Green's visionary dreamboat, Jeff Lescher.

Midwest power pop worth flying in for will be taking place in the suburbs of Chicago on Saturday, May 4. Shoes was one of the first groups ever to appear on MTV, and their basement-made debut, Black Vinyl Shoes, was dubbed by no less an expert than Ira Robbins “one of the finest home-brewed releases ever.” But for this guy, it’s Green that’s worth the trip. Twenty years ago, I wrote in my college newspaper:

More than a mere collection of songs, Green’s first album is a total reinvigoration of rock and roll. Its dynamism and energy are palpable; in a Chicago scene that placed a premium on being blasé, Green made it safe to love rock again, to love it wide-eyed and big. It was so goddamn cool to like this band and I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that Green was not just my favorite band in the world, it was my favorite thing in the world.

A few months after that first record came out, I joined Green, and that’s how I earned my living for the next four years. We put out more records, toured the world. We had a ball. Later in the same article, I wrote: “The triumphs were many, far outnumbering the disappointments, and I wouldn’t trade even my worst minute in Green for anything.” That’s still true. Green’s influence, and that of its dreamy singer-songwriter, Jeff Lescher, can be felt in a ton of Chicago pop bands that made it much bigger than Green itself, from Smashing Pumpkins to Fall Out Boy to Caviar to Smoking Popes. That’s not a tragedy—it’s a triumph. And on Saturday night, I’ll join a bunch of old friends to celebrate.

Shoes plus Green, FitzGerald’s 6615 Roosevelt Road, Berwyn, Ill., $20

Author Michael Pollan at the Morgan Lehmann Gallery.

Michael Pollan’s new book, Cooked, has just been published, and to celebrate, the rangy, brilliant food writer hosted 100 friends at the Morgan Lehmann Gallery underneath the High Line on West 22nd Street. Why there? So that his guests could be surrounded by the stunning paintings of Judith Belzer—his wife—whose electrifying depictions of cities on top of natural landscapes are actually a perfect fit for what’s happening in Chelsea along our city’s newest park.

In the new book, which tracks the author as he learns to cook, Mr. Pollan makes the case that food preparation lured humanity out of its loneliness. At the party, he credited his wife with doing the same, and also his parents, the writers Stephen and Corky Pollan, for supporting him (and his mom for being a great cook).

The branches continued to spread. The actor Tracy Pollan, Mr. Pollan’s younger sister, was there to show her support, as was her husband, Michael J. Fox. Sister Noella Marcellino, a Benedictine nun and master cheesemaker, who is described in Cooked as “something of a hero to the post-Pasteurians” with her “nun’s habit and a Ph.D. in microbiology,” was also in attendance. When the Transom asked Mr. Fox how he was enjoying the nun’s devastating ricotta with grilled nettles, he answered mid-bite, “It’s really great.” And it was.

Perhaps the most startling revelation of the night, even more than the fact that nuns make cheese and serve it with rabbit, was that Mr. Pollan has been agented and edited by the same two women for his entire career. Binky Urban and Ann Godoff were there to acknowledge that lovely display of loyalty. Bob Silvers, the venerable editor of The New York Review of Books, and the painter Eric Fischl were in the house too, and The New York Times Magazine was well represented by food writer Mark Bittman and Ilena Silverman, who spent some time in the ’90s alongside Mr. Pollan at Harper’s.

Speaking of The New York Times Magazine, another attendee, the actor Frances McDormand, took mercy on Times Mag editor Dean Robinson when she noticed the ludicrous prop-sized cast he was wearing on his leg (he told the Transom he got it playing “ultimate,” whatever that means). With her husband, the director Joel Coen, looking on, Ms. McDormand commented to Mr. Robinson with a simplicity that the Transom could not help hearing as a mix between Abby in Blood Simple (“I ain’t done nothing funny”) and Fargo’s Marge Gunderson (“Sir, you have no call to get snippy with me!). Exclaimed Ms. McDormand: "Ouch."

Helly Nahmad poses in front of a Picasso. (Photo by Arnaldo Magnani/Getty Images)

As The Observer—and every other news outlet—has been scrambling to report in detail, the city is abuzz over the high-profile indictment and arrests of figures in an art-world money laundering scheme involving seven-figure card games, international sports betting rings and mixed martial arts fighters who played the Rocky Balboa role of debt collector. Now, The Observer has exclusive information on the high-stakes poker games at the heart of the ongoing investigation.

