Hilly Awards: On the Street Where You Live

Photo Courtesy of Elizabeth Festa

The first annual Hilly Awards for top-rated Hill businesses – based on a citizens poll – was one of those events that, though carefully planned and orchestrated, come off as  an impromptu gathering of everyone you usually meet walking around the neighborhood plus those larger-than-life types you only hear  from idle sidewalk chatter.  All gleam and glisten and mingle, until you can’t tell who you have known for five minutes and who for five years, and  each one seems to be the host or hostess of an annual  holiday party you used to attend, but one that you haven’t gone to in ages. In other words–where has it been all these years?

Julia Christian, CHAMPS executive director,  had the idea –roll out a red carpet, install Stuart Hovell (the rangy neighborod photographer with the gigantic Canon camera), award  heavy, inscribed traslucent  stars to those voted most popular in an online poll, and let neighbors, whether ANC commissioner, city councilman, banker, businesswoman, baker or  not,  toast, embrace, and be jolly.  A bar, tended by patient Matchbox and Tunnicliff’s stalwarts, was never too far away, and a potion of vodka infused with fruit  in hand whenever needed. Daring fashion choices ranging from berets, sequins and boas to large cat family-print décolleté to U.S. Navy medals (and this is just from the chest up)   gave the North Hall of historic  Eastern Market a lot of new history with nods to the old. (More on that Tuesday.)

You can see the winners  printed in the post below.  Hill’s Kitchen got the most raucous applause  and seemed to have its own cheering section (it won in the category best new business and was runner -up for retailer of the year) and Frager’s was the old standby (with apparently some new ideas and hired technical talent), which won for retailer of the year. C’mon, can you see the neighborhood without it? One perceived upset, someone whispered in my ear, was the win by Cava over Matchbox for best restaurant/cafe of the year. I do know Matchbox trips off the tongue of my circle of friends more often than Cava, but I have nothing to say on the matter and have forgotten for whom I voted.

Who did YOU vote for?

Photo Courtesy of Elizabeth Festa