I have a funny Jason Botterill story.  When I worked at a local nightclub, we'd often gets sports stars come down, usually CFL or AHL.  Rarely, NHL.  A lot of CFL & AHL players werent immediately recognizable but the process was, they'd show their PA card and get in.  So when I was a kid, my parents had bought me one of the early EA NHL games for the computer and for some reason Jason Botterill was amazing in that game.  My best player.

So one day, huge line and this group comes in.  And this guy, vaguley familar, says "do you have courtesy for NHL players?"  I said yes, may I ask your name.  He says Jason Botterill.  I sort of laugh and say you were the best ******* player in NHL *whatever year*.  He laughs and we chat for a moment and one of his group leans in and says "is there a problem here, do you know who this is?" angrily.  Jason pushes him back and shushes him and says theres no problem.

Anyway, silly story but he was a super nice guy.

Man, I have a few stories like that.  Maybe the best is either Teemu Selanne coming into Grapes when I worked there (2 or 3 times) or when Shannon Rempel came in - she had been denied entry to another bar because they didnt believe she was an Olympian.  So she went home, got her Silver Medal and brought it to our bar to prove it in case we wouldnt let her in.  Let everyone take pics with the medal.  Awesome.

Some more smaller stories...

Met Tom Green when he was a correspondant for the late show in Florida years ago, he definitely turns it on when the cameras are rolling. Normal dude when they are off.

Saw Richard Gere riding a bike downtown in Winnipeg. He said hello and drove off after I said hey.

Met Dean Cain at a club years ago. Was hammered with several ladies following him. Much smaller then I realized.

Met tonnes of NHL guys over the years, nearly all of them were really friendly.

Met lots of wrestlers... The good ones were undertaker,tatanka, tajiri , Shane Douglas,one of the Bushwhackers, htm and Larry Zbysko was cool.

The drugged up ones were Billy Gunn , Sabu , Raven, Jim neidhart and I wasn't sure if Lex  Luger was drugged or just really socially awkward.

The douches I met were Buff Bagwell, I think it was Ted Hart...younger high flyer that was in wfx. 

The scariest was Scott Steiner...seeing him at his biggest in person was freaky. Those arms were ridiculous.

oh yeah and I met Max Poulin a couple of times back in his glory days, like in his last season with the team before they traded him, devastating my mother

Edited May 19, 20178 yr by iHeart

Tony Soprano himself had a cabin like 5 minutes from mine. Saw him a few times at the store. No big deal tho really. Celebs.. it's cool meeting some but.. who cares really lol. 

 

About 1996/7  I worked at Grapes and walked in one afternoon, holding the door as a guy walked out.  The hostess said to me "did you recognize him?"  I said no, I wasnt eally looking.  She said its some guy from Y&R...Suddenly it clicked.  "Scott Reeves??!" I asked.  I ran out to say hi and he was gone. 

Sounds silly but I was a huge Y&R fan and the Ryan/Victoria story is what hooked me in the early 90s.  Ryan was in town for World of Wheels or something.

It was at Grapes where I met some NHL players.  Supposedly Grapes was Teemu's favourite restaurant.  After a Flames game, Teemu and Housley came in together and asked for a quiet table.  That was followed up by most of the Flames who went into the bar, including Fleury.  The bar was mostly empty as it was a week night but soon a bunch of women showed up to party with them.  Fleury and the Flames enjoyed the attention.  Teemu ended up in the bar, sat with a couple of the guys and politely signed autographs but didnt look twice at any of the groupies.

He was there another night with his wife and friends and closed the place down.  As nice and funny in person as he comes across in interviews.  Although I bet most of us have met him at some point.

The entire Canucks team came into Grapes one night too.

Grapes was a fun place...

man this kind of makes me wish someone would bring Grapes back from the dead

5 minutes ago, iHeart said:

man this kind of makes me wish someone would bring Grapes back from the dead

Chi-Chi's!

2 minutes ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

Chi-Chi's!

and hey why not, if they should bring that back from the dead why not Bombay Bicycle Club as well

oh but even if we could bring that back from the dead guess where it would be located

Edited January 12, 20188 yr by iHeart

I saw Patton Oswalt at a breakfast place here once.  I did a double-take when I saw him and he gave me a look that said he was not interested in meeting a fan right now (totally cool by me, dude doesn't owe me anything and he was recently widowed) and so I just nodded and kept heading for the restroom without breaking stride.

