Electric Zoo 2010. (Bennett Sell-Kline/ElectricZooFestival.com)

On a recent Sunday, The Observer stood on a vacant lot neighboring the East River. While wistfully admiring Manhattan’s picturesque Eastern skyline, we soaked in the park’s halcyon beauty. Turning back to face the body of the Randall’s Island, we tried to visualize this site swarming with thousands of sweaty, painted, and dust-covered beings.

The next time The Observer will be here the scene will be much different. In less than one month, this site will be filled with a crowd—twice the size of a packed-house at Madison Square Garden—moshing to the most celebrated deejays in house and electronic music.

On Labor Day weekend, Randall’s Island will host the third annual Electric Zoo music festival, an event that shares an unconventional history with the island. Unlike other music festivals whose tenancy lasts only as long as festival weekend, Electric Zoo and the island’s management have developed a unique symbiosis over the past decade; a relationship that extends beyond Labor Day and into the renovation of the island itself.

“We’ve spent all year working on making Electric Zoo 2011 even better than the last two,” Mike Bindra and Laura De Palma, Executive Producers of Made Event (the festival’s sponsoring organization), told The Observer in an email.

The three-day festival is expected to draw one hundred-thousand people, and will showcase over one hundred world-renowned deejays, a collection of themed art installations, multiple popular food vendors, and a ceremony spotlighting a new public art exhibition on the island entitled FLOW.

Electric Zoo 2010. (Bennett Sell-Kline/ElectricZooFestival.com)

Five years ago, Mr. Bindra and Ms. Palma teamed with Aimee Boden, the Executive Director of the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation (RISF), to collaboratively develop the island as a public space. Drawing on inspiration from the festival, Ms. Boden conceptualized FLOW, a seasonal, outdoor art exhibit which consists of five large-scale installations throughout the lower-half of Randall’s Island. The exhibition's title “evolved from both dance music and from artistic expression,” Ms. Boden told The Observer in an interview at the Foundation’s midtown offices.

Having no artistic expertise, she enlisted the help of Sergio Bessa, the Director of Programs at the Bronx Museum of Art. With the support of Made Event and the Rockefeller NYC Cultural Innovation Fund, RISF and the Bronx Museum launched FLOW. Made Event donated over $42,000 to the project in 2010, and this year they will dedicate $2.00 from every festival ticket sold to the exhibition.

The artists for FLOW were selected from a pool in the Bronx Museum of Art’s Artists in Motion program (AIM). AIM is a highly competitive, biannual program that consists of twelve workshops designed to prepare emerging artists for the art market. “It is the most successful program the museum has ever implemented,” Mr. Bessa told The Observer in a phone call.

“This is just the beginning,” Mr. Bessa eagerly informed us. He added that Randall’s Island has recently signed a contract to host the esteemed Frieze International Art Fair’s first exhibition in the States.

“Made Event has a big stake in this,” Mr. Bessa told The Observer, and Ms. Boden agrees. “[Mr. Bindra and Ms. De Palma] go beyond just looking for a venue to slap down an event,” she told us. “They have an appreciation for the Randall’s Island environment.”

With the support of their venue and city, Electric Zoo 2009 exploded out of the woodwork. More than forty-thousand people traversed the East River and Hell Gate rapids for the two-day festival. And Made Event never looked back. In 2010, Randall’s Island shook under the feet of fifty-thousand indefatigable bodies dancing to Benny Benassi, Kaskade, and others.

“Music and art have always been a part of New York City life and bringing those two elements together within a city park is a natural fit,” Mr. Bindra and Ms. Palma wrote to The Observer.

Electric Zoo 2010. (Bennett Sell-Kline/ElectricZooFestival.com)

According to DJ Magazine, the festival’s line-up for 2011 boasts seven of the world’s top ten deejays. The festival’s headliners—Armin Van Buuren, David Guetta, and Tijs “Tiësto” Verwest—currently hold the top three spots on the magazine’s esteemed international rankings.

