Shelby About Town
More juice on Armando Palacios' and Neal Hamil's new nightspot
Neal Hamil is a partner in the new nightspot, Lake.
Dessert Gallery gives way to hip club for grown-ups, expected to open in lateJuly.Photo by Shelby Hodge
The Bank of America Center Houston lobby was setting for a keen FotoFest eventfeaturing photographer Laurie Lambrecht.
Dr. Kelli Cohen Fein and Martin Fein led the array of pretty people attendingthe Houston Symphony ball underwriter dinner.Photo by Kim Coffman
We have some juicy tidbits to add to Thursday's CultureMap scoop that Armando Palacios, Cinda Ward and Neal Hamil are planning a nightspot for the social cognescenti.
When their new venture, Lake, opens in late July in the old Dessert Gallery location between Kirby and Lake streets, don't expect to breeze through the door without the proper social trappings or without a certain amount of discretionary income.
Hamil, with two decades in Manhattan under his tastemaker belt, said there will be two phone numbers for reservations for the club. The unpublished number will be for insiders "one that the club kids will have, this one for our little gaggle of geese," Hamil said. And there will be another number for the general public.
He describes it as a "tight door" policy. In fact, there won't even be a sign that designates where the club is. If you know, you know. If you don't, c'est la vie. Shades of the beyond-hip disco Boccacio's, the popular watering hole for the chic set during the go-go '80s.
The thinking, Hamil explained, is that with a limited number of seats (no more than 100) in the 3,600 square-foot space, the owners, investors and their friends will want to have first dibs on primo seating. "It will be very intimate with couple appeal," he added.
Target customers would span the generations from Alex and Brady Knight to John and Becca Cason Thrash to Patsy and Greg Fourticq.
"It will not be the cheapest place in Houston to have a drink by any means," Hamil added. "In fact, it will be a little on the expensive side . . . You have to do that to keep it exclusive."
Picture perfect
FotoFest has gotten off to a grand start this first week of the six-week citywide photography event. On Monday night, for example, more than 100 photography fans turned out at the Bank of America Center Houston for an exhibition celebrating the photography of Laurie Lambrecht, a protégé in the early '90s of artist Roy Lichtenstein.
Lambrecht , based in New York, addressed the gathering on her Inside Roy Lichtenstein's Studio exhibition that was organized by Kinzelman Art Consulting in conjunction with FotoFest. The evening was hosted by M-M Properties and General Electric Asset Management, owners of the bank center.
Admiring the photographs that captured Lichtenstein's surroundings were FotoFest founder Fred Baldwin, Clint Willour, Kim Davenport, Frank Herzog, Gerry Ordway, Sonja Roesch, Nancy Kate Prescott, Alexis Harrigan, Liz Anders and Bill McFarland.
Making music
The pretty people turned out in force at Grille 5115 at Saks Fifth Avenue recently when the Houston Symphony celebrated underwriters of the upcoming symphony ball, "Music Matters! What a Wonderful World." Leading the pack were ball chairs Dr. Kelli Cohen Fein and Martin Fein, honorary chair Margaret Williams and underwriting chairs Tara and David Wuthrich.
As part of the salute, Kelli Fein presented the honorees — Aileen Gordon, Cora Sue Mach and Fidelity Investments (represented by Jeanie Reckart) — with engraved Christofle trays in sterling silver.
The swell crowd included Frann Lichtenstein, Jill and Brad Deutser, Harry Mach, Steve Mach, Phoebe and Bobby Tudor, symphony music director Hans Graf and wife Rita, Nancy and Bob Peiser, Saks GM Terry Zmyslo and Saks' special events guru Sylvia Forsythe.
