Dan Levin, Jon Gray, Malcom Livingston and Lester Walker. (Photo by Emily Anne Epstein)

IT IS AFTER MIDNIGHT in the kitchen of Le Baron, a Chinatown dance club. The chefs we have come to meet are squeezed shoulder to shoulder in the tiny space, chopping and frying for the throngs outside. Jon Gray is giving two waitresses in crop tops a pep talk, telling them to get as far into the crowd as they can before distributing the food. The doors have closed and the venue is over capacity. It’s going to be tough, he tells them. Hold the trays high.

Tonight is the inaugural event of his catering company, Ghetto Gastro, which draws on the talents of rising chefs who have earned their stripes at Le Cirque, Jean-Georges and wd~50, among other big names. “How many can we fit on a tray?” chef Dan Levin interjects, referring to the four-bite portions of chicken and waffles.

We pluck one from the trays and the flavor comes in waves. First the sweet crust. Then the feisty curried chicken. The cool heat of scotch bonnet mango butter. The creamy calm of the coconut waffles. And there are two more varieties to go: a fig waffle with chili chicken and foie gras butter, and a Belgian waffle with buttermilk fried chicken and maple butter.

(Photo by Emily Anne Epstein)

Once the food has gone out, Mr. Gray takes the stage and thanks everyone for attending. He hopes you like the food, and he hopes you’re having fun. Now, he says, the “ghetto” part of the party is about to begin. He steps down to reveal a stripper pole, and with it, an obviously enhanced young woman gyrating to the booming bass. She spins around, casually flipping upside down. The music moves faster and so does she, her clothes slipping off as the crowd yelps in excitement.

“Ghetto means raw, uncut, unadulterated, unpasteurized,” Mr. Gray says after the party. “It means beautiful. It means fresh.” It’s not about class, race or geography. To be ghetto is to hustle. Ghetto Gastro began as a passion project in August of last year, but it’s turning into a full-time enterprise for Mr. Gray. When the company had its first party in February, there was no website, no business cards, no real plan for the future—only a single party for Solange Knowles to the company’s credit. Now clients include Ralph Lauren and Jack Daniels.

Sway Calloway, an MTV VJ, sees Ghetto Gastro as pioneering hip-hop food, in its blending of the real and the refined. A$ap Ferg and Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan are also regulars at Ghetto Gastro’s Freestyle Friday events, where the chefs test recipes on friends. There, fish and chips becomes delicately fried blowfish served with blue potato crisps. Droplets of chickpea puree dot the plates to look like peas and give the dish a pop of color. General Tso’s is similarly deconstructed: the Styrofoam staple is transformed into a confit of cubed poultry beside pan-fried ginger hair, all over creamed vegetables arranged in the shape of the yin-yang symbol.

THE MISSION TO RECLAIM “ghetto” comes from a sense of pride. Mr. Gray, along with Ghetto Gastro chefs Malcolm Livingston and Lester Walker, grew up a few blocks from one another in the Bronx. (Mr. Levin hails from Florida.) Mr. Walker had a particularly challenging childhood. His father was absent and drug dealers were an enticing influence. “People on my block, they were cooking other things,” Mr. Walker says. “Not food.”

(Photo by Emily Anne Epstein)

Mr. Walker got into trouble of his own on occasion, and found sanctuary from the chaos outside in his mother’s kitchen. She was not a chef who started from scratch, favoring Ragu over a ripe tomato, but always put her own spin on the store-bought. To a young Mr. Walker, her lasagna was mythical. The smell of garlic would often waft into his bedroom and he would join his mother stoveside. “I would just put down whatever I was doing and run into the kitchen and open up pots and taste stuff,” he remembers. “She hated that.” His own palate evolved quickly, and in 1998, in his senior year at his fourth high school, he won a prestigious scholarship from the Careers through Culinary Arts Program (C-Cap).

Richard Grausman, the celebrated educator and founder of C-Cap, remembers seeing Mr. Walker cook for the first time. “He had good hands,” Mr. Grausman says. “He used his knife well and he was comfortable in the kitchen. He moved well.” He has watched Mr. Walker make the jump from a cook to a chef, finding his way into the city’s premier kitchens.

But it wasn’t a straight line for Mr. Walker. “I always had one foot in the streets, one foot in the kitchen,” Mr. Walker says. He was torn between the world he knew and the rush of the restaurant world, the tightly packed bodies and strict leadership of the chef. He found the chaos comforting and, in many ways, familiar. In 2006, he made a choice. He started working at Spice Market and Jean-Georges became his “big brother.” The food was foreign, Mr. Walker says, and the work was tough, but worth it. “The only Chinese food I grew up with was chicken wings and fried rice. I didn’t know there were so many different ingredients: lemongrass, Thai chili, Thai basil,” Mr. Walker says.

AFTER SPENDING MANY YEARS unschooling themselves in street talk to move up in the restaurant world, there’s a sense of marvel among Ghetto’s chefs that they can be themselves in the kitchen.

