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Press
Reviews + News
The
Vancouver Courier
Wednesday, February 7, 2001
Couple
heats up cool factor in Marpole
By Brenda Jones
Two
years ago, James Neufeld and Shainin Hudda were chowing
down at the now defunct Bella Casa restaurant in Marpole
when they came up with an idea for rejuvenating the
arts scene in their neighbourhood. They were frustrated
with always having to trek to Kits,
Commercial Drive
or downtown for a night out. Marpole's
main distractions consist of the Wild Coyote night
club, which tends to draw an under-22 crowd, and the
strip bar at Fraser Arms Hotel - neither of which
appeal to them.
"If
you want to go out on Commercial or downtown there's
always something going on, but in Marpole
there's nothing," Hudda says.
"We
were tired of the whole club scene downtown - the
pretentiousness of it," adds Neufeld.
That
summer evening Neufeld and Hudda started planning
their own event in Marpole
as an alternative to leaving the neighbourhood for
a Saturday night out. Inspired by shows they'd attended
at the Sugar Refinery and the Blue
Lizard Lounge, they started up Beautiful House
Productions to launch events of their own.
In
September 1999, they hosted their first party at Bella
Casa (which translates into "beautiful house"),
featuring local musicians, artists, poets and spoken
word performers. That first event, intended as a one-off,
was so much fun the couple decided to hold them bi-monthly
under the name Beautiful House Gallery Lounge.
"A
house is a gathering," Neufeld says when explaining
their venture's name. "It had to be 'beautiful,'
not only because Marpole
desperately needs some style, but because we've both
had enough of the snobiness often associated with
art gatherings and the often brutal ugliness of any
drinking establishment."
Beautiful
House Gallery Lounge's mandate, as a collective of
artists, is to build community and promote the arts
in Marpole.
The organizers also want to create a community of
artists for networking and to promote their own businesses.
Hudda designs a line of clothing under the Soul
Daisy label and Neufeld runs Magnetude
Media, a web site design and Internet marketing
firm.
Hudda
said that promoting the grassroots gallery events
to the general public was challenging at first. They
initially marketed events by driving around in her
red Honda Civic blowing bubbles out the windows and
stopping to talk to people as they distributed flyers
around Marpole
and Kerrisdale.
They now rely more on word-of-mouth, from their website,
and through their email
membership list.
Beautiful
House Gallery Lounge has a regular following now,
but the organizers struggle each time to find appropriate,
available and inexpensive venues to host their parties
in Marpole.
Last November's party had to be held at Main Street's
Starry Dynamo Cafe because they couldn't secure a
venue in Marpole.
The Angel-theme
event was a huge success because several of the 80
people in attendance were passersby who dropped in
to check out their event, Neufeld says. He added that
they've never had that kind of foot traffic in Marpole,
and a Beautiful House Gallery Lounge party will be
held on Main Street again this weekend. That said,
Neufeld hasn't ruled out holding their April event
in Marpole.
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