Image: The Market Mews by Stephen Ehrlich Architects in Venice

The term “real estate” has been transformed in cyberspace to mean any inch of space that one could use for profit or branding and promotion. And now real estate, in the literal old fashioned sense (real life homes and buildings for sale) is utilizing its valuable “real estate” (space within its space) to showcase architecture, furniture and even new signature cocktails. Is your head spinning yet? Mine was, after last night’s champagne and Absinthe.

I went to a little event dubbed arcanely enough, “The Home as Art” at the above Market Mews site. It promised and delivered architecture (the site itself) some very interest dark brooding landscape photographs courtesy of J. Bennett Fitts, and furnishings from Ford Brady. Going beyond a gallery opening–in the truely decadent capitalist style that L.A. has been known to champion–all of the aforementioned were for sale. Included in the price list was the actual structure which was going for between 1.2 and 1.4 mil with its glass ‘garage door’ open/closed living room and balcony. An interesting idea in these times of sagging home sales. Every Angelino is up for a party and many (those who aren’t in the Program) for gratis cocktails, so that is how they cleverly lured us all in.

I imagined that the event was catering to a special kind of hip and discriminating (and gay) buyer because many of the guests were somewhat stylish gay men (or metros, who knows these days?). And most importantly, whoever did the event planning had smartly hired two jaw-joppingly beautiful model-esque male bartenders. Who knows if the real estate agents will make an imminent sale but you’ve got to give them points for active ingenuity.

Next, I checked out a Flavorpill event held at Denizen Design Gallery in Culver City environs. The focus of the party appeared to be a particular brand of Absinthe and the bartender (more humanly good-looking–versus the air-brushed Adonises at the previous fete) served up signature “Flavorpill Absinthe” cocktails as folks cavorted on and surrounded by designer furniture. There were some hand-painted trucker hats for sale too. It’s a recession folks: retail spaces are practically garage sales these days, hocking a myriad of wares in hopes of making a hit on something.

True Absinthe, in its lore, has been known to do a Jekyll & Hyde on imbibers transforming them into magnets for psychedelic activity–fairy sightings and all sorts of other flying things. Unfortunately the cocktails weren’t tasty enough to cause any money to fly out of my wallet (as it usually does when I’m shopping under the influence). Not to scoff at a free drink, but these tasted like cough syrup and were presented in faux test tubes. This design flaw made me feel like I was at the doctor’s office about to provide the nurse with a urine sample. Where’s the Goldenseal when you need it?

Posted by Shana Ting Lipton