The Daily Beast asked me to write an essay on being evacuated from my home last Monday, a victim of luxury real estate as much as Hurricane Sandy. Hoist by my own petard, one might say. Donald Trump’s photo of Extell’s floppy crane–the cause of the evacuation–is above. UPDATE: Monday night at 8:30 PM, six days and a few hours after we were evacuated, we got the all clear and have been permitted to return home. Regular Gripepad programming will resume shortly.

Around the corner from my apartment is One57, the new Billionaire’s Club, which is right now showing the world that all the money in the world can’t keep trouble from your doorstep. Developer Gary Barnett isn’t making any friends in my neighborhood right now. When I wrote this , I sure had no clue what Towering Infernal might one day come to mean.

Alex Gibney‘s Park Avenue documentary inspired by my book 740 Park is now streaming for free on Hulu. Please like its Facebook page, too.

Bloomberg Game Changers featured Ralph Lauren in a half hour documentary last night–and you can watch it below. Then, if you want the warts-and-all story behind the success story the show highlights, seek out a copy of Genuine Authentic: The Real Life of Ralph Lauren. You can buy a copy here.

Alexa Luxe Living, a new New York Post quarterly on luxury real estate, was introduced today. And with it, my new On the Flip Side column, a recurring profile on real estate obsessives. My first subject: Michael Hirtenstein, the man who made Extell’s Gary Barnett foam at the mouth. Click here and turn to page 12 to read it.

Speaking of Greg Smith and his $1,5000,000 soon-to-be-remaindered-in-place book on Goldman Sachs, I don’t like being an I told you so, but I told you so in The Times’ “Muppet” Show back in April. I’m glad to see that James B. Stewart agrees.

“Gross delights in telling inside stories about the gaudy world of master-of-the-universe apartments,” Max Gross (no relation) writes in an article in today’s New York Post on Alex Gibney’s “Park Avenue” documentary, based on 740 Park. The Post also sneaks the name of the worst tipper at 740 Park, which is revealed in Gibney’s film. UPDATE: Business Insider give Gibney’s trailer some linkage love.

The 14th issue of Acne Paper, a lavish, oversized custom publication, is a tribute to New York City and features an interview with me by Freddie Campion about luxury real estate, focused on 740 Park and my upcoming book on Fifteen Central Park West. If you don’t mind loading a PDF file, you can find it here.

Watch Is the American Dream Out of Reach? on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.

How do you make a documentary for a series called Why Poverty? based on a book about a plutocrat palace? That’s what Kim Velsey asks in this New York Observer post on the soon-to-be-released movie, Park Avenue. When the Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney called to see if he could buy the rights to 740 Park and base his film on it, he summed up the answer to Velsey’s question thusly: We’re both more interested in the perps than the vics.

The Hollywood Reporter just revealed a secret I’ve been keeping since last year. Alex Gibney, the acclaimed documentarian, has acquired and made a film version of 740 Park. It’s called Park Avenue: Money, Power and The American Dream and it will air on PBS on November 12th as part of the international Why Poverty? documentary series, and will also be available on Hulu, iTunes and Netflix for digital download later this month. I’ll post links once I have them. Thanks to the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer who played matchmaker for Gibney and me. UPDATE: Curbed comments on the Gibney/Gross collaboration, … Continue reading →

Tomorrow’s New York Times notes the posting in city records of the recent $19.5 million sale of the late Randolph and June Speight’s apartment at 740 Park to a Goldman Sachs partner, and pulls a bunch of juicy details from the pages of 740 Park, the book, to buttress its item. Those tid-bits are uncredited, and at this point, who cares? But one error begs for correction. Big Ticket columnist Robin Finn pulled a bunch of names from the book for her list of those “turned down” by 740′s co-op board (long run by Speight), but incorrectly includes the singer … Continue reading →

The hidden history of real estate broker Kenneth Laub‘s townhouse on one of Manhattan’s most breathtaking blocks, now on the market for $27.75 million, is the subject of my latest Unreal Estate column in Avenue Magazine

My debut story for Departures magazine appears in its new, October issue and looks at the chiarosco history and bright present of the Isle de Cavallo, a tiny French island nestled between Corsica and Sardinia. It’s behind a firewall for now, available only to subscribers, but I’ll post a link once it’s unlocked. Until then, enjoy the view from the beach.

