Devil's Peak | WhaleTales Blog by Chris von Ulmenstein

On Thursday I was invited to the opening of the Kamers food and design pop-up event, which is being held inside and outside the extensive The Castle, an apt venue as The Castle of Good Hope was home to the market in Cape Town in early days.

Kamers started off in Stellenbosch twelve years ago when a collection of friends organised it as Kamers vol Geskenke, and its timing was close to Christmas, allowing one to buy unusual, unique, and stylish presents to give as gifts. At that time they started with 40 stands, now they have 140, chosen out of a list of 600 applicants, we were told by the founder of the event, Wanda du Toit. Her official title is Creative Director. Other members of the organising team include Magdel Kemp, Amelia van Zyl, and Hesta du Plessis. Kamers has never been held in Cape Town, so hosting it in the city as well as in The Castle is a double historic event. Now Kamers is spread over four events throughout the year, in Stellenbosch, Pretoria, and for the first time in Johannesburg and Cape Town this year. It is organised by a team of twelve, and no one ever leaves, said Wanda. Unique to the Cape Town event is the collaboration with the Cape Craft & Design Initiative (CCDI), a collective of 5000 small design and craft enterprises, which are offered business and marketing support to assist them in growing their businesses, to help them grow, and to enable them to employ staff, said Erica Elk, its Executive Director. World Design Capital 2014 has endorsed Kamers.

On arrival at The Castle, we were guided to park furthest from The Castle building, and fill up the space in this way, not making sense at all, the latecomers being lucky enough to park closest to The Castle building! It was difficult to find the venue for the media launch, a number of us entering the building housing the William Fehr Collection. An Iziko Museums staff member was unfriendly in pointing us generally down a passage with her walkie-talkie, without explanation. She had no clue about Kamers taking place on the property, or where the media function was, and fortunately a colleague could guide us to a completely different building. In the launch address Wanda hinted at some of the issues they had in using The Castle buildings, being a Military-owned property with rules and regulations, which created some challenges for the organisers, but these were not visible to us, other than the attitude of the Iziko staff and the parking ‘organisation’. I fed back the problem with the Iziko Museums staff to Calvyn Gilfellan, the CEO of The Castle, who told me immediately that the Iziko Continue reading →

The largest selection in Africa of beers on tap (16) and bottled beers (99) is available at newly opened Beerhouse, on party mile Long Street in Cape Town. The Beer List states that ‘we see ourselves as (part of) the world beer revolution’, and Beerhouse plans regular events to ‘incubate the ideals of craft’ and to celebrate the world’s oldest and greatest beverage’!

One cannot miss the strong beer yellow painted building exterior opposite Mama Africa. The Beer Hall is upstairs, once a bead outlet. The decor of the beer hall is quite plain, with some TV screens, and framed pictures of dressed up beer bottles in felt, representing traditional dress from around the world. The backs of wooden benches are painted beer yellow, and banquettes have been upholstered in the same colour. While they were renovating the building, they found attractive raw brickwork, and left some of it at the top of the walls. Lovely wooden floors had to be tiled, as the dust was affecting shops downstairs. Interior decorator Justin Plunkett of Joom came up with the theme of 99 beer bottles, after the well-known song ‘99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall’. Continue reading →