Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2008 > September > 07
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Texas 4000 Tribute Gala at the Four Seasons
In the course of an evening out, one fit athlete offered to get me out into the Hill Country on a bicycle, while another tried to lure me onto Lady Bird Lake in a kayak.
Joe Weismantel, Audrey Neville, Sarmed Rashid
Did they think that, just because I walked to their separate fundraising events along a multi-mile stretch of the hike and bike trail, that I could actually join something like the Texas 4000, a cycling road ride from Texas to Alaska to raise money to fight cancer?
Luci Baines Johnson, Nancy Brown
Hardly. Although the promise of adventure is tempting. The course is actually more than 4,500 miles and is billed the longest charity ride in the world. Hey, Alaska is my next intended road-trip frontier, so …
Stella Jang, Dane Edwards
The tribute gala dinner for Texas 4000 at the Four Seasons Hotel resembled any other posh affair at the incessantly busy lakeside retreat. (Spied at a wedding next door: Texas basketball legend Jody Conradt.) Tempting silent auction items were lined up for the cocktail reception, then the revelers took their seats in the ballroom for the hotel’s usual creative banquet fare.
Pratish Kanani, Olege Esenkov, Anju Kanani
We talked a some length with aspiring journalist Dane Edwards, also with Luci Baines Johnson, who sat with event chairwoman Nancy Brown and informed me about attempts to bring the world to the gradually more open-to-the-public LBJ Ranch, including a mass bike ride out there come spring. She’s been riding herself lately, by the way, and looks fit as a country fiddle and not a day over 40.
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Kirk Furniture Preview Reception
Will Austinites buy a three-piece set of original Marcel Breuer chairs and side table for $35,000? Jeff Kirk is betting they will. (Actually, as he points out, had they been originals, they would have been $35,000, but the version he’s selling is only $10,000.) Yet he’s not betting the entire store — that would be Kirk Furniture on Guadalupe Street in the AMLI on Second building — Kirk also stocks various smaller pieces of art work, including palm-sized animal sculptures made from Buenos Aires subway tickets, priced at well under $35,000.
Andrew Lopez, Katha Busk
Austin’s style community flocked to Kirk’s pad for a preview reception, folks including interior-design superstar Joel Mozersky, architect Paul Bielamowicz (I didn’t know Austin’s Page Southerland Page had opened offices in Abu Dhabi, Doha and Kuwait!), Andrew Lopez for Marc English Design, Katha Burk from UT’s design program, Loft owners Kelly and Offir Schwartz … the list goes on.
Kelly and Offir Schwartz
Kirk has carefully planned this place, so I’m guessing he will survive the war zone of construction across the street where the W Hotel and Residences is currently a gaping hole in the ground. His shop is more modestly scaled than the St. Bernard sportswear store next door. And he’s hired staff from the pioneering downtown retailer Design Within Reach.
Jeff Kirk, Ashley Kirk
We ran into Kirk’s buddy, Texas Book Festival literary director Clay Smith — single again — who’s writing a story about income shortfalls at the Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival for the Austin Chronicle. Smith is trying to get Kip and I to play a home version of “The Newlywed Game” — with all the incumbent double entendres — at his house, but I’m afraid Kip would need more than a martini to participate in that kind of humiliation.
Monza Lui, Stephanie Tsen, Melissa Lancaster
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