Dan Levin, center, in Le Baron. (Photo by Emily Anne Epstein)

“I don’t think anyone is cooking the way we’re cooking,” says Mr. Walker. “We’re young men from the Bronx, pretty tough neighborhoods, you would never expect us to do the food that we do. You’d see a picture of us and you’d say, ‘Those guys? They can’t be good chefs. They look like street guys.’” Their downscale presentation pays homage to their roots; Arctic char will hide inside a Crown Fried Chicken box. A table will be covered in newspapers in lieu of linen. Wonder Bread is favored over French baguettes—and, for a certain kind of client, that’s what they want.

(Photo by Emily Anne Epstein)

“We did a dinner party once and we used Olde English 40 bottles as carafes,” says Mr. Livingston. “People didn’t think twice about it. We just took the labels off and they loved it.” This summer, they plan to host a series of riffs on the classic fish fry, featuring hopscotch courts, double Dutch ropes and stickball.

The high-low vibe is what attracted Daria Brit-Greene, who hired the fledgling company to cater a dinner at the home of street art collector Natalie Kates for a SCOPE event. The caterers were charged with creating dishes inspired by Ms. Kates’s reserve of urban art as well as her home’s Bowery location. “They’re bringing in the Asian culture of Grand Street with a foie gras dumpling and the Jewish culture of the Lower East Side with a deconstructed Reuben,” Ms. Brit-Greene tells The Observer. The chefs are genuine, she says, and their food is ridiculously good.

They’re also trying to seed a food scene uptown. They’ve led nutritional classes at local grammar schools and hope to soon have cooking programs for single mothers and at-risk youths with the help of C-Cap. “You don’t hear about the Bronx as being an oasis of food,” Mr. Grausman says. “The Bronx is wide open.”

THE CROWD AT THE Le Baron event is a mix of old friends and friends of friends who seem to have discovered Ghetto Gastro’s style for the first time. Partygoers get close and kiss on the dance floor. When the stripper performs an upside-down pole maneuver, a woman with a pixie haircut seizes the opportunity to participate in the act and gets handsy.

Mr. Gray is flanked on both sides by people wanting more.

“Where is your restaurant?” one man asks. “Do you have a card?” A woman demands, “When is your next event?”

“We don’t have a card or a restaurant,” Mr. Gray responds, smiling. He had just ordered a sample pack of 25 cards, but had already given them out. “We try to keep things underground,” he says, “not unnoticed.”

(Photo by Emily Anne Epstein)

Roasted Baby Beet Salad with Chive Crème Fraiche

By Lester Walker

2 cups multicolor baby beets
1/2 cup roasted shallots
2 roasted garlic cloves
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon blood orange zest
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 pinch ground black pepper
Maldon salt to taste
1/2 cup creme fraiche
1 ounce chopped chives

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Wrap whole beets in foil with olive oil and salt and place in oven until fork-tender, approximately 30 to 35 minutes.

3. Wrap whole shallots and garlic in foil and place in oven until golden, approximately 10 to 12 minutes.

4. While hot, use a hand towel to peel skin off beets, shallots and garlic.

5. Cut beets into 1-inch dice.

6. Finely dice shallots and garlic.

7. Place beets, shallots and garlic in mixing bowl along with rest of ingredients, mix well and let marinate in fridge for at least an hour.

8. Finely slice chives and fold into crème fraiche in separate mixing bowl and add salt to taste.

9. Place beet salad in bowl and add small dollop of crème fraiche to top and garnish with micro cilantro.

10. SWERVE THAT WAVE UP!

eepstein@observer.com

On the Bowery last Friday, a man who gave his name only as Jay was cleaning his white Nike sneakers with a toothbrush. He had just stayed at The Bowery Mission for the first time the night before. “I used to work at CBGBs in the day,” he said, pointing down the street to where the legendary punk venue once was, reminiscing for a minute. Things are different now.

“You can’t go to sleep nowhere. Can’t sit on a bench in a park. Can’t even have a beer—you get arrested. Everything is trespassing,” he said.

From the Bowery, we ventured uptown to 32nd Street, where we spotted a blind man with a black bowl asking people for help. “Have a blessed day,” he said to passersby. In the half hour we watched him work, only two people, a construction worker and a suit, stopped to drop a dollar.

A few blocks away, on the steps of the 34th Street post office, several other people passed the time, apparently without anywhere else to be. An elderly man crouched in a fetal position and picked at his arms, shaking uncontrollably as he focused on his efforts. His shirt said “New York.”

(Getty Images)

A federal judge has ruled that the government must make the morning-after pill available to women of all ages without a prescription.

Judge Edward R. Korman of the United States Eastern District Court of New York has ordered the USDA to make the emergency contraception available without restrictions in 30 days.

The plaintiffs in the case, Tummino v. Hamburg, alleged that restrictions on the pill were brought because of "bad faith" by the USDA.

Judge Korman stated in his ruling that he believed the regulations were the result of politics, not health concerns.

"I agreed with the plaintiffs that the FDA bowed to political pressure emanating from the White House and departed from agency policy," he said.

He also pointed to the fact that the pills are most effective when taken immediately after unprotected intercourse and the barriers to obtaining the medication, both officially imposed and imposed by the ignorance of some doctors, were troubling. He called them "arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable."

"This case has proven to be particularly controversial because it involves access to emergency contraception for adolescents who should not be engaging in conduct that necessitates the use of such drugs and because of the scientifically unsupported speculation that the drug could interfere with implantation of fertilized eggs," he wrote.