With this in mind, The Observer called-up native-New York deejay and Zoo veteran, Richard “Moby” Hall, to get his thoughts on the festival. Mr. Hall is currently on-tour in Europe, but we were able to reach him in his hotel room before he went live in the Spanish nightlife hotbed, Ibiza.

Mr. Hall confessed that despite being born only two miles from Randall’s Island, he never even knew it existed until he was invited to play the Lollapalooza Music Festival there in 1995. He recalled being struck by the island’s antiquated infrastructure. “I thought it was the place where the Legion of Doom would’ve been housed,” he half-joked.

Mr. Hall played Electric Zoo in 2010. “I was really surprised how big Electric Zoo was last year,” the festival-hardened deejay recalled. Yet despite its size, he was shocked that hardly anyone in the music business was aware it was happening. “It was literally an underground festival for fifty-thousand people, a mile away from New York City.”

He feels that it is the production value that distinguishes this event from the rest. “Electric Zoo offers this huge, over-the-top festival,” he asserted, and then added, “In many ways the festival isn’t even about the deejays, it’s about the production.”

“It’s kind of like the Wizard of Oz in that way. I’m just the small man behind the curtain,” the famed disc jockey concluded.

The Observer spoke with Victor Calderone, another wizard of the Electric Zoo festival.

Mr. Calderone, who was the deejay-du-jour for both Madonna and Sting, has taken his electronic stylings all over the world, but he gets particular pleasure performing in his home city. “I didn’t feel like I was on Randall’s Island or even in New York,” he said about last year’s Zoo.

“I have not heard better sounds at a festival,” the Brooklyn-born deejay and three-time Zoo vet, told The Observer. “It’s just an explosion of energy that you don’t have playing a small after-hours club room” the once resident-deejay at the Roxy continued.

Mr. Calderone told us that location is what makes Randall’s Island an excellent venue. “I can’t think of any other locations in New York that work the way Electric Zoo works on Randall’s Island,” the nightlife legend mused, paused, and then added: “There are so many components that make sense.”

Electric Zoo 2010. (Bennett Sell-Kline/ElectricZooFestival.com)

One such component is that Randall’s Island lies in the East River and connects the boroughs of Manhattan, The Bronx, and Queens. “Location and venue are a big part of any festival’s character, so the two are never mutually-exclusive,” Mr. Bindra and Ms. Palma told us, admitting that they’ve had their eye on the island as a prospective venue for their festival for the last decade. “All the improvements they’ve made to the park over the years just made it a no-brainer for us,” the duo wrote. “It was just a question of timing and all the pieces falling into place to finally realize it.”

Despite its auspicious location, the island has a grim history. Since the 19th Century, it has sustained—among other shady establishments—a burial ground for the poor, a psychiatric hospital, and a reform school for juvenile delinquents. Although founded in 1992, RISF finished developing the island earlier this summer. Unveiled with a ceremony on July 1st, the island now has over sixty “state-of-the-art” playing fields, a driving range, a tennis center, the Icahn Track and Field stadium, a redesigned waterfront, gardens, and pedestrian pathways. Ms. Boden also pointed out that the construction restored nine acres of wetlands.

“We want to get people who are not there just to play on the fields to come over and use the island in a new way,” Ms. Boden told The Observer.

And Mr. Bindra and Ms. Palma agree. “New York City’s parks are such a valuable resource without which Electric Zoo could not exist in its current form,” the sponsors concluded. “Our goal is to not only support the island as it grows, but to be a part of its growth and improvement.”

As we made for the footbridge back to Manhattan, The Observer glanced back over our shoulder. After surveying the rehabilitated island, the image of the space alive with thousands of flowing bodies suddenly didn’t seem too far-fetched.

From left, T-Bone Burnett, John Turturro, Julianne Moore, Jeff Bridges, John Goodman and Steve Buscemi. (Diane Bondareff/AP Images for Universal Studios Home Entertainment).

