D5✰BUSINESS THE VANCOUVER SUN, THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2005

BRYAN ADAMS and fellow pop starMichael Bublé sell millions ofrecords and have their fame carry

them around the world. But they couldn’tcarry a tune three decades ago, when theirmanager-to-be, Bruce Allen, became SamFeldman’s business partner.

The circumstances were hardly auspi-cious.

Feldman was a cabaret bouncer — “I’dlike to say maitre d’ ” — when Allen, atough kid from the right side of the tracks,curtly invited him to drop by the followingmorning.

“I had had a rough night,” Feldmanrecalled. “And in the 1970s, a rough nightwas a rough night.” So when Allen suggest-ed they be partners and split the revenue,with Allen paying all the expenses, “Ithough he was on acid,” Feldman said.

Although many believe the truculentAllen and the more sage Feldman splityears ago, they’ve been joined at the hipever since.

“What we did together was build thebiggest agency in the country,” Allen said.He meant their A&F Music’s spinoff S.L.Feldman & Associates, which, via Feldmanand Steve Macklam’s Macklam/FeldmanManagement firm, handles the likes ofDiana Krall and her husband ElvisCostello, Norah Jones, Joni Mitchell, and,most recently, Leonard Cohen.

“Now,” Allen continued, “Sam has builtit into the third or fourth in North America.”

As for Allen and his Bruce Allen Talentfirm, “I am just a manager now and — youknow — I like it.”

A manager, that is, whose stars —Adams, Bublé, Randy Bachman and MikeReno — sang Happy Birthday at Allen’srecent 60th-birthday bash. Adams, whohas given Allen Corvette sports cars atpast anniversaries, also handed him afour-legged walker.

Veteran deejay, ad-agency principal andformer music-biz manager Red Robinsonsaid of Allen and Feldman: “These guysshould get the Order of Canada. Look atthe money they’ve brought in to Canada —millions.”

Robinson also said: “If you thoughtBruce Allen invented [the world’s mostcommon four-letter expletive], the answeris no.”

Feldman may dispute that. His drop-dead impersonation of Allen has more effsin it than my old report cards. Recalling along-ago day when Allen was yelling, “I’mthe f***ing king of Vancouver,” Feldmansaid: “I should have asked myself: ‘Dokings have partners?’ ”

Shtick that might have come from TheOdd Couple TV series sits easily on a chapwho often resembles Walter Mathau. Look-ing outside their personal sitcom, he saidof Allen’s forceful management style: “Hekicked the door down for a lot of people.”

Not only opposing doors. “It is trulyamazing that Bruce can offend so manypeople and still be respected,” Feldmansaid. Then, after a pause: “And most ofthe offendees are our clients. I have had abrilliant career as a professional apolo-gist.”

Praising Allen “for making a lot of peoplebetter — a lot better,” Feldman summedup their three-decade relationship thusly:“Having been his partner and his friend forthis long, believe me, you don’t want to behis enemy.”

•KYLE WASHINGTON, the Washington

Marine Group (Seaspan, etc.) local head,married Janelle Jarvis recently and has anoffspring on the way. Time to start drivingan anonymous family car, you’d think.

In fact, the billionaire-clan scion’s newjalopy is black. And it is safe, with sixairbags and carbon-fibre underpinningswith four times the energy absorption ofsteel. But it’s no Volvo wagon with a Babyon Board sticker. It’s a $725,000 Mer-cedes-Benz McLaren coupe, with a 617-horsepower V8 engine that can rocket it to97 km/h (60 mph) in 3.8 seconds and atop speed of 335 km/h — 207.5 mph.

Still, there’s no room for a baby seat onboard this Formula One-derived slingshotfor two.

•AMIR and MAHIN MALEK jetted in from

Paris’s home-of-the-rich 16th arondisse-ment recently to see sons Peter andShahram launch their Water’s Edge projecton the site of West Vancouver’s now-razedPark Royal Hotel.

Site models and display units wereunveiled in an upper Ambleside storefrontacross Marine Drive from the long-goneWest Vancouver Billiards Academy — apool hall anywhere else.

Designed by our town’s Lawrence Doyleand Manhattan-based architect RobertA.M. Stern, the three-building complex’s79 residences are priced from $500,000

to $3.5 million. Lori Young, the seriousrace-car driver whose late husband Iradeveloped Bowen Island’s Cowan Point,flew from Malibu to turkey-talk with sales-meister Bob Rennie, but opted to stickwith the Howe Sound sunsets her WestVan home affords.

The Maleks’ Millennium Group is alsobuilding L’Hermitage at Robson andRichards Street. It’s a 31-floor tower with205 condos, two floors of commercialspace, a boutique hotel (they’re negotiat-ing with potential operators) and an adja-cent four-floor structure containing 46 non-market housing units.

Meanwhile, the company expects to

build low-rise and mid-rise residences on a20-acre special-study area above the ParkRoyal North shopping centre. There’ll be apublic hearing in early May connected totheir rezoning plans.

•JOEL BERMAN saw 9/11 bring his $6-

million-a-year business crashing down.That was especially irksome sinceBerman’s staff of 60 designed andinstalled large glass sculptural works andmanufactured kiln-cast “art” glass.

The sculptural business — 20 per centof it in airport terminals — “disappearedentirely,” said Berman, who founded JoelBerman Glass Studios Ltd. in 1980 andlikened the setback to that of carriage-makers when automobiles came in vogue.

But Berman, 53, gambled that the tastefor carriages would return. And, paradoxi-cally, it was local gambling that helped gethis Granville Island-headquartered firm gal-loping again.