Nevertheless, the judge ruled, "the standards are the same for aspirin and for contraceptives."

Judge Korman ruled similarly in 2009 when he ordered that the pill be made available without a prescription to 17-year-olds.

Planned Parenthood applauded the ruling, saying that it would improve women's health.

"When a woman fears she might become pregnant after her contraceptive has failed or she has had unprotected sex,"a statement from the organization read, "she needs fast access to emergency contraception, not delays at the pharmacy counter."

Hot yoga practitioners perform Vasisthasana, or the Side Plank Pose, in a new Bikram-less class at Yoga to the People. (Photo by Emily Anne Epstein)

At noon on a recent Friday, 40 people filed into Yoga to the People’s 27th Street hot yoga studio. “We’re going to be doing a new class today,” instructor Lindsay Dombrowski announced. “It’s going to be super-intense.”

Wearing a tight tank top and short green shorts, Ms. Dombrowski led her nearly naked pupils through a series of poses, or asanas. At one point, instead of stretching into the Awkward Pose, in which students squat with their hands jutting outward, she directed them to the Thunderbolt Pose, in which students’ palms stretch directly overhead.

(Photo by Emily Anne Epstein)

The position swap was one of six changes that the studio’s instructors have made to the traditional Bikram Yoga regimen, a sequence of 26 yoga moves promoted by Bikram Choudhury and taught in Bikram studios around the world.

Until very recently, fiddling with Mr. Choudhury’s tightly guarded yoga practice in any way would have been a heresy tantamount to dashing off new verses for the Bible. In the same vein, the use of the poses in uncertified studios was fiercely forbidden.

The new poses at Yoga to the People, which debuted earlier this month, are the result of a legal settlement between the studio’s founder, Greg Gumucio, and Mr. Choudhury, who sued Mr. Gumucio last year for copyright infringement, among other complaints.

For more than 30 years, Mr. Choudhury has carefully guarded his 90-minute regimen, performed in 105-degree rooms, by copyrighting the order of the positions, charging aspiring teachers large training fees and insisting upon complete control of the practice. Mr. Choudhury has ferociously protected his franchise, suing numerous protégés for infringement and shuttering their studios.

Various studios around the country challenged his iron-fist approach; others simply closed down, or they altered the sequence, removing all language and resemblance to Bikram Yoga in order to appease him. Hence, Bikram-like doppelgängers called “hot yoga” have sprung up around the country.

In June of last year, the federal Copyright Office issued a clarification on compilation copyrights in general—including Mr. Choudhury’s claim—saying specifically that the copyright for his sequence of yoga moves was issued “in error.”

Pupils pose as a photograph of Mr. Gumucio and Mr. Choudhury hangs outside. (Photo by Emily Anne Epstein)

“This, in my eyes, was a fight for the future freedom of yoga,” Mr. Gumucio said after he settled with Mr. Choudhury, adding that he chose to alter the sequence despite the original copyright ruling because he wanted to “free” his classes from Mr. Choudhury.

Beyond the settlement for Yoga to the People, the Copyright Office’s decision has effectively declawed Mr. Choudhury. Benjamin Lorr, a former student of Mr. Choudhury’s and the author of a book, Hell-Bent, about his experiences in the world of Bikram Yoga, said that lifting the copyright has resulted in an “Arab spring” of hot yoga. Without the copyright on the sequence, the entire yoga community is free to take nearly everything but the Bikram name.

“There are two sides—there’s one side that’s very loyal to [Mr. Choudhury], and to them, it doesn’t matter if he loses these lawsuits, because it’s a respect issue,” Mr. Lorr said.  “There’s another side that’s quietly beginning to think, hey, the emperor doesn’t have any clothes on, and I can go off and teach whatever I want.”

HotYogaAlliance.com, a message board for hot yoga teachers, is abuzz with chatter about whether or not they stay beholden to their guru or cut their ties. “In my opinion Bikram has lost his way and his original intention has been clouded with greed and ego,” one poster said. “I do think it is important now maybe more than ever to separate Bikram the man from the yoga.”

In New York City, studio owners are deciding whether or not they will continue to send their teachers to Mr. Choudhury at all for teacher training. Competitors like Yoga to the People are even offering their own training seminars.

(Photo by Emily Anne Epstein)

Tricia Donegan, a Bikram studio owner on the Lower East Side who has remained loyal to Mr. Choudhury, said that she’s been noticing shorter classes across the city, down from Mr. Choudhury’s required 90-minute routine. “The hot yoga in New York has gone from 90 minutes to 75 to 60 minutes,” she said. “Now there is a lot of inconsistency in the product. It deflates the standard and integrity of the yoga.”

Others disagree. “Yoga is about the mind, body and soul, and I feel [Mr. Choudhury] has chipped away at his soul with this lawsuit,” Keanna Louise, a new student of hot yoga, said, wiping the sweat from her brow, after the debut class of Yoga to the People’s new sequence. That day’s session was free. Henceforward, it would be $8, nearly $20 cheaper than a comparable Bikram Yoga class.