To recap, here's what we know so far.

Art dealer and collector Hillel (“Helly”) Nahmad, who runs the Helly Nahmad Gallery inside the Carlyle Hotel on Madison Avenue, was named in a sweeping federal criminal indictment in which it is alleged that the 34-year-old Mr. Nahmad joined with Russians named Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov and Vadim Trincher to launder millions of dollars.

According to the indictment:

The Nahmad-Trincher Organization used online gambling websites, operating illegally in the United States, to operate an illegal gambling business that generated tens of millions of dollars in bets each year.

The Nahmad-Trincher Organization laundered the proceeds of the gambling operation through a host of American bank accounts and Titan P & H LLC (“Titan”), a plumbing company in the Bronx that the Nahmad-Trincher Organization acquired a fifty percent interest in as repayment of a gambling debt.

The Nahmad family, descended from a banking dynasty in Aleppo, Syria, is "one of the richest and most powerful art-dealing dynasties in the world" according to Forbes, which estimates the family fortune at more than $3 billion, citing, in addition to the New York gallery and another in London that is run by a cousin (also named Helly Nahmad), a warehouse near Geneva International Airport said to hold up to 5,000 works of art, including 300 Picassos.

According to Forbes, the FBI’s Eurasian Organized Crime Squad uncovered "high-stakes poker and sports-betting dens that were frequented by prominent New Yorkers in the financial, sports and entertainment fields."

The Observer can share for the first time details of the high-stakes card games mentioned in the indictment as "COUNT TWENTY (Illegal Poker Business)." At least five sources have come forward to discuss with The Observer the inner workings of these high-stakes card games. All agreed to speak on the condition that they would not be identified. They include two people who personally attended the games in question, one who helped run the games for many months, and a fourth who is intimately involved in business transactions with many of those named in the indictment.

Several sources with firsthand knowledge of the games named some of the players, including household names in the world of finance such as Daniel Andrew "Andy" Beal, chairman of Beal Bank, who makes no secret of his enjoyment of and expertise in poker, along with others who are less eager to publicize their affinity for Texas hold ’em. According to two sources, one well-known financier "is there every week."

Also spotted at some of the city's high-stakes games have been boldfaced Hollywood names like Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Nick Cassavetes, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

It's unknown how these allegations will impact those who are not named in the indictment but are alleged to have played in the games. According to no fewer than five sources, one regular player from the finance world who is active in high-level political fund-raising "is very nervous" about the indictment and arrests.

Both Helly Nahmad and "The Russians" (Messrs. Tokhtakhounov and  Trincher) have apartments in Trump Tower. One resident of Trump Tower told The Observer, "I'd see these guys for three to four years coming into Trump Tower, and they didn't live there. They would go not to Helly's but to the Russians' apartment. Other times they'd go to The Plaza. One thing I'll say about Helly, I have never seen a human being who has more good-looking girls."

One gentleman The Observer spoke to worked at the card games. He quit a few months ago when various poker players started getting calls from the feds. "They started contacting professional players and anyone potentially involved for information and confirmation months ago, and have been trying to bust the case for a while," he said.

A source close to Eugene and Ilya Trincher—the sons of Vadim Trincher, who is named in the indictment, as is Eugene—claims that the elder Mr. Trincher is a mystery, even to the sons' closest friends. "Nobody knows what Vadim’s business actually is, because Vadim doesn’t talk to anybody.”

The former employee claims that Eugene and Ilya Trincher were partners in heading the sports-betting operations, and that the younger Trinchers were the go-to sports betting option for many Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. Apparently they weren't bookmakers in the traditional sense, in which the goal is simply to line up even amounts of capital on both sides of a bet and live off the 10 percent vigorish collected from losing bettors. Instead, they had created an "algorithm" that predicted which teams would win. Ilya Trincher was rumored to be living in one of the priciest houses in L.A., with rent anywhere between $40,000 and $50,000, alleged to be funded by sports gambling money, including bets of up to $1 million per game.

