It’s a Merrymaker’s Dream:
Auction 2001:
Enchanting
I Auction chairs Bob and Connie Klein (front) relax at a pre-auction party with Bill Petkoupoulos and Doug Basegio. Doug’s Parkside Grille Restaurant has been a favorite place for Priory festivities and Bill, the new owner, kindly agreed to continue the tradition.
t’s Carnival—a time of revelry! In Venice, the palaces throw open their courtyards to merrymakers. There are musicians, fortunetellers, clowns and acrobats in the streets. Everybody, from the crown prince to the cook, dons a mask and dresses to the nines. They crowd the narrow streets of Venice, pour into the city courtyards, and then go off to a sumptuous dinner and wonderful theater. This was the Venetian Carnival of the Renaissance years. Revelers at Woodside Priory’s “Venetian Flights of Fancy,” this year’s auction fund-raiser, will share a taste of this glamour and excitement. The party starts at the elegant, full-size gondola at the Hotel Sofitel in Redwood City, 6:00 p.m. on March 24. Silent Auction and cocktails are at 6:00 p.m., dinner at 7:45, Grand Auction at 9 with dancing and general merriment until midnight. “The committee members have outdone themselves in creating a Venetian revelry. I know people are going to love it. Walking into the Grand Ballroom, people are going to be just enchanted with the
feeling of being in Renaissance Italy. The color, the glitter, the masks are all there,” said Connie Klein, who co-chairs the event with her husband, Robert. “Dozens of volunteers have devoted hundreds of hours making this a really memorable time everyone and I can’t them enough,” Connie
f o r thank said. In the main courtyard, Priory guests chatting over their wine-glasses can mingle with servers holding trays of delicacies, laugh with the court jester and the lady magician, and enjoy the irresistible airs of the Renaissance musicians, Connie said. “One magician’s trick, making live doves appear and disappear, is quite an authentic touch, and it seemed preferable to some of the other Renaissance traditions, such as releasing live bulls in the streets,” she added. The Grand Ballroom is a vision of a Renaissance masquerade with costumes and masks and colorful trappings. The food doesn’t get any more sumptuous than the Sofitel’s—warm puff pastry filled with shrimp and scallops in a light dill sauce, followed by a salad of goat cheese, mixed greens, walnuts and vinaigrette. Choose baked braid of salmon and seabass served with dill and roasted tomato velouté sauce, or sauced filet mignon, or penne pasta with a medley of fresh vegetables, garlic and olive oil. Then comes the pastry with fresh strawberries and cream atop strawberry coulis. And the theater! It’s hilarious, live, audience-participation theater with paddles and bidding creating the