The longtime home of 740 Park’s longtime co-op board head Randolph Speight (a compelling presence in my book 740 Park) and his widow June, on the market since her 2008 death, is reported sold today by Kim Velsey at the New York Observer. She IDs the buyers as Jonathan Sobel, a former Goldman Sachs partner, and his wife Marcia Dunn. “Shouldn’t Mr. Sobel be joining the rest of the Goldman gang in 15 Central Park West, or even showing them all up and buying into One57?” Velsey asks. Then she answers her own question. “Some buildings, 740 Park chief among … Continue reading →

The New York Times Big Deal column is as obsessed with Extell’s upraised starchitect digit on 57th Street, One57, as I am with 15CPW, and in his latest installment of Gary Barnett Eats Midtown, reporter Alexei Barrionuevo talks about the push and pull of providing the billionaires Barnett says are flocking to buy apartments there with the posh pads they require. Barrionuevo also graciously cites the Gripebox scooplet about Michael Holtz, a former 15CPW owner who has bought himself a piece of the big new tower in town. Moving on up!

Our local newspapers are lately locked into a top-this battle to hype uber-luxe apartments for the uber-wealthy. Extell’s Gary Barnett, now feverishly flogging his West 57th Street development One57, is the current master of highrise hype. But though his fan dance is all about obfuscation, the real estate gossips are all atwitter as he pours sweet nothing-much in their ears about how many apartments he’s sold and to whom, without ever naming names. Barnett is also obsessed with 15 Central Park West (subject of my next book, btw), the reigning monarch of big-money buildings, so in his latest act of … Continue reading →

When I started researching the book that became 740 Park, I began with a list of fascinating buildings, and eventually settled on one. But the others retain their fascination and thanks to Avenue, which gave me a column in the spring named after my current book, Unreal Estate, I now get to write about them, too. My September column (read it here) peeks past the doorman at 834 Fifth, home of Rupert Murdoch, A. Alfred and Judy Taubman and Carroll Petrie, among many others.

An exclusive story in today’s New York Post alleges that there is a secret deal between the Metropolitan Musem of Art and neighboring co-ops to “scale down big plans for the institution’s iconic plaza.” It apppears, however, that some of those neighbors are not going to lie down and acquiesce to any plan to turn that plaza into a food court. But those who forget–or don’t know–the past are, as the saying goes, condemned to repeat it. Such is the case with the museum neighbor who fumed, “This was a museum of the people. Now it’s the people versus this … Continue reading →

In today’s WWD, Oscar de la Renta (formerly Oscar Renta), the fashion designer and husband of Metropolitan Museum of Art Vice Chairman Annette de la Renta (formerly Anne France Mannheimer, Annette Engelhard, and Annette Reed) sticks a pin into New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn. The question is, Huh? Oscar was apparently offended by a generally positive if cursory review of his latest “lively…generally cantankerous” runway show, in which she Horyn called him “far more a hot dog than an eminence gris” of Seventh Avenue (he is, IMHO, both). In response, de la Renta bought a full page ad … Continue reading →

In 1993, I interviewed Miuccia Prada in Milan for a story (never written) on the revival of venerated labels like Prada and Gucci. The tape popped out of a box in storage not long ago, and the conversation is published here for the first time.

The New York Observer’s crack observer Drew Grant looks at what goes on behind the scenes at Fashion Week in a cover story today–and it isn’t a pretty picture. Readers of Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women already knew that, but this regular reminder was inspired by a new documentary, Girl Model, and Sara Ziff‘s Model Alliance, which, I fret towards the end of the piece, will be another Quixotic attempt at reform in the frontier trade in genetic lottery winners. (Jason Seiler‘s impression of Alliance-supporter and 90′s supe Shalom Harlow, at right, is snatched from

David Murdock, the billionaire who features large in Unreal Estate–he owned (and ripped the designer guts out of) the most significant mansion in Bel Air (pictured)–has sold an even more significant piece of property, the Hawaiian island of Lanai, to Oracle’s Larry Ellison, but retains the right to build a field of 45-story turbine windmills there. The ongoing controversy over the windmills is the subject of a big front pager in today’s New York Times.

Who would you rather share an elevator with? A puppy or an armed Secret Service man and Paul Ryan? In this week’s New York Observer, Kim Velsey looks at the tribal rights of fundraising nights in New York’s best buildings, and includes 740 Park (home of big Republican donors like David Koch and Steve Schwarzman) in her survey of buildings where candidates feed at the money trough.

The Southampton estate of Peter and Maya Tufo (at right, in the 1890s, with the gondola on Lake Agawam that belong to its builders, the Betts family) is on the market–and is the subject of my latest Unreal Estate column, just out in the August issue of Avenue magazine.

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders‘ documentary on supermodels of a certain age premieres tonight on HBO. For the back story on how they got to supermodeldom…and how modeling itself got super-sized, there’s Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, the New York Times bestseller, recently re-issued in an updated edition and, for the first time, an e-book. You can buy it here.

