A Return to Kits

It's hard for me to believe but it was close to 20 years ago when I'd often hit the weekend with the "legendary" Kits Girls. I used to work with Miss Germany and she had a gang of girlfriends that were all bright, beautiful and bouncy. (I'd have used "vivacious" over "bouncy" but I thought I'd stay with the alliteration. Sorry.) And they all lived and partied in Vancouver's Kitsilano part of town. For the non-locals, think young, trendy, beaches, pubs, you can probably catch my drift.

Hence, the Kits Girls. There was a core of about six to eight and, if they all walked into Bridges' Pub or Biminis or one of the other happening spots as a group on a Friday night, there could often be a case of whiplash from all the heads a-turning. As I sit here, I just realized that they were very much like a pre-cursor to Carrie Bradshaw and her Manhattan gang. A kinda Vancouver-based Sex & The City. I remember at one point, a couple of them were going to write a book about all the pick-up lines they'd heard. They were some doozies.

I suppose, however, that some of those lines must have at least opened the door for the guys, because most of the Kits Girls have long since married and moved away - New York, Calgary, Washington, Vancouver Island, Italy. There's not a lot of Kits left in the Girls.

I don't hear of or see much of the Girls nowadays, but I was thrilled to hear that Bella Jianna was going to be in town and hoped to get together for dinner one night. By happenstance, Angel was visiting from Europe and she and two of the remaining local girls could make it as well.

I had to laugh when I heard that we were to meet at The Sandbar. The restaurant has a reputation as being one of Vancouver's foremost cougar bars. I'm not sure if I elicited a chuckle or not from anyone else, but I amused myself when I asked if it was still appropriate to refer to the gang as the "Kits Girls." Being of a more delicate age now, I suggested that the chosen location might be a great place to introduce a new team name - the Kitsilano Cougars.

I didn't get smacked, but I don't think it caught on either.

Bella Jianna loves her BC wines, so we decided to stick with two from one of the early stars of BC's winemaking pioneers.

166. 2007 Blue Mountain Pinot Blanc (Okanagan)

167. 2007 Blue Mountain Pinot Noir (Okanagan)

This has been a rather lengthy post, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on Blue Mountain itself. I can rely on the luxury of knowing that I'll be adding more of their wines to The List. I can expound on the winery at that time. As a brief note here, Blue Mountain was probably the first Okanagan winery that made me sit up and think that there might be something to BC wines after all. In fact, I remember that I first tried a Blue Mountain wine at a work dinner for the same firm that Miss Germany and I were both working at back in the days of the Kits Girls.

The wines were a fine accompaniment to an evening of laughs and memories. It wasn't like one of those nights of old that carried on into the early morning hours, but - for a group of more mature folk - I think we carried ourselves off pretty well. I hope to see a lot more of the Girls as The List grows.