Brian Lawrence Live

Wednesday, April 18
Tonight, CenterStage hosted ‘Puchi Nippon,’ a Japanese-themed evening of food, performances and fun. The crowd of several hundred enjoyed bars, food stations from eight Baltimore restaurants, strolling performers, artwork and fashion shows spread out over three floors of the performance complex on Calvert Street. As soon as I walked in, I ran into Downtown Diane and Sloane Brown, who showed me her handy-dandy new digital recorder, which she uses at events to do on-site interviews and then posts on her Sun column’s Web link. Cool! I was joined by friends Tracy Kwiatkowski and Tom Brinkley, and we set out to explore the multi-level party. After sampling some saki and and a special theme shot, we wondered upstairs, where I came upon our own Style fashion editor Suzin Boddiford and past Stylemaker from our Sept. issue Jennifer Brown. In keeping with the evening’s theme, Suzin was rocking a beautiful vintage kimono, while Jen opted for a sleek Missoni dress. In the dining salon, we joined frequent Style fashion photographer Dean Alexander and Dean Krapf, who is the hair & makeup mastermind behind many of our Style fashion shoots, including the current issue. After posing for a series of group shots, we continued to wander. In the Chapel bar, I stopped to chat with Jim Halle and with CenterStage director Michael Ross and Susan Garabedian. Architect/designer Patrick Sutton joined us as we attempted to get into the 9 o’clock fashion show, but the auditorium was already at capacity. By then, there’d been a power outage that prevented some of the food stations from cooking; faced with hunger, a few of us decided to trek the two and half blocks up to Minato (still in its old digs just off the square, but soon to move into new ones two blocks up Charles St.). After more saki, some Sapporos, sushi and sesami chicken, we decided to head two blocks north to Red Maple for its Wednesday night Shanta party, complete with belly dancers. Inside, we joined developer Pat Turner and Christian Johannssen, who’d also just come from the same party, at a table in the front room next to one of the glowing firepits. That made a nice perch to enjoy the dancing and the rest of the evening. Check out photos from the party in our Social Seen pages.