Dawn Arnall, widow of Roland Arnall, a central figure in creating the mortgage crisis, is quietly seeking to sell Owlwood in Holmby Hills, one of the central estates in Unreal Estate for a noisy $150 million ask, says the Hollywood Reporter and Real Estalker. Among the fabled residents of the gated estate (actually once three separate houses): Tony Curtis (pictured), Cher, Jayne Mansfield, Engelbert Humperdink, David Geffen, and movie mogul Joseph Schenk, who allegedly let Marilyn Monroe stay in a guest house in return for special benefits. Read all about them all in Unreal Estate.

The news that actress Kristen Stewart was caught cheating on her Twilight co-star Rob Pattinson was quite unreal. There’s also an Unreal Estate connection. The photos of Stewart snogging her Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders put an unwelcome spotlight on the cuckquean (the female equivalent of cuckold) in the affair, Sander’s wife, the British model Liberty Ross. Happier in the glare of publicity is Ross’s father Ian Ross, aka Flipper (for his metal leg), who brought his family to Los Angeles in the ’70s when he signed on as the front man for California’s first roller disco, … Continue reading →

David Geffen‘s reported purchase of tax-avoider Denise Rich‘s Fifth Avenue apartment for $54 Million sets a new record, says Matt Chaban of the New York Observer. It’s been more than a decade since 740 Park held that record. Sell, Steve Schwarzman, sell!

The Hollywood Reporter reveals that producer Richard D. Zanuck, one of the original residents of Beverly Park, has died at age 77.

Three weeks ago, Bank of America quietly sued Kent Swig, his estranged wife Elizabeth Macklowe Swig, and The 740 Corporation, the cooperative that owns 740 Park, seeking to foreclose for non-payment on the Swigs’ duplex apartment there, and seize their proprietary lease and the associated shares in the fabled co-op, presumably planning to put it on the market to recoup what is owed the bank on a consolidated $17.6 million loan against the apartment. Read the lawsuit here [pdf alert]. My question: Whose apartment will be listed first? The Swigs? Or Ezra Merkin, owner of apartment 6/7B at 740, who … Continue reading →

My final Commentary column for Crain’s New York Business is about New York City.

The late June and Randolph Speight’s apartment at 740 Park, aka 71 East 71st Street, is in contract reports Kim Velsey of the New York Observer, who got the news from the Olshan Luxury Report of weekly apartment sales. Velsey has some fun considering possible reasons for a $12 million price chop (tp $23 million) since the unit was first listed in the days before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, following Mrs. Speight’s death. Regardless, it’s a great estate sale. And now, let the speculation begin about who will sell next at 740 and whether it will ever retake the … Continue reading →

In next week’s Newsweek, Rebecca Dana revisits some 740 Park stories while discussing Andrew Madoff‘s failure to find a rental apartment.

Joel Silver, who is developing Unreal Estate as a series for HBO, is reportedly buying the Post Office in Venice, California (at right), as his new production office. In this YouTube clip, he discusses he plans to save the historic building–the perfect place to develop a series about historic Los Angeles homes.

Alexei Barrionuevo has another good Big Deal column in the Times on Sunday. It includes a shopping list of the best penthouses currently for sale around Manhattan. But celebrity broker Raphael De Niro should have read my new Unreal Estate column in Avenue before claiming that Martin Zweig (at right) is looking to sell his awesome Pierre Hotel triplex. “I love our apartment and I don’t want to leave,” Zweig told me flatly.

As recently revealed by Jennifer Gould Kiel in the New York Post, Millennium Partners co-founder Christopher Jeffries just sold one of the grandest penthouses in New York–a former ballroom atop the former St. Moritz Hotel–to gambling man Steve Wynn. But it’s only one of three similarly stunning aeries overlooking the southeast corner of Central Park. I write about the history and the present occupants of all three in my latest Unreal Estate column in Avenue. That’s the former Pierre Hotel ballroom at right (Amiaga Photographers) CORRECTION : In the magazine, two captions are misplaced. The living room identified as the … Continue reading →

The upkeep of Central Park is 85% privately-funded. So why do only 17% of parkside residents chip in? This not-so-pretty picture is the subject of my penultimate “Commentary” column for Crain’s New York Business this week.

