In her 1970 song “Big Yellow Taxi,” Joni Mitchell laments how paradise was paved to put up a parking lot.
Fast forward a few decades — specifically, to last Saturday night — and guess what? AMC Cancer Fund put a reverse spin on the lyrics by turning the wall-to-wall asphalt of a car park at 14th and California streets, across from the Colorado Convention Center, into a Parisian paradise for a pop-up party known as Dinner in White.
This was the second year for the fundraiser, patterned after a similar event in Paris. Co-chairs Shana Briggs and Krista Gilbertson were very happy with the results. The number of guests (250) and the net proceeds ($20,000) represented significant increases over last year, and the downtown, open-air location attracted a lot of attention from passers-by.
Dinner in White is geared to a younger demographic, with all communication done by social media — right down to the tweets and text messages sent out an hour before the 7 p.m. start to say where the party would be held. (There’s a different location every year).
“We want our guests to arrive somewhere totally unexpected,” Gilbertson said, “and you’ve got to admit this is pretty cool. I mean, who parties in a parking lot?”
Tickets are a bargain $50, a price point made possible by the fact that guests bring their own picnic suppers to enjoy with desserts donated by Le Central restaurant and Cake Crumbs bakery. There was also music by Meniskus and a break-dancing set by Dance2Live.
Le Diner en Blanc originated in Paris when Francois Pasquier returned after living elsewhere and threw a dinner party in the Bois de Boulogne to reconnect with friends and family. To make it easier for everyone to find each other, he asked his guests to wear white.
So how did Dinner in White come to Denver? AMC’s executive director, Alice Norton has an aunt who is married to a Frenchman; they live outside of Paris. The husband’s niece and her husband, Magali and Kil Bruneau DelaSalle, became friends with Pasquier while living in Tahiti, and they helped him organize the first dinners in Paris.
“In France,” Norton says, “the crowds now number in the thousands. Everyone brings their own table and chairs, silverware, china, dinner and wine and — like here — they don’t know where they’re going until they’re loaded on buses that take them to the site.”
Guests included Gary Kortz, chair of the AMC Cancer Fund board; Miss Colorado Diana Dreman; Alan and Karen Stein; set designer Tina Anderson, who donated her services to create the replica of the Eiffel Tower that helped guide everyone to the locale; Jim and Michelle Cottrell; David MacLeod; and featured speaker Kasia Iwaniczko MacLeod, who shared her experiences as a three- time cancer survivor.
Joanne Davidson: 303-809-1314 or jdavidson@denverpost.com; also, and GetItWrite on Twitter