After revealing the new positions for the first time, Ms. Dombrowski hugged some students she recognized. She turned down the temperature in the studio and shut the door. To the left of the door hung a photograph of Mr. Choudhury seated in the center of a studio. Mr. Gumucio is standing behind him, smiling.

Ms. Wolkoff in her Midtown office. (Emily Anne Epstein)

In the 31st-floor offices of SWW Creative, the walls are beige, the carpet is gray and the cabinets are standard-issue wood-grain. There’s no Eames armchair, no runway stills splashed across the walls, not even a lucite coffee table with a copy of Grace Coddington’s memoir. There’s not a flower in sight.

While fashion professionals are known to obsess over the color of their pens, SWW Creative’s offices are about as splashy as an insurance agency’s. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is not concerned.

Ms. Wolkoff, who orchestrated Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week’s Lincoln Center expansion, isn’t in it for Smythson notebooks or a pair of Céline fur sandals. She is an executor first and a fashionist somewhere further down the line, finding more satisfaction in a spreadsheet than an Avedon. Though she’s a front-row fixture and a special-occasion catwalker, she doesn’t scour the runways for her own closet. Instead, Ms. Wolkoff, who stands a statuesque 6-foot-1, prefers the simplicity of a uniform—Ralph Lauren is her everyday.

“The outside world thinks that Fashion Week is so amazing and so glamorous and so over-the-top,” said Ms. Wolkoff, who has been overseeing the twice-annual event since 2009. “Is it important to have celebrities there? Great. Is it important to have the athletes in the front row? Super. But the truth is, this is a business.”

And yet, by acknowledging as much—and reimagining Fashion Week as populist and business-friendly—she has rankled fashion’s artistes, who feel that recent changes have given the event a noticeable odor of commerce. Under Ms. Wolkoff’s tenure, corporate sponsorships have taken center stage in a lobby concourse that more closely resembles the Javits Center than the heart of couture. Also, for the first time, there are events for the public, in the form of fashion-art collaborations with Lincoln Center’s performance groups. It’s gone from a tent to a circus.

“Lincoln Center is amazing—they have amazing facilities, they have everything you could possibly need,” said Stefan Golangco, the communications director of progressive menswear line Asher Levine. “But our brand is also about being underground and being off-schedule and being a little bit ... maybe less commercial. [Showing at Lincoln Center] doesn’t feel unique to your brand, especially if you’re a small label. You kind of get lost in the shuffle.”

While Fashion Week may be a few days longer now and may feel bigger (the tents certainly are), the number of shows in its main hub hasn’t grown materially since Ms. Wolkoff entered the mix. The total number of designers showing at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week itself has remained pretty much the same—the big explosion has been predominantly offsite. In 2007, when Fashion Week was still at Bryant Park, 90 designers showed at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week while 165 showed offsite. Last year, 91 designers showed at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Lincoln Center and 231 showed offsite, according to data from the Fashion Calendar, a fashion event scheduler, and IMG.

(Emily Anne Epstein)

Many of the designers opting to show offsite are looking for a particular sense of place; a mythology that matches their brand. “I always dreamed about being a part of Bryant Park, and when Fashion Week lost its location, I was really bummed about it. I lived for that moment,” said Nary Manivong, an emerging designer who has chosen to show his work offsite and off-schedule.

Of course, nobody can keep everyone happy, and Ms. Wolkoff is aware of that. She’s not interested in reclaiming defectors. She is interested in making sure the event goes off seamlessly.

“I stay in control of every little thing,” said the maestro of Post-it notes, corkboards and carefully stacked folders. “I want to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks. If I could delegate a little better, I would be better off.”

She is well-known for indifference to the theatrics so often associated with fashion, calling herself an industry “Switzerland.” “There’s no drama,” Elle’s creative director, Joe Zee, told The Observer. “Whatever is happening behind the scenes, everything still feels very put together.”

Every detail is per Ms. Wolkoff’s design, said associates, one of whom likened her preparedness to that of a Boy Scout. “I don’t feel it’s appropriate to put my hands up in the air and say, ‘too bad,’ you know, or ‘It’s not my job,’” Ms. Wolkoff said. “There were times when I’d be sweeping the floor before an event if the floor was dirty. I wouldn’t wait for someone to come into the room and do it themselves.”

Ms. Wolkoff is known in the industry as “General Winston”—a name bestowed on her by Anna Wintour, a career-long mentor who tapped her to become Lincoln Center’s director of fashion when Fashion Week was pushed out of Bryant Park by an ice-skating rink. Ms. Wolkoff, who had previously headed the Vogue-hosted Costume Institute Benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is credited with helping elevate it from an East Coast event to a star-studded couture pageant.

She is one of the many New York fashion success stories who owe their rise in large part to Ms. Wintour’s mentorship. Ms. Wolkoff was a client services manager at Sotheby’s when Ms. Wintour hired her to do PR for Vogue, despite her lack of fashion experience. Raised amid acres of farmland in the Catskill Mountains, the black-belt preferred working on her jump kick to reading magazines. “Fashion was not something that I knew about,” she said. “It just wasn’t really particularly interesting.”

