thoughts about how to improve it, so thus this place was born. All of us worked together to solve these puzzles and at this place, we could ask for lots of clues, but due to our pride, we only asked for 3 clues in the last 10 minutes of the game. When time was over, we made 80% of the way through.
It was a fun team building exercise and seeing different people knowledge and skills was fascinating!
Feel free to go check it out at www.gofindandseek.com
Catfe
The Cat Cafe has garnered a lot of interest in recent month, since Vancouverites love our cats and dogs. This concept is really popular in Japan, I overheard from another blogger, they even have a goat cafe. This cafe opened late 2015 on the second floor of Tinseltown and after only a month, had to shut down temporarily because all the SPCA cats got adopted by patrons so they had to wait for more cats in order to resume business. The design of the cafe is separated into 3 parts. There is a small entrance area, then two separate doors, one leading to the cafe and gift shop and the other to visit the cats. People may get their coffee/tea and go to the other section. Everyone must sign a weaver form and be informed how to interact with the cats. They had eight cats when we visited, not every cat like to be petted since the place is packed. Also we're told not to take pictures of the cats with flash since they have sensitive eyes. The cafe is designed in a very cute way with a very nice wooden logo above their storefront. The cats only eat specific food the SPCA provides and the staff there really do take good care of the cats. These lucky cats are well loved and I'm sure will be quickly adopted. Due to the volume, the cat section could only service 15 guests for 30 minutes at a time, so our group had to take several turns. Go check it out at www.catfe.ca
RED
Sunday, Feb 21st at the Commodore Ballroom, hundreds of the LGBTQ community came out in addition to local media in celebration of colour, couture, and showing love in a fundraising effort to support Positive Living Society, which helps those living with AIDS. It was produced by the famed Dean Thuliner with his large production team and over 150 creative artists including fashion designer, hair and make up, costume, etc to put on this show. It certained was a show! With living singing, dance, performance, fashion and live auction. The diversity of performance was dazzeling and what really impressed me was seeing people from all age, gender, and walk of life on stage proudly walking the fashion runaway. Some of the clothes seem to represent just different type of work, from construction to business, etc. Some are really outlandish. Of the fashion portion, out of the 12 brands represented, I was only impressed with two, one looked like bondage wear, and another court clothes for European royals from the middle ages. This medival theme also extended to the bearded white faced man in these princess outfits walking around selling raffle tickets. I'm not sure if the juxtaposition is working, it gave me a scare to see a man with a big beard with extremely long drag queen lashes. Everyone seem to have enjoyed their time, and the event raised quite a bit of money by selling the $500 or $1,000 balloons as well as the live auction. The auctioneer is a really insecure actor in his mid 40's who seem to past his expiry date, and he's verbalizing all his insecurities about his non existent six pack and sagging face. I wish he could love himself more and stay consistent with that night's message of positivity.