White Russians were flowing by the pre-made bottle at last night's Lebowski Fest at the Hammerstein Ballroom on 34th Street.

"I'm not sure why we are even offering a full bar," the bartender told The Observer. As we took our creamy libations from her, an unshaven man donning a bathrobe, jellies and sunglasses pushed by us and ordered three more. “'Scuse me dude.”

On the “red carpet” – actually a number of the rugs depicted in the film, stitched together along the length of the entrance – we had been approached by a pair of middle-aged men in life-size bowling-pin costumes: Scott Shuffitt and Will Russell, co-founders of Lebowski Fest and authors of the book, I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski: Life, The Big Lebowski, and What Have You.

“We played in a really bad band and instead of practicing we would just quote lines from The Big Lebowski,” Mr. Russell said, recalling the inspiration for their first Lebowski-themed bowling party. “We thought ten of our friends would show up and we had like 150 people come out. Next thing you know, twelve hundred people are there.”

This was the first time the cast has reunited since the release of the movie in 1998. The event (minus stars) traditionally features a bowling party, costume contest, and a screening, but for this year’s simultaneous release of the limited-edition Blu-Ray version of The Big Lebowski and Jeff Bridges’ self-titled solo album, Universal partnered with Messrs. Shuffitt and Russell to bring the original cast together for the event.

Tickets for this year’s festival sold out in 48 hours, “quicker than any other event at the Hammerstein,” Mr. Russell announced to the room. “Take that, David Bowie!”

Spying John Goodman break free from the plethora of cameramen at the other end of the carpet, The Observer caught him before he entered the venue. We asked if, like his character, he was armed. “Yeah, I am,” Mr. Goodman said casually, a crazed look in his eye, before he broke into a hearty laugh.

Other actors took on roles not their own: "I'll suck your cock for a thousand dollars" Julianne Moore told us, recalling Tara Reid's line as her favorite from the movie. She was then mauled by a number of reporters eager to know what Maude named the Lebowski lovechild.

As T-Bone Burnett, Jeff Bridges’ music producer and the music archivist for The Big Lebowksi, gloated about Mr. Bridges’ new album, a work he described as “a beautiful, beautiful record,” a procession of emergency vehicles roared down 34th street, temporary deafening us both. “Rick Perry!” Mr. Burnett yelled over the din. “Rick Perry is coming to the screening!”

Later, following a cast Q&A marked by the more intoxicated members of the audience yelling lines from the movie before the cast even had a chance to speak (Steve Buscemi shouted “Shut the fuck up!” more than once), The Observer picked our way over to Jeff Dowd, the original "Dude" and the Coen brothers' inspiration for the movie.

What message did Mr. Dowd have for aspiring Dudes?

"Are you fucking ready for this?" he asked, posing for a picture with a couple who had been to Lebowski Fest more times than they could count.

"Get as close as you possibly can to one woman," he began, while shaking hands and posing for a few more pictures. "Intimacy is everything."

He meant what he said, putting his arm around us, and pulling us in uncomfortably close. He hiked his leg up on the chair in front of us and gazed out over the crowd. “The Dude is the holy fool, like the King’s jester. He is the one guy who can tell the truth without getting his head cut-off,” he paused, looked us straight in the eye, and said: “We need to use that power to create the future.”

“I was covered in their saliva, urine, and feces,” Ms. Kim, 30, writes in the statement that accompanies her most recent photo series, “The Pig Therefore I Am.” The photographs show the New York-based artist crawling naked amongst 2,400 domesticated pigs at an industrial hog farm in upstate New York.

“The Pig” is the second of two series in Ms. Kim’s breakout collection of photographs featuring the artist posed nude in unconventional, if not unsettling, environments. Her first series, “City Spleen,” shows her wandering abandoned, industrial boneyards of the world’s major metropolises, including the Tour Saint-Jacques in Paris, the Arthur Kill Ship Graveyard in Staten Island, and what she called her “toughest” site to date, the London sewer.

