No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
So… as noted (and praised) below, the reigning Queen of Gossip, Liz Smith, was the only working journalist I could identify who both got an invitation to, and then reported on, the 60th birthday party that 740 Park’s most illustrious resident, Steve Schwarzman, gave himself last week. Alas, the Valentine La Liz sent to Sir […]
Kiss, Kiss Sweet Charlotte
A friend asks why I’m being so hard on “journalists” who attended Steve Schwarzman’s birthday party while their lessers were penned outside like the penurious ink-stained wretches many of them likely are. I refer her and you to Charlotte Curtis, the late bright star writer and editor of the New York Times Style section in […]
Signs of the Apocalypse
The ripples from Steve Schwarzman’s birthday party continue to disturb the placid surface of society. Jacob Bernstein of WWD (behind a firewall) gets all investigative about a party one anonymous guest deemed “soulless” and another, “the end of something.” TV Guide agrees, quoting another of Schwarzman’s hundreds of intimates, whose feeling is that the night […]
This Way to the Schwarzman Bar Mitzvah
Page Six ladles out more details on 740 Park’s most publicized publicity-shy resident, Steve Schwarzman’s 60th birthday bash, including one guest’s pithy review: “The whole evening felt like a bar mitzvah on steroids.” If true, it was likely the first-ever New York bar mitzvah where the Knickerbocker Greys played ushers. According to the New York […]
Trompe L’Oiel or Trump L’Oiel?
New York Social Diary’s David Patrick Columbia looks askance (towards the bottom of the page) at last night’s 60th birthday fete for financier Steve Schwarzman, where the decor featured a trompe l’oiel (or fool the eye) recreation of the Schwarzman’s famous duplex apartment at 740 Park (which Page Six upgraded today from a $29.9 million […]
Howard’s Power
Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily and Gawker review this week’s New Yorker, which contains a profile of PR man extraordinaire Howard Rubenstein that adds up to, per Finke, “the usual ceo porn that [profiler Ken “Access”] Auletta spins out,” or as Gawker puts it, “a whole lot of nothing”. Back in 1999, I profiled Rubenstein, […]
Bohos Bounced As Bankers Ball Downtown
The blogger Bankers Ball chimes in on my post on downtown vs. midtown: “There are more and more signs that downtown is becoming tres passe, and the hip ones are all moving to greener pastures.”
Alex K: You’ve Got Mail
Last week’s kerfluffle over a Gawker prank —splicing my outgoing voicemail message to a sound bite from a radio interview with 740 Park First Lady Alexandra Kuczynski, wife of 740 co-op board president Charles Porter Stevenson Jr. —seems to have unexpectedly long legs. This morning brought an explanation from David Patrick Columbia’s New York Social […]
Berlin in Brooklyn
In the run-up to his performances at St. Ann’s Warehouse this weekend, Lou Reed has been complaining that his 1974 recording, Berlin, was roundly savaged by the critics. Not this one. In a review in Crawdaddy! in January 1974, I wrote, “With the release of Berlin, Lou Reed, ex-child pianist and ex-lead vocalist of the […]
Giving ’til it hurts
Give it up for Contribute, a new magazine devoted to philanthropy which has given your correspondent a new column called Scene. It’s about the social side of the giving game, and debuts in the December issue. My philanthropy? Previewing it here: It’s called Benefit Hell. It would be a hell of a world if we […]