On a recent Friday night, Sheba Mason had nearly wrapped up her stand-up routine at the New York Comedy Club on East 24th Street, and the time had come to let the crowd know about her father: Borscht Belt comic–turned–Broadway kvetcher in chief Jackie Mason.
“A lot of people ask, like, ‘What’s it like Read More
The gentrifying core of Bushwick occupies only a few blocks, and for Rabbi Menachem Heller, 29, herein lies the problem.
As an emissary of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, a branch of Hasidic Judaism that emphasizes outreach to less observant Jews, Rabbi Heller wants good access to the hipster arrivistes. Unfortunately, his current spot is too Read More
On a recent Tuesday morning, Philip Bobbitt was sitting in his grand but sparsely furnished Park Avenue apartment, smoking a cigar and drinking a caffeine-free Diet Coke.
“Most of my life is inside my head,” said Professor Bobbitt, who, when he is in New York, and not at one of his Read More
Barack Obama’s Upper West Side acolytes can’t help themselves. With a profusion of voter-registration events, button-hawking and even street-side bake sales, they’ve been charging forth to conquer … their own neighborhood. Otherwise known as one of the most heavily Democratic areas in the city.
In recent weeks, it’s often been difficult to walk on Broadway Read More
WHILE THEY SLEPT: AN INQUIRY INTO THE MURDER OF A FAMILY
By Kathryn Harrison
Random House, 304 pages, $25
A transcript of a 911 call begins Kathryn Harrison’s While They Slept: An Inquiry into the Murder of a Family. It’s 1984, and 16-year-old Jody Gilley reports that her older brother, Billy, has murdered their abusive Read More
The press junket to showcase British Airways’ $30 million renovation of Terminal 7 in JFK began at 10 a.m. in Bryant Park with a chartered bus.
At the terminal, reporters were greeted solicitously by British-accented airline staff, but didn’t get to skip going through security. Turnout was good: The Associated Press, the BBC, the Read More
Also on Monday, May 19: Hair, makeup and costume people decked themselves out for the Designing Hollywood Awards, distributed by New York Women in Film & Television during a ceremony held at the Time-Life Building.
Actress Bebe Neuwirth, of Cheers, Frasier and Broadway fame, told the audience that it was a makeup artist’s fabulous Read More
Management at the Plaza is paying a million dollars to an electronic-music composer, one Ariel Blumenthal, to create a two-hour soundtrack for its revamped Rose Bar (along with Frank Sinatra remixes for the lobby). “They said they want the downtown people to come uptown,” Mr. Blumenthal, who has been working on the project amid workmens’ Read More
Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It
By Elizabeth Royte
Bloomsbury, 242 pages, $24.99
Meet Elizabeth Royte, the extremely rare New Yorker who until a couple of years ago had never tasted Poland Spring water. Then she began researching Bottlemania, her book on bottled water, and in a meeting with Poland Read More
So, Earth Day. Earth Week. All those glossy magazines with their “green” issues. (Not on recycled paper, and what about all those environmentally unfriendly Town Cars idling at the Condé Nast curb? But whatever.) Siggy cups instead of plastic bottles. We try to be good. We tell cashiers, “Oh, that’s O.K., I don’t need a Read More