Although “City Spleen” was shot around the world, its concept grew out of Ms. Kim’s fascination with New York. “I’ve lived in New York City for twelve years, and have come to appreciate the different layers,” Ms. Kim told The Observer.

In the statement for “City Spleen” Ms. Kim writes, “the city has an anatomy and a psyche as complex as that of any human being.” She adds that during her explorations she often becomes “an animal or a child interacting with the surroundings.”

“At first it was just for fun,” Ms. Kim told The Observer. She began roaming the city’s ruins after she connected with a group of urban explorers while searching online for Julia Solis’s book, New York Underground: The Anatomy of a City. “Sometimes, I don’t even take photos,” the au naturel explorer admitted with a giggle.

Jamie Anderson, a director at London’s Waterhouse & Dodd Gallery, Ms. Kim’s most-active dealer, told The Observer in a telephone interview that the distinctive feature of Ms. Kim’s work is that “the photograph is the end point of such a prolonged process.”

“Her work has a strong conceptual element, and a sort of innocence, a child-like spirituality,” he added.

Her photographs are simple and unembellished. “I don’t even crop them,” said Ms. Kim, who has never formally studied photography. To make her photographs, Mr. Anderson explained, she usually employs a self-timer.

Ms. Kim said that her nudity is meant to stimulate a powerful gut-reaction from her viewer. “My goal is to establish a direct-link between audience and space, so that people can look at it and feel something,” she told The Observer.

The inspiration for the series came from Ms. Kim’s studies as a pre-med undergraduate at Columbia. “It was shocking to me how similar the anatomy of a pig is to that of a human,” she said.

But shooting at industrial pig farms turned out to be a difficult task. “It was almost impossible to find the location,” said Ms. Kim. She sent letters to a few hundred farms and was rejected by all of them.

“[The farms] wanted to make sure I wasn’t with an animal rights group,” she said, adding, “they also didn’t want to expose the bad conditions. It is extremely unnatural. It is very concentrated.” She ended up sneaking into one of them.

PETA has featured her work, but Ms. Kim wants to leave interpretation to her audience. “I want to keep my work poetic, rather than overtly political,” she told us.

She also isn’t about to bill herself as the naked self-portraitist. In her next series, Ms. Kim told The Observer, she plans to photograph people other than herself.

Asked for details, she only revealed: “I am really interested in the idea of skin.”

Photo by Ian Reid for Getty Images

On July 1st, Councilman Peter Vallone’s newest piece of anti-graffiti legislation went into effect. The new bill, which prohibits the purchase and installation of new roll-down security gates (a classic canvas for graffiti) on city storefronts, took the Councilman five years to get passed. “This bill is one of the things I am most proud of,” Mr. Vallone—dubbed “Graffiti’s Public Enemy No. 1”—declared in his recent interview with The Observer.

Contrary to some misinformed grumbling, the bill does not make owning a roll-down gate illegal. Rather, it is now illegal to purchase and install a new roll-down gate. “No one has to replace their current gates,” Mr. Vallone emphasized. From now on, however, any new security gate that is installed must provide at least 70% visibility of the shop behind it.

The bill attacks graffiti in a roundabout way. “It is part of a pattern of novel approaches,” Mr. Vallone says of his bill. Approaches dedicated to cleaning up the city. Mr. Vallone is devoting his tenancy as Public Safety Chair to these cleaning efforts because he believes it will make the City safer.

Listening to Mr. Vallone tell us about his initiatives, The Observer was reminded of Mayor Giuliani’s city clean-up policy in the 90’s which centered around the (then-avant-garde) Broken Windows Theory.

The theory—put forth in the March 1982 issue of The Atlantic Monthly—was developed by Harvard University social scientists James Wilson and George Kelling as an innovative approach to the issue of social disorder and crime in urban environments. The theory got its name from the conviction that if “a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken,” regardless of what type of neighborhood the building is in.