One source said that Edwin Ting (known as Eddie, also indicted) "ran the highest-stakes poker games in New York, probably made more money than anyone else ever did playing poker in New York." The source continued, “He’s just a Chinese guy from Queens, graduated from Baruch College. His wife was a poker dealer, now he’s a millionaire (and a real scumbag, by the way)."

According to a source with knowledge of Russian organized crime, the first person listed in the indictment, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, known as Taiwanchik, is from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and "has the highest ranking you can have in the Russian prison system. He’s part of the prison brotherhood. They sit in jail with newspapers, caviar and laptops."

Another part of the sports betting picture is Noah Siegel, known as "The Oracle," who was also indicted. According to the former employee, The Oracle wasn't involved in business decisions; instead, "he was the smart kid with glasses who knows every player on every team and would pick the winning teams" with the goal of bankrupting traditional bookmakers.

The employee The Observer spoke to and all others working the games were asked to sign disclosures stating that they “never met” certain celebrities, and they were not allowed to use phones during special bookings, which included "a lot of lawyers, a lot of finance guys, a lot of hedge funders."

Another name that came up during The Observer's investigation was the R&B record producer Irv Gotti a.k.a. Irving Lorenzo, who is known to run games. One source was shocked that Mr. Gotti was not snared in this dragnet. He said Mr. Gotti "surprisingly was not raided during this whole thing, which is extremely strange. The feds have walked into his [poker game] in the past and have never shut him down."

One source painted a picture of how the whole thing works.

"First of all, you have an apartment that’s rented under somebody else’s name. You buy a poker table, some chips and chairs, and a casino shuffler on the black market, because they’re illegal to buy. The shuffler is to make the players feel comfortable that there’s no cheating going on. There are two dealers and two to 10 players per game. There are two to three waitresses and also 'massage girls.' The games go anywhere from six to 48 hours. Generally, the games start in the evening and finish in the morning, because most people need to go work, see their families and whatnot."

Another gambler who frequented the game spoke of the card shuffler but put a different spin on it. "It wasn't so much to prevent cheating. It was there to ensure there was always a freshly shuffled deck." This gambler recalled attending games hosted by Mike Sokoloff, a New York society fixture who dated Charlotte Ronson, that were frequented by David Lee (then a New York Knick, now a Golden State Warrior), as well as "a lot of other Knicks." This gambler said he "saw David Lee at the Molly Bloom games as well," referring to the 34-year-old socialite who is referred to as “Poker Princess” in the indictment and is the sister of Olympic skier Jerry Bloom.

A different source also referred to the Poker Princess: "Molly Bloom just ran games, flew private jets back and forth to run games for the wealthy."

According to someone with inside knowledge of the games, “There are no nobodies in this indictment, literally. These people are simple businessmen—not mob, not anything relating to it. They are maybe doing some organized crime, but they’re not the mob."

Simple businessmen they may be. But there's a good chance that not-so-simple trouble awaits. One source with extensive knowledge of the casino industry told The Observer that U.S. tax law requires all winnings to be reported as income. And as a check on the dishonesty of individual gamblers, a casino is required to report any payout in excess of $10,000.

Like a guy catching a straight flush on the river—it's a solid bet that this 84-page indictment naming 33 individuals is only the tip of the iceberg.

Robert Redford (Photo: Ken Kurson)

You know how you’re supposed to be suicidal when someone refers to Robert De Niro as “Bobby” because you know you’ll never be that intimate with someone so vitally important to the cultural life of the city? Well, the same is true of Robert Redford, who was called to the stage by Sony Pictures honcho Tom Bernard at last night’s premiere of The Company You Keep.

“Bob is just going to say a few words,” and that’s exactly what Bob did. Before a crowd that included Judd Hirsch, Camilla Hansen, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Kenneth Cole, Anna Chlumsky and Zosia Mamet, Mr. Redford thanked co-stars Stanley Tucci, Brit Marling and a brilliant little girl he spotted singing Puccini, Jackie Evancho. Then he sat down to enjoy the movie. As the lights dimmed and it began to play, Mr. Redford shot back up and shouted in the dark, “I forgot, Shia LaBeouf is here, too.” Everyone laughed, including a Unabomber looking LaBeouf, and it was exactly as endearing as you’d expect.