But what Ms. Wolkoff did have was an intensely disciplined work ethic, which was solidified playing power forward for Fordham University’s Division 1 basketball team. The diligence of waking up for predawn practice drills developed a personal drive that became impossible to turn off. (To this day, she calibrates her schedule to the minute, opting to have a manicurist come in to do her nails at her desk so she doesn’t have to cut into family or work time.)

(Emily Anne Epstein)

And she looks the part. Described by an associate as “the first person you see when you walk into a room,” Ms. Wolkoff came equipped with Vogue-worthy family associations: her stepfather is Bruce Winston, jeweler Harry Winston’s son.

“I didn’t have quite the understanding of the difference between Vogue, Elle, Harper’s and the rest of the world,” Ms. Wolkoff said, recalling her interview at the magazine. She was hired the same day. “I knew Anna Wintour was the editor in chief of Vogue, I just didn’t understand what it meant to wait around to meet with Anna Wintour. I didn’t lie that I read Vogue every day or that I grew up loving fashion, but I did know how to roll up my sleeves and do whatever it took to learn it.”

In the cosa nostra of fashion, Ms. Wintour’s blessing is likened to being “made” by a mafia boss. The wheels are slicked, critics are silenced and success is imminent. Accordingly, Ms. Wolkoff’s ascent at Vogue was rapid; she jumped from PR manager to special events manager to the head of the Costume Institute Benefit.

“The Costume Institute Benefit became my baby. It was something that I lived, breathed, day and night,” she said. “It was all about excellence. It was all about never taking ‘no’ for an answer from anyone in order to achieve the ultimate goal.”

At Lincoln Center, Ms. Wolkoff expanded on the foundations laid by Fern Mallis, the founder of Fashion Week, whose efforts put American designers on the global fashion map.

“We wanted to compete with Paris and Milan and other world capitals. There was very limited international business coming to New York, because we weren’t organized,” Ms. Mallis told The Observer. One of the initiatives she pursued was corporate sponsorships that would help offset the costs of the runway productions.

(Emily Anne Epstein)

Ms. Wolkoff nurtured those relationships, creating events that were open to the public rather than only buyers and editors, prying open the former fashion fortress and transforming it into a sprawling campus. “My goal was to put fashion on par with all the other cultural institutions that were at Lincoln Center,” Ms. Wolkoff said. “I always wanted to somehow democratize Fashion Week in a way that hadn’t been done before. I wanted to create a place where editors, models and designers could rub elbows with the everyday person.”

Some designers have balked at the new venue and the new vision, opting to take their shows elsewhere. Marquee New York brands like Proenza Schouler, Marc Jacobs and Alexander Wang have all decided to sidestep Lincoln Center. “The feedback I’ve gotten is that it’s way more commercial out there. But at the end of the day, that’s what it’s about,” Ms. Mallis said. “I certainly miss Bryant Park.”

Mr. Zee says that Ms. Wolkoff’s innovations have “matured” the biannual event. A self-proclaimed “fashion dinosaur,” he has been to shows at every fashion week, since long before they ever found a home at Bryant Park.

“I kind of love Lincoln Center,” he said. “She’s really made it into a true event. It’s not about going to a fashion show and leaving—she makes it into a true experience. It’s like growing up: Bryant Park was the teenage years, and now you grow up and you migrate uptown. It’s bigger, more glamorous ... it’s more what it is.”

At the end of the day, the models need to walk, the buyers need to shop, the editors need to see the season’s best and the designers need to sell their handiwork. It’s a trade show.

“If you look at who’s involved in fashion, there’s glamour, and smoke and mirrors, but it is a true business,” Vanessa von Bismarck, co-founder of fashion PR firm BPCM, told The Observer. “[Ms. Wolkoff] is someone with a business mind and [she] knows how the business works.”

(Mario Zucca)

In June of last year, Ms. Wolkoff stepped down as Lincoln Center’s director of fashion to take charge of her own company, SWW Creative. She still oversees the event, but now IMG and Lincoln Center are her clients, along with a number of other companies, including the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Penske Media Corporation and Kapture, an iPhone photo-sharing app.

Setting up shop privately enabled Ms. Wolkoff to dictate her own terms, which include being able to pick her three kids up from school and get home for dinner with her husband, real estate developer David Wolkoff. “I didn’t have children not to be with them,” she said. And even though her daughter Alexi has made the occasional runway appearance, she’s not an aspiring Tavi. “My children do not know the difference between Tar-jay and any other designer brand,” Ms. Wolkoff said proudly.

After bedtime, she typically dives back into work. “I go to sleep once I’ve put my third child to sleep, and I will wake up around 1 o’clock in the morning and work for a couple of hours, and then go back to bed,” she said, pointing to the 1,777 emails that had accrued in the past hour.

Once left alone, Ms. Wolkoff settled back into her seat and began riffling through the stacks of paper spread across her desk. She checked her iPhone and called out to her assistant. It was clear: she may be the first person you see when you enter a room, but she’s also the last to leave.

eepstein@observer.com

Flooding at the WTC site.

During Hurricane Sandy, the site of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum complex was overcome by more than 16 million gallons of floodwater, which ruined wires and drywall and ravaged a handful of iconic artifacts.

In an emotional essay on the museum’s website, director Alice Greenwald described seeing “seven feet of standing water throughout the museum.”

