Dancing About At the New York City Ballet's Spring Gala
Lordy, Lordy, 740: Oaktree Capital Chief Howard Marks Buys Ross' 740 Park Co-op for $52.5 M., Setting Record
Morning Read: Bloomie On JP Morgan's Hiccup; Bill Thompson's Giveaways; Tea Party Wins Again
To Slur, With Love: 'Ironic Racism' is More Than Just Taki
Facebook IPO Approaches Record, More JPMorgan Irony: Wall Street Roundup
The Battle of Billyburg: Fresh-Faced Lincoln Restler Challenges The ‘Corrupt’ Political Machine
A Dimon Is Forever ... Right?
Strangers Among Us: The Protagonist of Nell Freudenberger's Novel Is New to America
Rosario Dawson Rails on Moynihan Station: She's Amtrak's Biggest Fan Since Joe Biden
Morning Read: Bloomie On JP Morgan’s Hiccup; Bill Thompson’s Giveaways; Tea Party Wins Again
Mayor Bloomberg called JP Morgan’s $2 billion trading loss “a hiccup.”
State Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs will step down.
A new poll showed that New Yorkers approve of medical marijuana.
Rudy Giuliani eulogizes James Q. Wilson, the father of “broken windows” policing. Read More
To Slur, With Love: ‘Ironic Racism’ is More Than Just Taki
Two weeks ago, Phil Mushnick, a respected veteran sports writer for The New York Post, published a column about the Brooklyn Nets’ new brand identity, as designed with the help of Jay-Z. The team—previously known as the New Jersey Nets—had switched their colors to black and white. “Why not have him apply the full Jay-Z treatment?” Mr. Mushnick suggested, referring to the team’s part-owner. “Why the Brooklyn Nets when they can be the New York N——s. The cheerleaders could be the Brooklyn B—hes or Hoes …” Read More
Facebook IPO Approaches Record, More JPMorgan Irony: Wall Street Roundup
The Facebook IPO keeps growing, a new source of irony in JPMorgan’s losses and an old player heads goes in for a fresh helping of mortgage bonds. That and more in today’s Wall Street roundup.
Who needs revenue? The world’s largest social network may yet challenge the record for the world’s largest IPO, as Zuck Read More
The Battle of Billyburg: Fresh-Faced Lincoln Restler Challenges The ‘Corrupt’ Political Machine
“Look, this election is a whole lot bigger than just one person, especially a little guy like me who needs to stand on this chair,” 28-year-old Lincoln Restler declared as he artificially towered over a packed room at the Brooklyn Winery in Williamsburg a couple of weeks ago. “The machine has their candidate, they’re going to pour all of the resources they’ve got into this district leader race. But, for every hack elected official that they’ve got on payroll, we’re going to have to reach out to 10 of our neighbors.”
The “machine” in this case is the Kings County Democratic Party and its chair, Assemblyman Vito Lopez. Mr. Restler sees his re-election campaign as a critical aspect of the effort to topple what he describes as the corrupt status quo in Mr. Lopez’s organization.
Mr. Restler, who has the honor of holding the obscure position of district leader, is very aware of the fact that despite the lofty rhetoric of his campaign, he’s talking about an unpaid office with few official responsibilities.
“Any elected office, even an elected position you’ve probably never heard of, is a platform to advocate for one’s community,” Mr. Restler said in his speech, still standing on the chair. The crowd rightfully laughed after “you’ve probably never heard of.” Read More
A Dimon Is Forever … Right?
In the days leading up to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s bombshell announcement of $2.3 billion in trading losses, chairman and chief executive officer Jamie Dimon faced a delicate predicament. His executives had scheduled visits with banking analysts to discuss the state of affairs at JPMorgan—the company whose stock Mr. Dimon knew was sure to plummet when news of the trading losses were disclosed. These weren’t just any trading losses, of course; they were losses incurred on credit derivatives bets placed by a mysterious trader nicknamed the London Whale and Voldemort by the financial press. And it wasn’t just any bet—it was the same trading position that Mr. Dimon had described as “a complete tempest in a teapot” not one month previous.