Throughout the city, sparsely-tagged walls are rare, yet we frequently encounter walls covered in graffiti. Thus, the Broken Windows Theory of 1982 aptly becomes the Graffitied Wall Theory of 2011. By focusing on neighborhood clean-up projects, Mr. Vallone is attempting to make a safer city.

Mr. Vallone’s (near-)fanatical obsession with graffiti is also evident in his proposed legislation that targets graffiti artists themselves. Street art has long been a staple of New York City pop-culture, and while Mr. Vallone grudgingly agrees, he believes there is a fine line between vandalism and art. He reluctantly conceded to The Observer that “a very small percentage [of graffiti] shows some artistic ability.”

Recently, Mr. Vallone opposed Brooklyn Museum of Art’s planned “Art in the Streets” exhibition, because of its overt support of street art, or graffiti, as a medium of artistic expression. Despite some controversy, the exhibition is quite popular at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, CA.

He has also restricted the ease with which vandals (and artists alike) can purchase certain graffiti-related supplies. You now have to be at least 21 years of age to possess etching acid, and he is actively working to have the same restrictions applied to “Fat Caps” (which allow users to paint larger areas more quickly) and “Graffiti Pens” (diamond-tipped pens used for fine etching).

“I am running out of ideas,” the confident Councilman admitted, and he concluded his interview with The Observer by telling us that (contrary to rumor) he has no plans to run for Congress in 2012 and will remain as the Public Safety Chair of the City Council for the next two years--where he can fight the War on Graffiti.

His best chance for victory? Following the sage advice of Messrs. Wilson and Kelling, break out the cleaning supplies, and start scrubbin’.

Photo for MTV2 Presents: Converse Band of Ballers by Brad Barket of PictureGroup

On Monday, The Observer braved the heat and schlepped down to the LES home of the City’s second-oldest Catholic high school, La Salle Academy. The alma mater of pro-baller Ron Artest was an all-too-appropriate venue for the filming of the third-annual Converse Band of Ballers 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament to air on MTV2 in mid-August.

Despite being a celebrity basketball tournament on paper, the event ran itself in a fashion similar to a dog fight with each team’s celebrity leaders sitting on the sidelines fanning themselves to keep cool while their streetballer pit-bulls fought it out gladiator-style in the 100+ degree gymnasium amidst a crowd of aggressive fans, and one overzealous commentator.

We found the Brooklyn-bred, indie rock group Matt & Kim in a classroom, away from the mêlée, notably chipper and dry after their first game.

“Have you seen his body? He’s a got a good body, and that’s how I judge basketball players.” Kim Schifino told The Observer with a giggle, when we asked her if her teammate (Community star and rapper) Donald Glover was as good at basketball as he is at everything else.

Ms. Schifino and her partner Matt Johnson came to Monday’s tournament ready to compete—as was evident when Matt approached us wearing what he told us were “custom extra-short shorts,” which were noticeably shorter than Kim’s shorts.

The indie-rock-famous duo catapulted to fame from humble Brooklyn-band beginnings—one of their albums is even named after Williamsburg’s Grand Avenue—and like Williamsburg, have grown out of simple hipster-fandom to mainstream recognition.  On a similar note, The Observer recently spotted a Lamborghini in Williamsburg. When we told the pair about the incident and asked whether they were now “part of the problem,” Matt admitted that while they have yet to see the car in question, yes they are now part of the problem, as they recently drove down Bedford Avenue with the top down in a white Chrysler Sebring Convertible. He noted: “Kim was so embarrassed she got in the back of the car, laid down, and hid.”

Contrary to her absurdly-uniformed partner, Ms. Schifino was quite serious about the tournament, “I grew up following the Celtics. My mom even had a Larry Bird poster in the house” she told us, adding “Larry Bird was not an attractive guy, but I’m certain my mom would’ve fucked him.”