Back in 2000, just as the dotcom bubble was bursting, I went to Silicon Valley on assignment for Tina Brown‘s Talk Magazine to find some nouveau riche tech types and make fun of them. Instead, I found a man named Elon Musk (at right) who’d just founded X.com, an online bank that would soon evolve into PayPal, and discovered him to be not just newly rich, but charming, charismatic, brilliant and fascinating. Musk became the centerpiece of a story called “War of the Worlds” [pdf alert: it loads slowly], which compared the Jurassic society of New York with a new … Continue reading →

“Lies and gross exaggerations,” is how Linda and Stewart Resnick of Beverly Hills characterized Unreal Estate–which ends with their astonishing story–in a mass email condemnation shortly before its release late last year. They cited no specifics (of course) and the book nonetheless spent 15 weeks on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list. And today, news comes that the Resnicks have engaged in what can only be described as “lies and gross exaggerations” themselves in promoting their signature POM Wonderful pomegranate products. “An administrative law judge issued a cease-and-desist order after determining that the company had insufficient evidence to support claims … Continue reading →

Editor, merchandiser, organizer, choreographer. Why, I ask in my latest Crain’s New York Business column, do they suddenly all want to be curators?

Robert A.M. Stern long ago put his mark on New York real estate with his monumental set of books about the city’s changing architectural face. Now, he may be about to put his mark on a micro-neighborhood. Following his huge success with 15 Central Park West (subject of my next book for The Free Press), several sources tell me he’s been approached to design a replacement for the white brick non-entity at 220 Central Park South. The focus of a dispute pitting two of the city’s development giants, Extell and Vornado against each other (Vornado owns the site, while Extell … Continue reading →

I just bought a new novel called The Darlings by Cristina Alger (at right, from Penguin Press), so it was a double thrill to discover she’d told Jeff Glor of AuthorTalk at cbsnews.com that she is reading Unreal Estate. “I always find his books entirely un-put-downable,” Alger said. I expect to return the compliment soon.

So, it turns out that the sale of Courtney Sale Ross‘ double duplex apartment at 740 Park–first reported here–was indeed closed for “about $52 million,” as reported elsewhere–$52.5 million to be precise–and not the asking price of $60 million, as Gripepad initially heard. The buyers, reports Kim Velsey of the New York Observer, are Howard Marks, head of the Oaktree Capital investment firm, and wife Nancy. Gripepad’s favorite fun fact from the official city filing? Real estate taxes on the transaction totalled $1,483,125. That won’t buy you much at 740 Park, but elsewhere in Manhattan, it’s the price of a … Continue reading →

Robert Stiller, founder of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, was ousted as its chairman this week after stock sales that violated its rules. Stiller and Burt Rubin, his partner in an earlier entrepreneurial venture, EZ-Wider Rolling Paper, were two of the characters who didn’t make the final cut in my history of the Baby Boom, first issued as My Generation, then re-published as The More Things Change, which got a mention in this Bloomberg story on Stiller. Click the links to read my original interviews with Stiller and Rubin.

Monday night’s Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum garnered less press attention than in previous years, but from the armchair view of one of the uninvited, the celebrity petting zoo was still a spectacle worthy of Rome. My favorite snapshot was of Marc Jacobs in a lacy see-through Comme des Garcons dress, Colonial-style buckled shoes and a pair of Brooks Brothers boxers (pictured). It reminded me of the night in 1990 when the Met Ball’s current mastermind, Vogue editrix Anna Wintour, turned up at a Giorgio Armani party at MoMA in a bright yellow sequined scuba-style dress by Karl … Continue reading →

What do Rupert Murdoch and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. have in common these days? More than you might think, I propose in “Time’s up, news moguls,” my latest Commentary in Crain’s New York Business. The image, however, is from an old Vanity Fair.

My latest column for Crain’s New York business is about the relative reality of reality tv.

My scoop late last week on the sale of Courtney Sale Ross‘s double duplex at 740 Park Avenue has since been picked up and linked by The New York Observer, curbed, and Business Insider, all of whom were kind enough to credit Gripepad. It was also picked up five days late and a credit short by The Wall Street Journal today. The Journal set the sale price at $52 million, slightly below ask. Eventually, city records will show who got that right. As far as credit goes, as the merchant John Wanamaker once said, “Courtesy is the one coin you … Continue reading →

Could it be the halo effect of Sandy and Joan Weill‘s unloading their 15 Central Park West penthouse for $88 million? The proverbial little bird chirps that Courtney Sale Ross has finally found a buyer for her double duplex apartment at 740 Park–and got her asking price of $60 million via Kathy Sloane at Brown Harris Stevens, whose listing for it is here. Officially listed last November, though it was available as a semi-secret pocket listing long before that, the apartment is on the 12th and 13th floors of the fabled co-op. Ross and her late husband, Warner Communications mogul … Continue reading →