It’s basically impossible not to like Robert Redford, even as I felt pretty sure I was the only one of 300 or so people in the MOMA screening room who was rooting for the FBI the whole time. The movie itself has its head screwed on pretty straight. It deals with a complicated subject in a complicated way and arrives at essentially the right answers, within the confines of a 2-hour movie that covers perhaps the most divisive periods in American history since the Civil War.

I pre-gamed by watching Three Days of the Condor but this movie is at least as much about the state of journalism (another subject the actor and director has covered plenty) as it is about radical politics and family responsibilities. The news today that former Weather Underground armored car robber Kathy Boudin now holds prestigious posts at both Columbia and NYU Law School puts into stark focus how quickly we like to forget inconvenient facts (like the nine children who grew up without fathers because of Ms. Boudin and her radically chic comrades).

Mr. Redford deserves the praise he’s getting for The Company You Keep (Rex Reed gives it four stars) and it was a treat to watch him get it.

Tim Ferriss is the kind of guy who’d be easy to hate—speaks five languages, won a national kickboxing title, ranked seventh on Newsweek’s Digital 100 Power Index for 2012, everything he touches sells a million copies, does it all working just a few hours a week, and he’s great-looking to boot—if he weren’t so damn likeable. The author of The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Chef, the native New Yorker spoke to The Observer about NYC’s emergence at the epicenter of America’s public health debate.

* * * * *

Q: You’ve written all of these books, and you’re all about self-discipline—that’s your shtick, really. So I thought you could weigh in on Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed soda ban. To me, the problem is that it takes the decision out of it; it infantilizes us by having the government make decisions for us. You’re all about fitness—is there a way we can reap the benefits of the soda ban without having the government force us to behave?

A: I value self-discipline, but creating systems that make it next to impossible to misbehave is more reliable than self-control. The first thing I would do for anyone who’s trying to lose body fat, for instance, would be to remove foods from the house that he or she would consume during lapses of self-control. These types of constraints don’t have to be legislated, but I do think that the proposed drink ban is a good idea. I doubt sugar would pass FDA standards to be on the “Generally Recognized As Safe” (GRAS) list, if it were to be put through the process now.

This is really interesting—there are those who are sort of libertarians, and then those who are nanny-state types, and you’re in this interesting middle ground, where you think the soda ban is a good idea, but maybe not the most effective way to get people healthy.

If you look at the purported dangers of salt or fat, there is no consensus of support in scientific literature. So I would ask first: “Is it possible to have an informed government that actually follows the science?” From what I’ve seen, it’s not likely. I’m not sure you can get the occasional helpful “nanny state” legislature (16-ounce-plus bans) without giving governments the latitude to pass restrictive laws that aren’t based on good science.

Certain aspects of the proposed soda ban were so goofy. For example, 7-Eleven was entitled to sell Big Gulps, because it’s regulated by the state, but right next to it, a fast food restaurant was not entitled to, because it’s regulated by the city. Now Mayor Bloomberg has proposed banning the public display of cigarettes in bodegas and other stores. Is this a good idea?

There are always loopholes. The question is whether or not there’s a net positive effect, and what the magnitude of that effect is. The standard Body Mass Index (BMI), used by physicians worldwide, is fundamentally flawed. That said, it’s simple and useful for most obese people on the Standard American Diet (SAD), even those poor bastards who get it as an import. Ultrasound bodyfat percentage is infinitely more accurate, so I use it, but it’s more expensive and inconvenient. It doesn’t scale for a hobbled health care system.

As for the cigarettes, I don’t have enough data to have an opinion.

So what would you do? Let’s say you were made not just mayor, but Czar of New York, and you could enact a bunch of rules by fiat. What would be a more effective rule than a ban on cigarette displays or ultra-sugar soft drinks?