Ms. Schifino’s pro-baller attitude carried onto the court and it was quickly apparent that Team Brooklyn didn’t come to Band of Ballers to mess around. Despite having close to no basketball experience themselves, Matt and Kim do have some friends in the game. In addition to Mr. Johnson, Ms. Schifino, and Mr. Glover, Team Brooklyn consisted of Jack “Black Jack” Ryan, a Brooklyn native and streetball icon, Pat The Roc, the self-proclaimed “King of Streetball,” and Ryan “Special FX” Williams, who played in college at St. John’s University and is presently an actively touring professional streetballer.

As The Observer watched from the sidelines it became startlingly clear that the tournament itself seemed to be less a tournament between artists, and more a contest to see who was better connected to actual “ballers.” Outside of the misinformed Team Swell—rap group Chiddy Bang, who were thoroughly dominated by their competition—none of the other recording artists made it onto the hardwood to compete in Monday’s tournament.

Equally misinformed, Lil Twist—the seventeen-year-old artist sent to represent the notoriously-elusive Lil Wayne as the replacement captain of the Young Money Entertainment team—seemed slightly confused as to the nature of the event. The miniature rapper wore sunglasses, a large diamond-studded link chain, and knee-high polka-dot socks. Mr. Twist didn’t play. He just sat on the bench, the tags still dangling from his new converse sneakers.

Photo by Nisian Hughes for Getty Images

In the past few months, The Observer and the rest of the online community has witnessed a whirlwind rise in popularity of mobile, app-based deal companies. Well, here is yet another one claiming to offer you a good deal.

New York has now been “Poggled.”

Though the brainchild of the Groupon family, “Poggled is not Groupon,” the site’s co-founder Joe Matthews told The Observer in an interview.

What began as a business school start-up, Poggled was initially designed to be a social networking site for avid partiers, but it caught the attention of Groupon investors Eric Lefkosky and Brad Keywell and with their generous support, the flailing knock-off was converted into the coupon company it is today.

Like Groupon, the site posts daily deals. But rather than the random deals that appear in our inboxes daily, Poggled is tailored entirely to promoting nightlife.

“Poggled wants people at the best bars, every night” said Mr. Matthews. Consequently, Poggled deals don’t expire like Groupon.

“Our deals are up forever,” Mr. Matthews told The Observer. The idea being that if you have a good time one night, why not do it all again the following night, and the night after that, and the night after that, and then again the night after that?

Poggled.com also allows subscribers to link their accounts with Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter and automatically keep their friends abreast of their location. Finally, no more texts at 3am from your AWOL friend identifying their location as “tha4 majhaatt.”

According to Mr. Matthews it took 4 or 5 months following the site’s launch for Poggled to hit its stride, but he believes that in that trial-and-error period they discovered the formula for the rapid success of the product.

Poggled launched its New York iteration on June 27. Currently partnered with about a dozen NYC establishments, Mr. Matthews believes the website will have close to 30 partnerships by the end of this week.

Already at full-steam in the Midwest, Poggled Chicago posts around 100 deals a day. Yet, Mr. Matthews has his sights set higher for the Big Apple. “Our ultimate goal for New York City is deals with 200-300 bars and 100,000-200,000 online subscribers,” the co-founder proclaimed.

To reach this goal, Poggled conducts extensive research on a bar or club before contacting them to make a deal. “We want people to go out with their friends and have a good, good time.” When Poggled targets a bar to promote, “it is not so much about the venue, but more the environment, we are looking for the best atmosphere,” said Mr. Matthews.

Curious to see if Poggled was already living up to the hype, The Observer spoke with Matthew Hecht, owner of Sip Bar on the Upper West Side, one of the first New York joints to partner with Poggled. Currently, the site is offering a “$1 for $20 Worth of Food & Drinks” coupon for Sip Bar. Mr. Hecht said that the impact hasn’t been huge, but some people with Poggled coupons do come in. Mr. Hecht is excited about Poggled, as Sip Bar did well with Groupon’s help. Sip has a 3-month contract with Poggled and Mr. Hecht is optimistic about its potential for New York City nightlife. Although he admitted that thus far, “it certainly hasn’t had the same type of sales [as Groupon].”