Right when I started playing drums, me and a couple guitarist work friends rented this piss-smelling practice room in the Rockbox, an ancient Seattle rehearsal warehouse a couple blocks from the Space Needle. All the big Seattle bands rehearsed at the Rockbox before they made it.

My friend was really into the Foo Fighters and wanted to play Everlong, which was way too fast for me to play, but I was up for anything so I'd try and it would sound brutal, just awful, I could not keep up the steady fast hat beat of the tune.  And we played it over and over again, because how else am I gonna get better?  One day we're leaving the space and the old stoned door guy says "hey, were you the guys playing Everlong?" and I said yeah, and he said "yeah, Dave Grohl was here, standing outside your door listening for like ten minutes and he was nodding his head and digging it"  And we were really bad, I cannot emphasize enough how shitty we sounded.  So I'm horrified, and I beg the guy, please tell me you're pulling my leg.  And finally I got him to admit that he was ******* with us, that Dave Grohl really wasn't there. So that's my best celebrity non-encounter.  I was so relieved...

Another time, I was hanging out with my friend's band in the Rockbox.  The next door band was Candlebox.  Everyone makes fun of Candlebox here because the perception is that they're lightweight outsiders who moved here to cash in on the grunge thing in 1994.  My friend's bandmates are all metalheads so that day they were ******* around trying to play The Trooper and they can't get it right because it's insanely hard to play.  Suddenly, Candlebox next door fires up an absolutely perfect and tight version of the Trooper.  So my friend's band got owned by Candlebox.  Embarrassing!

I really miss Grapes.  They had the best wings I've ever eaten, giant, crispy, and breaed.  I could eat like two baskets of those things when I was in my twenties.

Edited January 12, 20188 yr by johnzo

oh, yeah, when I was in Ottawa playing men's league football, one of our guys worked with Stephan Jones and he came out to a game of ours. 

I had a pick six in that game and when I went to the bench Stephan high-fived me.  Pretty awesome.

Got a putting lesson from Lee Trevino, many moons ago, at a motel putting green......that was kinda cool.

On ‎5‎/‎13‎/‎2017 at 5:34 PM, Mark F said:

Which one is the puppet in that picture?

Seems ok.

 

ARCHIE WOOD!  I watched Uncle Bob every day!  Right after Sesame Street.

On ‎5‎/‎14‎/‎2017 at 1:01 PM, Goalie said:

 

Here. I'll throw in 1 random Jets player story.. 2011 I'm walking to work down Albert street. There's a guy in front of me and a bum in a wheelchair beside him. Bum falls out of wheelchair. Guy helps bum up and puts him back in wheelchair.  I see it all as I've caught up now and say something like that's very rare to see and guy says what is and I said seeing a guy help one of these guys out like that. He's like thanks. I'm like you're welcome and I said oh BTW I know who you are and he said oh do you? And I said yup. Go Jets Go. He laughed and went in to some random food store. That guy was Zach Bogosian.

 

 

Edited January 15, 20188 yr by kelownabomberfan

On ‎5‎/‎14‎/‎2017 at 1:12 PM, SpeedFlex27 said:

I was at Grand Beach in 1977 & was throwing the football with my friend. Back then, I was hitting the gym hard & was pretty jacked. I had shoulder length brown hair with a moustache. I was wearing a Blue Bomber home jersey with #5 on it as I had a sunburn. Random guy came up to me & asked if I was Dieter Brock. I frigging loved it.

was it Brian Jack, and was he carrying something over his shoulder in a body bag?

On ‎5‎/‎15‎/‎2017 at 6:13 AM, Logan007 said:

The only thing I have is seeing Brent Butt at his stand up comedy a couple of times. 

If that counts then every single concert I've been to in my life counts as a brush with celebrities.  But if it's just stand-up, the coolest stand-up I ever saw was in New York at a comedy club, when Amy Schumer jumped on stage totally unannounced and did a new set, 10 feet in front of me.  That was pretty neat.

Best stand-up routine I ever saw was Gilbert Gottfried, performing at some comedy club in Winnipeg in 1989.  It's probably not around anymore.  I can't even remember what it was called or where it was.  It wasn't Rumors, that's all I remember.