“The humidity was thick, like a sauna,” she wrote. “This was a disaster.”

The site’s extensive flooding is renewing protests over a plan to move the 8,584 still-unidentified remains from 9/11 victims into a repository adjacent to the base level of the museum, seven stories below ground. Family members of the dead fear that putting the remains so far under the earth—in flood zone A, no less—leaves them unnecessarily vulnerable to the elements, particularly with researchers still actively conducting DNA tests on those body parts.

“It’s going to happen again,” said Russell Mercer, the father of a 32-year-old firefighter who perished in the attack. “Those human remains should not be there.”

Mr. Mercer’s son, Scott Kopytko, died climbing the stairs of the South Tower on 9/11.

Though his corpse was never recovered, his parents still hold out hope that scientists will yet find some part of him that they can bury. “I can’t even go to a cemetery and visit his grave,” Mr. Mercer told The Observer. “I have an empty seat at my house on the holiday.”

Prior to Hurricane Sandy, the remains were stored above ground in a parking lot adjacent to the medical examiner’s 30th Street office and were removed to a secure location during the storm. When construction is completed—in late 2013 or early 2014, according to officials—all of the remains will be moved over to the repository site, where they will rest until they’re sampled and transferred, one by one, to the city medical examiner’s office for testing. The agency has committed to identifying every piece of bone, tissue and DNA found at Ground Zero, insofar as testing methods allow.

Mr. Mercer is afraid that when the remains are transported to the bedrock of the memorial site and there’s another storm and another flood, he’s going to lose his son another time.

“Is Scott going to be washed away?” he asked. “Is he ever going to be identified?”

Most of the museum’s thousands of artifacts were stowed before the storm in secure locations, but some of the larger pieces, including the Last Column, the World Trade Center cross, two fire trucks and a cab, remained in the structure, shrink-wrapped to protect them from the surge. While the Port Authority installed dozens of sandbags and concrete barriers and additional water pumps, those efforts were no match for the gushing water.

Michael Frazier, the museum’s spokesperson, said that despite the precautions, some artifacts were damaged. “We’re doing all the work we can with our conservators to make sure any damage is remediated,” he said, noting that the objects were pretty banged up to begin with, given their source. “They came from the rubble. It’s a relative thing.”

One construction worker faced with the task of emptying the waterlogged location was somewhat more candid. “Everything that’s in there is fucked—the fire truck, the taxicab—it was so sad to watch,” he said. Exposure to seawater made the metal artifacts vulnerable to corrosion, he said, and inadvertently cleaned them. “The dust, the sweat and the tears—it’s washed away,” he said.

It took more than a week to pump out all of the water, and the museum is still assessing how much damage the flood caused. Mr. Frazier said that some of the wiring, Sheetrock and other infrastructure needs to be replaced. The Port Authority filed a request for FEMA assistance on November 27, records show, but a dollar figure for the damage done to the site is not yet available.

Steve Plate, the director of World Trade Center Construction, noted that the museum site was especially vulnerable because it was roofless at the time of the storm. “We will continue to re-evaluate and implement additional strategic flood mitigation efforts moving forward,” he said in a statement.

Mr. Frazier attributed the flooding at the museum to vulnerabilities in other areas of the World Trade Center site that were still under construction. “It is believed that the flooding would not have been as extensive had the museum, which is still under construction, been complete,” Mr. Frazier said.

Mr. Frazier said the museum and the Port Authority are evaluating what additional measures, if any, need to be taken to fortify the museum and memorial, but said staff will get additional training in emergency artifact removal.

The Office of the Medical Examiner did not detail its own emergency plans for the repository.

What the museum will look like when it opens. Remains will be kept in a special room out of public view. (NS11MM)

Construction for the memorial and the museum—located below the footprint of the towers—began in 2006 following several years of back and forth among families, architects, engineers, community members and other stakeholders. Everything from the admissions price, to the construction start date to the organization of the victims’ names has been contested at pulpits and in courtrooms.

The 110,000-square-foot site will have multimedia displays, archives and narratives commemorating the victims of the attacks. Portraits of the nearly 3,000 men, women and children who died will also be displayed. Visitors will walk down a sloped ramp until they reach the exhibition space at the base of the site, 70 feet below ground level. The museum area will share a wall with the repository, where a quote from Virgil will be displayed: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” Parts of the original foundation of the Twin Towers will also be incorporated into the museum complex.

While the subterranean design was intentionally grave-like, that concept has long been contested by family members who wanted the remains to be stored above ground and entirely separate from the museum’s exhibition space. Flooding was always a concern for these families, Sally Regenhard, one of the museum’s most vocal opponents, told The Observer.

Those fears were heightened by the recent storm, said Ms. Regenhard, who lost her son Christian, a firefighter and former marine.

She and more than a dozen other family members are suing both the memorial and the city for the right to obtain a comprehensive contact list of victims’ relatives. Ms. Regenhard hopes to use the list to mobilize an effort to store remains in something akin to the Tomb of the Unknowns, a monument dedicated to American service members who have died without identification.

Their next court date is scheduled for January 9.

“No one wants their loved ones remains floating down the drain,” she said.