Mr. Matthews boasts a “success-proven” business plan to reach his goal for the City and it begins with parties. According to Mr. Matthews, Poggled-sponsored parties have the perfect formula for success, which among other things (locked away in the company’s brand safe) includes: “the perfect girl-to-guy ratio, the best venues, and the best nightly deals.”

The Observer has good reason to believe he is right. After all, “Poggled” is the Old English word for “tipsy.”

Photo by Andrea Sperling for Getty Images

Yesterday afternoon The Observer got wind of a grandiose affair to take place at the The Trump Building at 40 Wall Street the following morning. The grand opening of Duane Reade there is the company’s newest effort to tailor a pharmacy to its neighborhood.

The official Facebook event boasted 41 Duane Reade diehards planning to attend the opening. Curiosity got the better of us, and we thought we’d pop down to 40 Wall to see what the fuss was about.

Fresh out of the subway, The Observer was greeted (or rather, attacked) by a zealous young man in a tuxedo handing out store coupons and ushering people to the event.

“This is the greatest pharmacy in the world!” the elaborately-dressed escort bragged with a smile. “It is going to change everything.”

What exactly needs to be changed in the market of convenience and pharmaceutical sales is uncertain, but whatever the direction of the industry, Duane Reade is certainly making moves. The new store touts an impressive array of innovative features from in-house hair and skin analyses to an on-site doctor and sushi chef to a soda machine that dispenses all 130 varieties of Coca-Cola beverages.

Closer to the entrance of 40 Wall Street, The Observer encountered another Duane Reade street promoter, this one doling out cups of complementary coffee from a hose connected to his backpack.

Intrigued, we accepted a cup. Coffee in hand, we entered the historic building now home to the “greatest pharmacy in the world.”

The store was a hive of activity, with half a dozen morning shoppers mulling around, a squad of security guards patrolling the aisles, a small army of employees, and a dozen or so Duane Reade “higher-ups” overseeing the whole affair.

We were immediately welcomed by a hologram of a middle-aged Caucasian woman projected from a machine “custom-designed” for Duane Reade by Tensator. While the hologram perpetually gloated about the merits of the store, The Observer wandered around a bit.

Much to our surprise, the morning customers appeared lost and overwhelmed, but perhaps more disconcerting was that the confusion extended to the staff as well. Outside of the hologram, the rest of the store’s new employees appeared to know very little about the building and its inventory. Although one employee credited his inability to find the men’s shaving cream to the amount of “red wine” he had consumed the evening before.

Once New Yorkers’ local pharmacy, the atmosphere of Duane Reade’s new “flagship” store was inordinately professional and aloof. When approached by The Observer, the store’s manager, Tom Cashman, offered no comment on the “grand” opening. Ironically, the friendliest guy we met was not in the store at all, rather on the street dispensing coffee out of a backpack...but his excessive excitement can probably be linked to the copious amount of complimentary caffeine he toted on his back.

Between the tuxedo’ed usher, the hologram soccer mom, and the Japanese sushi chef dishing out overpriced pharmacy sushi, Wall Street’s new Duane Reade seems to be going through an identity crisis. Is it possible that consumers really want to turn to their pharmacy to whet their appetite for sushi and manicures? The answer remains unclear for now.

Perhaps Duane Reade already hit their mark in one regard, the new pharmacy does fit its neighborhood with the store atmosphere being as cold and impersonal as the Wall Street businessmen stalking by the entrance on their way to work.

Needless to say, we’d soon had enough of the fanfare and headed out. To our relief the chipper coffee boy was still outside and we gratefully accepted another cup of hose-coffee for the ride back.