In my model of behavioral change (borrowed heavily from researchers, Nike+ data, and more), results are always better with scheduled misbehavior: in other words, follow the rules 90 percent of the time, and then enjoy yourself in excess the other 10 percent of the time. Everyone is going to binge on a diet, for instance, so plan for it, schedule it, and contain the damage. In the Slow-Carb Diet—which is this diet that I tested and vetted through all the experimentations in The 4-Hour Body, and have tracked with 2,000-plus people—allows for one cheat day a week. On that cheat day (often called “Faturday” or “Dieters Gone Wild (DGW) Day”), people can consume five whole pizzas, they can have ice cream until it comes out their ears, whatever. It doesn’t matter—the body can’t metabolize the excess calories into body fat effectively over that short a period of time. But—this psychological release valve is critically helpful to adherence. No one is giving up their favorite foods forever, just for six days at a time. Thousands of people now keep a “to-eat” list for their cheat day, which I recommend as Saturday for social reasons; every time they get an urge during the week, they put the item (I like bear claws) on their “to-eat” list. This format creates unbelievable results—84 percent of people who comply lose an average of eight-plus pounds in the first four weeks. There are people who have lost 120 to 140 pounds in six to 12 months and now kept it all off for two to three years. The stats are unreal.

In your book, The 4-Hour Body, you give an example in which Michael Phelps claims to be eating 12,000 calories a day. And you say, either he’s a liar or something else is at work burning those calories. And you determine that the effort it takes his body to keep his temperature up while swimming in cold water is sort of an ultra metabolism machine. So as Czar, would you also prescribe smarter exercise than what people are currently doing?

Oh, for sure. I’d prescribe smarter exercise. But first, I would prescribe that people over a certain body weight—or rather, body fat percentage—focus exclusively on diet for the first eight to 12 weeks, and not exercise at all. Exercise is overrated. Many of my readers are like Travis Heryford; he’s lost 130 pounds with ZERO exercise. Just Slow-Carb Diet and a few supplements. The problem with New Year’s resolutions—and resolutions to “get in better shape” in general, which are very amorphous—is that people try to adopt too many behavioral changes at once. It doesn’t work. I don’t care if you’re a world-class CEO—you’ll quit. So start with one—the key here is really diet—that’s 99 percent of fat loss. Forget about fancy workouts, expensive gyms, impossible schedules, and all the crap that everyone ditches after two weeks.

Are you using that metaphorically or is it truly 99 percent?

It’s not far off. I’ll debate anyone on this. You just can’t out-exercise your mouth. The physics don’t work. Ray Cronise, a former NASA scientist who I worked with on the Phelps anecdote you mentioned, sent me an email a couple of days ago where he said something like, “You know, we were right when we estimated that something like 24 flights of stairs burns a third of an Oreo.” Now, I have my issues with the calories in, calories out model—but I don’t want to digress too far. The main point: you can lose 120 pounds with zero additional exercise in a year, no problem … If you try to lose 120 pounds through exercise and don’t fix your diet, you will fail. It just takes one injury or calendaring problem to lead you to back to your fat self. Diet travels with you, in sickness and in health. Food tends to be more bulletproof to the winds and storms of lifestyle change, if that makes sense. That doesn’t mean you can’t exercise, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t exercise; it just means that you shouldn’t view it as priority #1.

You grew up on Long Island. Why do you think New York City has become America’s center of gravity when it comes to public health policy and the debate between personal liberty and public health?

I think it’s a combination of things:

A) New York City is the U.S. media epicenter. It just broadcasts itself more loudly than any other city on Earth.

B) New York City is full of extremely rich people (including billionaires) in two camps: “I’m basically a socialist but can’t say that” liberals and “I think I’m a character in Atlas Shrugged” libertarian types. This creates a real turf war in the political and PR soapbox arenas. And it provides great opportunities for social jockeying and public speeches. Not that I look down at this game; there is huge value in being good at it. New Yorkers are more incentivized and better positioned for it.

San Francisco, where I live now, comes in a close second to New York City, but it doesn’t satisfy A, and instead of B, it’s mostly unemployed—and often crazy—aging hippies running amok. There are a handful of changemakers (e.g. Peter Thiel), but it doesn’t have the power-broadcast dynamic of NYC.

Any final plans for your hypothetical reign as Czar of New York?

I’d outlaw tight pants with “Juicy” written on the ass for anyone with more than 20 percent body fat.