Amid flood fears, yet another concern is the safety of personal artifacts that are being donated to the exhibition, including bloodied watches, handwritten notes and wallets recovered from the site.

“These things are a part of history—we cannot replace them,” Patricia Nilsen, who lost her sister Anne Marie Martino Cramer in the South Tower, said. “What are they doing to protect our items? We need to know what’s going on.”

Mr. Frazier said that it was unlikely that the museum would relinquish any items, owing to “a thorough collection policy” that requires donors to give the museum legal ownership.

Michael Burke donated his late brother’s FDNY badge to the museum, and is now having second thoughts about having signed it over. “When I heard about the flood and saw the photographs, I was shocked,” he said. “I want the story to be told ... and he would want the history to be told. It’s not fair.”

Other donors are wondering if they can get those items back.

Mr. Burke said the only silver lining in the years of construction delays and bitter debates surrounding the still-unfinished repository and museum is that their future contents were largely spared by the storm—at least this one.

“If there is one place where we know we can’t predict the future, “ Mr. Burke said, “it’s at Ground Zero.”

eepstein@observer.com

The American Freedom Defense Initiative's new ad. (AFDI)

Pamela Geller is at it again.

The outspoken blogger and Executive Director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative has just purchased a slew of advertising space in several subway stations and on numerous Metro-North platforms in order to display her newest anti-Islam message.

Her latest ads, shared exclusively with The Observer, will feature a panorama of the sky the moment the World Trade Center burst into flames in 2001, accompanied by a quote from the Quran that reads “Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers.”

Ms. Geller’s various websites, AtlasShrugs.com, JihadWatch.org and TruthAboutQuran.com are listed on the top—making no details of the design particularly shocking (for her).

However, an MTA disclaimer taking up 25% of the ad space will be presented in conjunction with Ms. Geller’s message for the first time.

“This is a paid advertisement sponsored by American Freedom Defense Initiative. The display of this advertisement does not imply MTA’s endorsement of any views expressed,” it reads.

The MTA’s new disclaimer policy came in September of this year following an incident in which protestor Mona Eltahawy, 45, was filmed spray-painting another AFDI advertisement, which equated Muslims with savages.

The ad stated: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.” It added, “Support Israel. Defeat Jihad,” in between two Stars of David.

Ms. Eltahawy was arrested, and every single advertisement in the series was defaced by the end of the day—a fact that did not go unnoticed. The MTA addressed the issue of salacious advertising at its monthly board meeting. The MTA had previously tried to amend its advertising guidelines so it could refuse “demeaning” ads, a rule that would prohibit “images or information that demean an individual or group of individuals on account of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation,” but that modification was deemed unconstitutional. With its hands tied, it opted to include a disclaimer on ads that expressed a particular viewpoint on “political, religious or moral issues or related matters.”

“A cost of opening our ad space to a variety of viewpoints on matters of public concern is that we cannot readily close that space to certain advertisements on account of their expression of divisive or even venomous messages,” the MTA’s statement at the time read. “The answer to distasteful and uncivil speech is more, and more civilized, speech.”

Following the September incident, Ms. Geller has been busy crafting new advertisements for her campaign beginning December 17. The new ads will be plastered across at least 50 different locations, the MTA confirmed, the result of an ad buy worth more than $10,000.

“I refuse to abridge my free speech so as to appease savages,” Ms. Geller told The Observer. “Thousands of anti-Israel ads have run across the city and not one has been defaced. My ads, 10 went up in New York City, and they were destroyed in hours. You don’t agree with me, fine, run an ad. I have no problem with other people’s ideas.”

She is prepared, however, for the people who disagree with her to take out their frustration on her ads. This time around, she printed twice as many.

(AFDI)

Davis. (Photo by Andrew Reid)

Manhattan Madam and former gubernatorial candidate Kristin Davis has a few words of wisdom for struggling starlet Lindsay Lohan: fire your lawyer.

Ms. Lohan was arrested this morning after an alleged “bender” following the negative reviews of her recent flop Liz & Dick. Police say she got into some fisticuffs with Tiffany Eve Mitchell in the VIP section of Avenue Thursday evening and collared her there and then.

Following Ms. Lohan’s arrest for assault in the third degree for punching the Florida psychic in the face at the Chelsea nightclub, the redhead reportedly enlisted the help of notorious New York attorney Mark Heller.

In an open letter to Ms. Lohan, Ms. Davis claims that during her stint at Rikers during everyone's favorite Eliot Spitzer scandal, Mr. Heller committed a host of crimes against her, including but not limited to stealing thousands of dollars, turning her case into a media circus and calling her “lunch meat” in court.

“Dear Lindsay,” the letter, which The Observer obtained before its release, begins.

“While we don’t personally know each other, I feel compelled to inform you about your choice in attorneys, Mark Jay Heller.  If you care about your freedom- you will fire him immediately and retain competent representation,’ Ms. Davis says, before mentioning that Lifetime once made a movie about her life.

 The Observer spoke to Ms. Davis about the letter and why she felt so compelled to help Ms. Lohan.

“He’s a hawk. He watches the news and finds a high-profile person and says 'I’ll represent you for free,'” Ms. Davis said. “I retained him prior to my arrest to turn myself in. He went out there and tried to sell my story instead of trying to keep me out of jail.”

