Summer Soiree Series at the Canary Kicks Off with a Rainbow Glow

Happy hour is pretty much always my happy place to be, but this week’s inaugural experience at the Kimpton Canary’s Summer Soiree “Artist in Residence’ Series” was a particularly cool one.

In addition to great prices on drinks and snacks on the happy hour menu — where my husband and I did a taste test pitting the classic Tanqueray London Dry Gin (with tonic) up against our local Cutler’s Artisan Gin, which came out on top — they also featured the Ventura-based Hado Being Aura Photography & Readings, which was so much fun.

I had my aura read when I was a teenager, but having your aura photographed is a whole different and fascinatingly fun experience. After being escorted downstairs to the aura photography studio, I put my hands on the two electromagnetic hand sensors that picked up my vibrational frequency (this is also what they sometimes call biofeedback) and smiled for the “aura cam.” This is a photographic instrument created in the early 1980’s by Guy Coggins, who collaborated with several psychics to develop the system. It’s basically a hand-built device that uses the data from the hand sensors and translates it into colors determined by the frequency of your chakra energy. They explained that it’s like “your own unique, colorful, spiritual fingerprint!”

Mine was a combination of white, turquoise, and lavender, with some strong indications toward empathy, communication, intuition, truth seeking, and what she called cosmic wisdom. As the Hado Being website explains, “At different times in our life, we give priority to different needs and wants; the aura is a physical outward structure expressing these priorities in different chakra energy colors.” Between that and the gin, I’ll take it!

Sessions run daily from 4-7 p.m. through Friday, July 26, and you can book one here (the cost is $50). 

Additional Summer Soiree events include a rooftop paella feast on Thursday August 1 with DJ Darla Bea spinning tunes, and a pop-up market on Thursday, September 5,  which will showcase local vendors and artists who will have items available for purchase, beats from DJ Dansauce, $2 oysters, plus extended happy hour from 4-7 p.m.