Cody R. Wilson (Screencap: YouTube)

VICE debuts a new documentary produced by Erin Carr about the way 3D printing—and specifically its potential to create firearms and other weapons—is changing the nature of the debate about gun control and even about intellectual property and creativity. With a great title—Click. Print. Gun.—and a red-hot subject matter, the film is certain to be a smash. Its trailer already notched 121,000 views and over 1,600 comments (most of them threatening to kill those who hold a differing viewpoint on gun control). The film premieres on VICE.com on March 25, but lucky invited ducks can catch one of two screenings hosted by Motherboard and Vice at the Soho House. Cody R. Wilson, the dishy University of Texas law student who founded the wikiweapon project and stars in the film, will be on hand to take questions.

Click. Print. Gun. Screenings, Soho House, 29-35 9th Avenue, 7:15 and 8:15, by invitation only.

Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdal, Noah Bermanoff, Abigail Pogrebin, Jan Aronson, Edgar Bronfman, Hannah Bronfman, Jeremy Bronfman (Photo: Observer)

The story of Passover includes four children, one who is wise, one wicked, one foolish, and one who does not even know how to ask questions. Any large family is bound to have a few of each, but a couple weeks ago, the Bronfman family came together to celebrate a truly lovely new Haggadah, the book that tells the story of the exodus from Egypt and is read at seder tables around the world during Passover.

The Bronfman Haggadah, written by Edgar M. Bronfman and lavishly illustrated with watercolors by his wife, Jan Aronson, will be a welcome relief to those who view Passover with resentful memories of mothers giving death stares during four-hour dissertations on a story that may be losing relevance to diaspora Jews raised on Wii and compulsive media portrayal of Israel as the oppressor, not the oppressed. This haggadah, all in English and focused on universal Jewish values, is a big departure from the boring, badly written freebie haggadot handed out at King’s and Shop Rite. But in a weird way, its focus on the ecstasy of being Jewish and celebrating Passover together actually comes closer to the spirit of Passover than the stultifying books it seeks to replace.

A couple weeks ago, the Bronfmans celebrated the release of The Bronfman Haggadah with–what else?–a party at the Four Seasons. Joined by friends like Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky and MC’d by cousins Hannah Bronfman and Jeremy Bronfman, Edgar observed that Passover, the most widely celebrated Jewish holiday, “is the most important holiday because it's the only time G-d refers to himself, [saying] ‘When I took you out of Egypt.’ That's when we became a people." Ms. Aronson was more about the here and now. "How long have you been married?" The Observer asked her. "Twenty-four years. But I call it 'time served.'"

It’s the kind of banter that’ll be familiar to millions of Jewish families across the globe this week as they break matzo together. Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, the executive director of the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU, put it like this: "What a family. Actually, it's more of a tribe than a family. I think Edgar at this point in his life has set the bar high for what it means to be a patriarch: reflective, wise, and always looking to convene the membership."

Illustration by Kyle T. Webster

I’ve been a fan of this newspaper for more than 20 years and its editor for less than three months. One of the things that people keep asking from me—demanding, actually—is that most noxious of modern conventions, “the elevator pitch.” Any idea that requires more than 30 seconds to explain is anathema in our 140-character culture, but what I love best about The New York Observer is how ferociously it declines to be reduced.

The New York Observer takes longer to explain, and it’s worth it. Nevertheless, here’s my best effort at a mission statement: identifying and chronicling the city’s most influential people in the world’s most influential city.

These days, a newspaper celebrating an anniversary is like a grandparent celebrating a birthday—one year closer to the grave. The Observer is bucking the trend. Our 25th year is on pace to be our best revenue year yet. While the paper remains our most visible face, our digital and ancillary businesses continue to thrive. As a paper that made its mark chronicling the media industry, The Observer has confronted the realities of our industry. The result: we are here, and we are growing, ensuring that this important voice will continue to be heard.

The New York Observer could not exist in any other city in America. New York is our country’s one world-class city. There are great cities all across America, of course. But there’s only one whose output is a daily concern to every other American. Or at least we New York City types think it is. And we think it’s adorable that we think it is. That self-assured conviction that the rest of the world is not only concerned but obsessed with what we think has provided the cornerstone of this paper for 25 years. And that’s why it’s growing beyond the city, as our websites evolve and links on Drudge and BuzzFeed and elsewhere direct people our way from around the world.

