Flashback: H. L. Mencken on America’s (God-awful) Aristocracy
In The Yale Review in 1920, Baltimore’s H.L. Mencken (at right) took on the notion of an American aristocracy, the utter failure of the plutocratic class to live up to any aristocratic ideal, and the role of the press in propping up the plutocracy. This passage is long, but well worth revisiting, as ninety-three years […]
Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown
Extell’s West 57th Street condo-hotel One57, home of Hurricane Sandy’s dangling boom of doom, has been an (un-)favorite of Gripepad’s since its damn-the-context design was first revealed. The Towering Infernal was in the news again yesterday, when London’s Telegraph revealed that the latest Chinese buyer in the building had gone into contract on a $6.5 […]
Met Museum flak calls critics a “nuisance,” AP listens anyway
Institutions are run by individuals who sometimes fail to live up to what’s best about them. In an AP story making the rounds today about the latest class-action lawsuit accusing the leaders of the august Metropolitan Museum of Art of cowing and gouging visitors and violating the terms of its lease, MMA spokesman Harold Holzer […]
Down memory lane to Miller Huggins Field
I’m all ears in the photo accompanying my sister Jane’s article in tomorrow’s NY Times sports section on our father Milton Gross and our years skipping school to accompany him to spring training in St. Petersburg. But just to be clear, with all due respect to the late Stan Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals […]
Flying Zweig at $120 Million?
Super stock picker Martin Zweig’s last interview before his death in February appeared in my Avenue Unreal Estate column in June 2012 about three ballrooms-turned-penthouses on the southern rim of Central Park. Today, Jennifer Gould Keil at the Post reports a rumor that his widow Barbara Zweig is about to list his Pierre Hotel penthouse […]
Bowie’s Back
David Bowie’s return this week reminded me of the last lines of a profile I wrote long ago of his friend and collaborator Brian Eno, and a comment Eno made on his work with Bowie on the albums Low and Heroes. It’s applicable to just about any creative endeavor. “We’d go to the studio, work […]
Spring Cleaning: Archive Update
I’ve at last updated the Selected Articles archive, and added stories written since late 2011 for Newsweek, Departures, The Daily Beast and Travel & Leisure and columns for the New York Post’s Alexa Luxe Living, Avenue and Crain’s New York Business.