Just when you thought it was safe — and you’d put away your celebrity first-aid kits for a bit — a whole depot’s worth of fancy feet are expected to be wheeling into Toronto on the weekend. And when we say wheel, we mean wheel.
About 100 of them — petro-sexuals, some call ‘em — are expected to get to Toronto around sunset on Saturday. These are those blokes, and a few hot-to-rod ladies, who are taking part in a coast-to-coast, invitation-only luxury-car charity-rally called the Bullrun.Lamborghinis, Aston Martins, Rolls Royce Phantoms. That sort of thing.Or as Bullrun president Andy Duncan summed it up to a reporter last year, “It’s a bit of fun that’s all it is … guys with too much money and too much time on their hands.”
Yes, that sort of thing.The seat-belted scenesters driving in the race this year include former NBA shooter Dennis Rodman (the first Mr. Carmen Electra), our hometown boy Hayden Christensen (watch out for any Shattered Glass!), model Tyson Beckford and race-car Romeo Mario Andretti (probably the biggest name in the world of autosport).
Also along for the ride — I mean, have you ever known her to stay home? — is that singular sensation known as Paris Hilton.
Century Room, on King West, is where they’re set to party on the night that the gang arrive on cars that just scream “second mortgage!”
“They’re driving straight here,” is what a source, in fact, tells me about the stop at the well-known club.
Why waste time, surely? The party will start early — well, early for this crowd — as they’re only staying for one moon’s viewing.
And, then, off again for parts unknown first thing the next day. (Yes, sadly, they’ll probably have to miss Tim Russert’s Meet the Press on Sunday morning.)
The Bullrun, which begins the day before at a secret location in New York, is supposed to go for seven unholy days and nights, eventually veering its away to the City of Angels on the West Coast.
Sounds divine, don’t it? May I, however, just humbly suggest that all your dear city-folk here look out for Dennis Rodman before you cross the street on Saturday. Please!That particular speed demon — a human windshield-wiper, if I’ve ever seen one — got a ticket last year during last year’s event
that led briefly to an arrest warrant.Rodman was charged with speeding and reckless driving after he was stopped in a US$250,000 Lamborghini on a highway near the mountain town of Frisco, about 70 miles west of Denver, according to the Denver Post. Officers allegedly clocked him going 98 mph, and the former basketball star eventually pleaded guilty, paying out US$516.50 in fines and making a US$200 donation to charity.Fast and furious, indeed! This whole Bullrun thing — which would be precisely the sort of thing that Evelyn Waugh would be writing about if he was writing about his Bright Young Things today — reminds me a lot of a party I ended up at in the south of France some years ago. That was for a rally called the Gumball, probably the most famous race in the world. It’s essentially a richie-race rally that starts at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and zips to Madrid, Casablanca, Fez, etc, etc, etc.
The Oscar-winning Adrian Brody, who was racing that year in a Porsche 911 Turbo, explained the thrill of it all to me by saying — and this was his exact, exasperating quote — “I think everybody wants a certain freedom within certain parameters.”
Something else I remember: watching a highly excitable woman exclaiming, not so shyly at all, “Oh my God! There are people with actual head wounds at this party! How chic!”