The New York Observer has always punched above its weight. No one will ever mistake our circulation for that of USA Today, nor our writing. Our goal, as the campus newspaper for the city’s powerful and influential, is to tell the story of the city’s actors. Not all of their stories—we don’t list every real estate transaction or catalog every media moment or cover every gallery opening. You don’t come to us for comprehensive news. You come for something that’s even more important: the meaning of the one transaction or moment or opening that everyone is talking about (or should be). These are the stories, large and small, that define the moment.

We’ve documented the shift in authority in the power class as it migrated from the Upper East Side throughout the whole city, first downtown and then to Brooklyn. We’ve been there, watching it and calling it, from the lows of September 11 to the highs of the first dot-com boom, from the days of open-air crack dealing in Bryant Park to the days of Cristal popping at Bungalow 8, from three great mayors and one who tried his best, to a Governor Cuomo to Client 9 to another Governor Cuomo.

Even our misses have been grand—if we were going to fail to notice the game-changing perfection of The Bonfire of the Vanities, at least it would be Francine du Plessix Gray who would be calling the characters “thin.” As Wall Street unraveled—Ivan Boesky wore a wire, an ambitious junk bond innovator named Michael Milken ran into the buzz saw of an even more ambitious prosecutor named Rudy Giuliani, and the stock market suffered its greatest-ever one-day dive in October 1987—Michael Thomas chronicled the recovery of the city’s most important industry in his beautifully titled Midas Watch.

Even 25 years ago, no one started a newspaper to get rich. By 1987, after the Hearsts and the Pulitzers and the Newhouses, it had already become clear that the only way to end up with a little money in the newspaper business was to start with a lot of money. Tilting against windmills, even our founding myth is totally Observer-y.

The Observer was born as Arthur Carter’s vision for a paper for people like himself—a guy who had made a pile of dough on Wall Street but was also a knowledgeable patron (and as an excellent sculptor, a practitioner) of the arts. To edit it, he soon recruited a young Graydon Carter, whose sensibilities had formed and been formed by the legendary Spy magazine. Soon after, Peter Kaplan grew The Observer into an incredibly fertile nurturing ground for talent of every variety, on every topic. As The Observer found its way, the paper fostered some of the greatest writers in the city. To name a handful is to omit a bucketful; just know that when you read any magazine or newspaper of consequence (or watch a bunch of TV shows and movies), it’s been touched by someone with pink-stained hands.

But all the while, operating out of Mr. Carter’s townhouse, where the staff literally wrestled over supplies, The Observer never really had a business plan. All the other media companies started to struggle, and we contended with what this is and what it should be. And now it’s getting there. Five years ago, in his intro to The Kingdom of New York, a compendium of The Observer’s first 20 years, Peter Kaplan wrote about the changes he and Jared Kushner began to enact on The Observer “to publish it as a paper for the new digital present, not the remote fading past.”

The New York Observer has been owned by two gentlemen who would be perfectly at home being covered in these pages. That means they are frequently the target of angry phone calls from people, sometimes close friends, who aren’t thrilled with the way they’ve been treated in our pages. We are lucky—and so are our readers—that both owners have resisted those calls and understand that our product relies on our readers knowing that we mean it when we say nothing is sacred but the truth.

Today the Observer Media Group is stronger than ever. Our highly opinionated writers help shape the national perception of New York. Our influence in the city continues to expand. We’re hosting the mayoral debates, we continue to be a force on all the local elections, we drive thinking about culture and art, and if our local sphere of influence is tight, it is also very real.

Even as The New York Observer consistently breaks national news, our goal is to continue to own the microcommunities of power that exist within the most powerful city in the world. Our paper is a reflection of NYC. The reason why this small, colorful enterprise is so beloved by so many is because we’re looking into the pond of the city and seeing the city’s reflection. Ultimately, that’s really our elevator pitch. Our pages reflect the city for everything it is: brilliant, beautiful, bad-assed, vain, impossible and sometimes cruel, yet absolutely intoxicating. The best character alive.

kkurson@observer.com

Fred Armisen performs at the Bowery Ballroom with Bob Mould.

One of the reasons I don’t see live music much anymore (in addition to all the reasons that come with being a grumpy old tossup, such as “it’s too damn loud”) is that the era of smartphones has undone the very reason live performance exists. The notion of a small, sweaty room devoting its full attention for 90 minutes to a beloved creator of something special has gone the way of full sentences, introducing oneself and children calling adults Mr. and Mrs. Lastname.