Edited January 15, 20188 yr by kelownabomberfan

Speaking of New York, 2016 we're in New York and we're walking through Greenwich and suddenly there are all these old cars on the street and people wearing old clothes, and we realize that we are walking through a live movie set.  Some guy motions us to keep going as they are between takes.  We stop to look around a bit on the set and the wife says "I wonder if anyone famous is in this movie" and from behind us a familiar voice goes "yes, in fact there is" and we turn around and there's Kevin Spacey standing there.  Our mouths drop, and he takes off on one of those scooter things down the street to his trailer.  Then Nicolas Hoult walks by us and the wife says "that guy looks familiar" and I said yeah I think that's the dude from that Mad Max show.    They were filming "Rebel in the Rye".  The Spacey story isn't as cool now unfortunately.

 

Edited January 15, 20188 yr by kelownabomberfan

One more story.  I was working in Calgary in the mid 1990's with a guy whose cousin was a lighting guy for hire for movies filmed in Calgary.  He calls up my buddy one night and says "a few of us are going drinking tonight" and my buddy invites me along, and I stupidly say no for some reason.  So my buddy goes out and the next morning he says "we ended up hanging out with the guy who was Elliot in ET all night!!  Henry Thomas!!  It was so cool!!!  And I'm like feeling jealous, but then he said "and there was this other actor that came along too, long-haired guy, never really heard of him...he's in the movie too....Brad something or other...really nice guy....  DOHHHH

So the next time his cousin calls, I say I'm in.  We head down to the Ship & Anchor, which was the place all the movie guys hung out at in Calgary in the 1990's.  My buddy's cousin introduces us to this bald dude, who I quickly realize is Goose from Top Gun, Anthony Edwards.  He was a super nice guy - he had us laughing all night with Clooney stories.

 

10 hours ago, kelownabomberfan said:

If that counts then every single concert I've been to in my life counts as a brush with celebrities.  But if it's just stand-up, the coolest stand-up I ever saw was in New York at a comedy club, when Amy Schumer jumped on stage totally unannounced and did a new set, 10 feet in front of me.  That was pretty neat.

Best stand-up routine I ever saw was Gilbert Gottfried, performing at some comedy club in Winnipeg in 1989.  It's probably not around anymore.  I can't even remember what it was called or where it was.  It wasn't Rumors, that's all I remember.

Saw him again Saturday night.

13 hours ago, kelownabomberfan said:

Best stand-up routine I ever saw was Gilbert Gottfried, performing at some comedy club in Winnipeg in 1989.  It's probably not around anymore.  I can't even remember what it was called or where it was.  It wasn't Rumors, that's all I remember.

The one at the St. Vital Hotel with the tropical name?

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/arts/its-a-dirty-job-104065764.html

Memory test pass!

Edited January 15, 20188 yr by FrostyWinnipeg

1 hour ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

The one at the St. Vital Hotel with the tropical name?

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/arts/its-a-dirty-job-104065764.html

Memory test pass!

That could have been it - was it on St. Mary's road?  I believe it was close to the old CKND headquarters.

EDIT - the Comedy Oasis - sounds right.

Edited January 15, 20188 yr by kelownabomberfan

20 minutes ago, kelownabomberfan said:

That could have been it - was it on St. Mary's road?  I believe it was close to the old CKND headquarters.

EDIT - the Comedy Oasis - sounds right.

Yep, couple blocks north. Recently changed owners. Really good story here.

15 hours ago, kelownabomberfan said:

was it Brian Jack, and was he carrying something over his shoulder in a body bag?

I knew Brian Jack. He was the manager of the store upstairs at the Provencher Ave Fit Stop where all the Bombers worked out at that time. 

1 hour ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

I knew Brian Jack. He was the manager of the store upstairs at the Provencher Ave Fit Stop where all the Bombers worked out at that time. 

another celebrity brush...

9 hours ago, kelownabomberfan said:

another celebrity brush...

Yeah, is he still doing time? With the Canadian justice system, I'm sure he was out years ago. 

8 hours ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

Yeah, is he still doing time? With the Canadian justice system, I'm sure he was out years ago. 

Brian Jack was tried three times in Christine’s killing. In 1997, three appeals later, Jack walked away a free man, despite being convicted of manslaughter, after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled it would be an abuse of process to try him again.

http://winnipegsun.com/2013/12/15/she-was-everything-to-me-says-sister-of-christine-jack-25-years-later/wcm/8900f403-1a56-418b-8a96-199824f3b4a8

Tough to achieve a guilty verdict without a body.  It can be done, but you need some kind of evidence.  That's how they were able to charge that guy who murdered those old people in Alberta a few years ago, even though they never found the bodies.