“On the inside, Dimon must have been trying to figure out what was happening with the trade, and what to do about it,” said Frank Partnoy, a former Morgan Stanley investment banker, currently a law professor at the University of San Diego. “It’s like he has an inside personality, and an outside personality that he shows the world, and the two things must have been in conflict, like what politicians deal with when they’re handling a crisis.” Read More
Strangers Among Us: The Protagonist of Nell Freudenberger’s Novel Is New to America
One of the more recent entries in the annals of literary hype that threatens to overshadow actual achievement is Nell Freudenberger. Back in 2001, when the recent Harvard grad was an editorial assistant at The New Yorker, her short story “Lucky Girls” was published in the magazine, and she soon became known, both in New York publishing circles and beyond, as a wunderkind. She happened to be attractive. “Too young, too pretty, too successful” said the title of an article by Curtis Sittenfeld, in Salon. But then came a well-received first novel, The Dissidents, and a short story, “An Arranged Marriage,” in The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 Fiction issue, in 2010, and awards, like the PEN/Malamud. And now with her second novel, Newlyweds (Knopf, 352 pp., $25.95), an extended version of “An Arranged Marriage,” comes her most successful effort yet, one that shows a more mature voice and the true triumph of her talent over her hype. Read More
Rosario Dawson Rails on Moynihan Station: She’s Amtrak’s Biggest Fan Since Joe Biden
“My oldest memory of riding the train? I don’t know, that’s hard,” Rosario Dawson told The Observer last Tuesday night. “I was born in Coney Island, but grew up on the Lower East Side, so we spent a lot of time on the F-Train, going to the beach. My dad used to wear his little shorts, and the knee-high socks. He was the most handsome guy on the entire boardwalk.”
And thus the country’s most beautiful railroad buff was born.
Ms. Dawson was standing inside a post office in Midtown, there for a four-course dinner at which she was the guest of honor. She wore a form-fitting black pant suit, ruffled black shirt and black pumps that had to be nine-inches long and sharper than a railroad tie.
This was no ordinary post office, to be fair, but the Corinthian temple on Eighth Avenue known as the James Farley building, once Manhattan’s central post office, and certainly its grandest. From a staff of thousands, there is now a skeleton crew of about a hundred, which has freed up acres of space in the building for Moynihan Station. A dream since the early 1990s of the former New York senator for whom it is named, it will allow for the expansion of Penn Station across the avenue and out of the hell it has resided in for the past six decades, since Robert Moses destroyed the original Penn in 1963. Read More
Marc Jacobs vs. The Graffiti Artist, Round 4: Revenge by $10 T-Shirt
Could this become any more wonderful and/or absurd? Apparently, yes.
Last week, French street artist Kidult took a fire extinguisher full of pink paint, and unleashed it on Marc Jacobs’ SoHo boutique last week, painting the word “ART” over the store. Marc Jacobs had some fun with it on social media, and then, commodtized the ostensible political message by turning a photo of his painted store—which is vandalism or art, depending on how you see it—into a $700 T-Shirt, with the caption “Art by Art Jacobs.” Kidult, the artist, was pissed, and made it known. Read More
Steve Wynn Gambles on Ritz-Carlton Penthouse, Wins for $70 M.
It looks like casino king Steve Wynn‘s unlucky streak with New York real estate has finally come to an end. After selling his pad at the Plaza a few years back, Mr. Wynn has reportedly scooped up a penthouse at another famed New York hotel, the Ritz-Carlton.
According to the Post, Mr. Wynn has put in a winning $70 million bid for Millenium Partners’ founding partner Christopher M. Jeffries’ $77.5 million pad. Read More
Thinking About Arianna Huffington While Hiking in the Catskills
It is May, and time to spray the doors and windows of my home. I trudge, unhappily, out to the garden shed. The insect repellent waits for me, but by the time I carry it back to the house, I’ve already decided I’m not going to spray the fucking doors or the fucking windows. It’s a beautiful day.
And yesterday, goddamn it, was City Day.
City Day is the day, every couple of weeks or so, that I take the train to New York City and wonder what God is waiting for. Read More