People who have presumably paid for a ticket staring at their phones and paying attention to something other than the performers wrecks it for me. And the worst are the people who have not paid for a ticket doing the same. If I’m fortunate enough to be invited to the VIP section, I cringe when some fellow lucky bastard can’t even commit himself to the show being given by someone who’s presumably his friend.

On Wednesday night, I didn’t have to worry.

Portlandia’s Fred Armisen was at the Bowery Ballroom to see Bob Mould and his band, along with me and a few hundred other fans of a performer whose songbook ranges from punk innovators Hüsker Dü to indie-pop hit makers Sugar to a sturdy solo career.

Mr. Armisen passed all of my tests for celebrity authenticity—his entourage was composed of real people, he sang along, he drank beers and, most of all, he stayed off his goddamn phone. I would have expected that, because I used to see his band Trenchmouth back in the day in Chicago (I think I even played with them once). But then it got even better.

Mr. Mould’s trio whaled, mixing great new songs like “Star Machine” with old Hüsker chestnuts like “I Apologize” and even “Chartered Trips” from Zen Arcade. When they came back out to reward the crowd’s enthusiasm, they were joined by Mr. Armisen, who absolutely killed it. Shouldering some kind of Danelectro-looking guitar with authority, he joined the band in playing “Flip Your Wig,” “Hate Paper Doll” and the splendid “Divide and Conquer,” with the SNL star supplying Grant Hart-worthy backing vox, credible guitar and adorable stage moves.

Mr. Armisen posed for photos with fans and turned down a request to do his Ira Glass impression because “it’s too loud in here.”

The Transom told him what a pleasure it was to see him perform with a musician whose work had obviously meant a lot to him. Mr. Armisen’s reply showed no trace of the detached cool guy that he’s turned into an archetype. “It was a dream come true,” he said. “A fucking dream come true.”

Bob Mould.

Bob Mould is the Ben Franklin of indie pop. Founding member and driving force of ’80s punk trio Hüsker Dü (whose influence resonates today through Foo Fighters and Ryan Adams), Mould has succeeded at everything he’s tried, and he’s tried a lot. Credits include the post-Hüsker band Sugar (classic record Copper Blue), solo hits including “See a Little Light” (which appeared in Buffy, HBO’s Mind of the Married Man, and a commercial for TIAA-CREF), one half of the deejay phenomenon Blowoff, the theme songs to The Daily Show and TLC’s In a Fix, a stint as a writer for World Championship Wrestling (!), lead guitar on the soundtrack to Hedwig and the Angry Inch, gay rights activism, and a truly excellent memoir.

Eight-Day Week spoke to Mr. Mould last week. At 52, he retains a shocking percentage of the fire and enthusiasm that incubated “Celebrated Summer” and “59 Times the Pain,” and he drew the arc between his newest record, Silver Age, and the heyday of Hüsker Dü:

“The template for this record was Copper Blue. The notion of shorter/faster/louder guitar pop songs. As far as Flip Your Wig goes, I’m on record as saying that’s my favorite Hüsker Dü album. Beyond the great songs on there—“Makes No Sense At All,” “Divide and Conquer,” “Green Eyes”—after the records with Spot at the helm for SST, for me and Grant to take charge and to make the pop record that we always knew was in there. That was the end of the good times. Touring with Soul Asylum. That was the best of days.”

Mr. Mould has continued to innovate, even as many of his colleagues from mid-80s punk rock have fallen by the wayside. (We are grateful he went back on his 1998 promise to hang up his electric guitar.) He launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the release of a video concert from a 2011 appearance. "There was a tribute show of my songbook at the Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and this is a movie about the event. Kickstarter has been a great way for artists to underwrite projects that fall a little bit out of the mainstream."  The project raised over $100,000 from 1800+ backers and now fans can see artists like Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters), Ryan Adams, No Age,  Britt Daniel (Spoon), The Hold Steady, The Shins and even Margaret Cho perform songs from the Mould catalog.

Mr. Mould, who is playing on Wednesday night as well, says both shows will rock, but notes that Bear in Heaven, who are opening Tuesday night, released one of his favorite records of the year.

The Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, doors 9pm, tickets $25.