One of her most horrifying memories of her time with Mr. Heller was when he allegedly referred to her as lunch meat.

“In one of his motions to dismiss the case he wrote, ‘We all know that prosecutors can indict a ham sandwich and Ms. Davis is not a piece of lunch meat.’ The judge was shocked,” she said.

Ms. Davis says that Mr. Heller failed to secure bail for four months, leaving her “rotting in Rikers.” After giving him upward of $175,000, Ms. Davis says she fired him for incompetence. She hired a new attorney and was freed four days later.

“We’re talking about her freedom. I want to do the right thing for Lindsay.  She could be looking at a year in jail at least,” Ms. Davis.

Ms. Davis’s complaints against Mr. Heller are not unwarranted; The New York Times ran a profile of him in 2010 in which they interviewed former clients, judges and fellow attorneys that called him a “menace to the public,” “shockingly cavalier and abusive,” and cited a disciplinary panel that recommended a five-year suspension for “puffery.”

Earlier this year, convicted pimp Jason Itzler fired Mr. Heller at his sentencing for failing to keep him out of the pokey.

“I don’t trust Heller!” Mr. Itzler shouted at the time, according to The New York Times. “Heller to me is the devil!”

Mr. Heller, whom we reached by dialing him at 1-800-LAWYER-911, took the criticism in stride.

“I became an attorney 44 years ago, and in all that time I’ve represented a lot of clients. Thankfully most of my clients are happy. Apparently Ms Davis is unhappy, but the allegations that she has made are inaccurate,” Mr. Heller told The Observer.

He rebuffed her claim that he stole any funds from her or was dishonest in his dealings. He wasn’t sure, however, if he had ever compared her to the product of a corner deli.

“It sounds like a great quote,” he said. “I just don’t recall saying it.”

He said claims like Ms. Davis’s go with “the territory,” and went on to take a dig at her.

“I think there are some very serious issues concerning her credibility,” he fired back.

As for Ms. Lohan, he says he and she are bosom buddies, having met in the wee hours of the morning at the 10th Precinct.

“I was contacted yesterday. I met her at the precinct. I got her released in a short time without any bail or orders of protection,” he said.

He told The New York Post that Ms. Lohan was “a victim of someone trying to capture their 15 minutes of fame,” but like all stories involving LiLo, there’s yet another twist.

Turns out Mr. Heller may not even be Ms. Lohan’s attorney after all, according to her freshly hired PR reps.

“Lindsay Lohan’s attorney remains her longtime legal counsel Shawn Holley. Mr. Heller is not representing Ms. Lohan as is being reported,” a member of Ms. Lohan’s team told The Observer.

Another happy ending.

A wedding photo salvaged from a flood-damaged home in Staten Island. (Getty Images)

Among the thousands of images taken of Hurricane Sandy’s destruction, showing mangled houses and weeping children, photographs of floating family albums and framed memories lost to the storm have been particularly poignant.

For these families, there is no way to rebuild a photograph of a baby’s first step, a great-grandfather’s smile, a son’s lost tooth or a daughter’s prom night – but now local photographers are banding together to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy reclaim their memories with free portrait sessions and image restoration.

Photographer Meg Bitton formed Souls Rebuilt on November 1, inspired to help the thousands of suffering families the best way she knew how: with photographs.

‘The goal is a simple one,’ she said on her website. 'To provide a new set of family memories through photographs to those that lost theirs in the storm.’

She has already ventured to numerous areas devastated by the storm, offering her services to whomever needs them. More than 100 photographers interested in helping have already been in touch, anxious to mobilize their art and get to work.

‘The response to this has been overwhelming.' she said. 'Over 100 photographers have volunteered.'

Ms Bitton has already organized one relief trip to Staten Island, packing blankets, supplies and cameras.

Families interested in having their waterlogged images repaired can also reach out to Souls Rebuilt and connect with an expert re-toucher, happy to help victims salvage what photographs remain.

‘So far we are seeing that the Hurricane survivors are of course focusing on basic needs, food and shelter,' Ms Bitton said. 'Once people are more recovered, it will be our turn.’

Only a few days after Sandy terrorized the Eastern Coast and before droves of generous volunteers began their efforts to rebuild the seaboard, the damage done by the hurricane was visible against the landscapes of the region.

Coney Island, in particular, was littered with refuse from the Atlantic: the remnants of people's homes, lives and everything else that was ripped away from them.

The residents of the community painfully packed their drenched belongings on the sidewalks, mattresses, toys and memories, while the boardwalk with its shuttered storefronts was left largely abandoned.

On Friday, business owners and photographic tourists pounced on the historic beachfront to assess the damage.

Nathan's Famous workers swabbed the sidewalk and packed up dozens of bags of rotten food while intrepid shutterbugs mulled over the broken and beaten objects that lined the shore.

Families traversed the beach, stopping at children's cribs, upturned rowboats and even marooned Jet Skis, to take portraits and document their own experience with the storm.

The New York Observer captured this strange moment before the cleaning truly commenced and long after Sandy had passed to find Coney Island perfectly preserved in a moment of chaos and calm.