That was a million-dollar order from Edge-water Casino’s Gary Jackson and Len Livenfor a hanging sculpture, glass balustradeand outdoor sculpture Berman says “is cur-rently Canada’s largest art-glass project —and we’d like 20 more like it.”

Berman also furnished an 80-foot glasswall for a Donald Trump casino in Indiana,and is negotiating on another Trump gig.Ditto for a huge work to hang in Time-Warn-er’s Manhattan headquarters building, itshundreds of glass elements to containlaminates on which video images may beprojected.

Meanwhile, prudent economic moveshave brightened Berman’s own picture. Hepaid $1.3 million for a Railway Avenuebuilding — it’s worth considerably moretoday — that not only gave him 26,000square feet for production “but made uslook more grown-up to the banks.” TheBusiness Development Bank and HSBC“treated us differently when we had real-estate behind us,” said sole-proprietorBerman.

He also contracted out the production ofEditions-series pressure-formed glass hesays cost $2 million but may well result inhis firm grossing $25 million by 2008.

He won’t say which European glassplant accepted its first outside commissionin 150 years. But Berman says he ordersin 150,000-square-foot lots, and sells incontractor lots for $35 per square footinstead of $80. He has distributorsthroughout North America, Germany andSpain and is “closing in on the U.K. andAustralia.”

The price break has enabled him toinstall a 6,000-square-foot curtain wall inGermany, undertake a large Kansas Citymall project and regain budget-consciousoffice and hospital business. He’s alsomade supply deals with such furnituremanufacturers as Haworth, Knoll andDirtt, has décor contracts with all U.S.Movado stores, Range Rover dealershipsand American Dental Association offices.Decor-biz Metropolitan Home magazinehas also ranked his firm 45th in its annualTop 100 edition.

Not bad for a Winnipeg kid who wasexposed to glass by a watch-making grand-father. Had it been the other grandpa,maybe he’d have done as well in thekosher butchering business.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca604-929-8456

Better to be a partnerof the ‘king of Vancouver’

TRADE TALK I Sam Feldmanreflects on three decades

as Bruce Allen’s‘professional apologist’and business partner

Sam Feldman and Bruce Allen have been partners for 30 years while building separate stellar enterprises.

MALCOLM PARRYVANCOUVER SUN

COLUMNIST

Kyle Washington (left) and his new ride: If you’re good for $725,000, theMercedes-Benz McLaren is bad for 335 km/h.

Joel Berman found how to makemore art glass less expensively after9/11 shattered his business.

Multi-million record sellers MichaelBublé and Bryan Adams sang HappyBirthday to manager Bruce Allen.

Amir, Peter, Mahin and Shahram Malek launched their Water’s Edge projecton the site of the now-razed Park Royal Hotel in West Vancouver.

BY MARKE ANDREWSVANCOUVER SUN

Standing among a bank of TVscreens at Future Shop’s WestBroadway store, Tim Walker rais-es his keychain and hits a button.Half the screens go black.

He then strolls out of the store,leaving a confused sales staffwondering what happened.

“It works pretty well,” saysWalker, campaigns manager forAdbusters, the Vancouver-basedmagazine which stages guerrillacampaigns against everythingfrom over-consumption to mediaconcentration.

The device Walker used in thestore is called TV-B-Gone, asmall remote-control that dou-bles as a key chain. The contrap-tion, made by U.S. companyCornfield Electronics, is basical-ly a mini-universal remote-con-trol device capable of turning off(or on) TV sets across the land.Adbusters has sold 2,500 of themto consumers in preparation fornext week’s TV Turnoff (Mon-day through Sunday), an annualweek-long event started in 1994to protest television consump-tion.

This year marks the first timeAdbusters has introduced a cul-ture-jamming element to TVTurnoff. Other activities includeparents and teachers getting stu-dents to go without television fora week and recording theirthoughts in a journal, a “zombiewalk” in Washington, D.C., and atelevision-smashing fundraiser inNew York City where people payto destroy a TV set, the proceedsgoing to media literacy educa-tion.

In addition to selling 2,500 TV-B-Gones (at $10 US), Adbustersgave away 100 of them to culture-jamming groups, who plan to usethem in malls, bars, banks andairports to shut off televisions inpublic spaces.

Why target television?“It is still the most powerful

form of communication,” saysWalker. “If you look at the per-suasiveness of a 30-second TVspot, this is why companiesspend billions of dollars using it.It hits so many of your senses.”

Walker says that North Ameri-cans spend, on average, seven-and-a-half hours per day in frontof computer, videogame and tele-vision screens.

“You could say that some ofthat is productive in front of acomputer, but if Albert Einsteinspent that much time watching ascreen, would we have relativi-ty?” asks Walker. “It’s a big wasteof our potential and our mentalactivity.”

Walker says he isn’t totallyagainst television, stating thatthere are good things on the CBCand some of the cable channels.But he objects to the non-inter-active nature of the medium,where consumers cannot raisetheir voices, like they can on theInternet.

“It shouldn’t be up to the cor-porations to be doling out thiscontent to citizens,” says Walker.“It should be citizens who are incontrol of it.”

Keychaindevice canzap masses

of TVsundetected

CULTURE I Adbusterssells them for upcoming

‘TV Turnoff ’ week

STUART DAVIS/VANCOUVER SUN

Adbusters’ tiny TV-B-Gonedevice closely resembles anyordinary key chain, but it canremotely turn off just aboutany television set.