Bill Cunningham hunched behind his camera last Saturday morning, snapping photos of those lined up at the southern tip of Manhattan waiting to board a ferry to Liberty State Park for the Veuve Cliquot Polo Classic.
“Watch your pedicures,” a ferry hand said.
It wasn’t just the women who were looking sharp, however. New York City’s Read More
The four original members of the Spin Doctors sat around a poker table at Acme Studio in Williamsburg last week. A blues record spun in the background as they smoked cigars and drank hard liquor, surrounded by a gregarious group of hangers-on dressed in Jazz Age attire.
If this is not the image you associate Read More
The Harlem Meer was teeming with wildlife on a windy morning last week. Barn swallows swooped about stealthily, hunting for insects. Red-winged blackbirds sang their pretty songs in the distance. A wood duck dabbled lazily in the middle of the lake. And on a nearby bank, a great egret waded into the water, which was Read More
The 54th annual CLIO Awards ceremony, held last week, seemed to straddle some kind of line between innovation and industry nostalgia—much like the ads they were celebrating. Instead of The Waldorf Astoria, they were held at the Natural History Museum. Instead of Paul Newman, who gave the keynote speech on a recent episode of Mad Men, the ceremony was hosted by Modern Family’s Eric Stonestreet. And instead of dinner, there were hors d’oeuvres during a pre-ceremony cocktail hour.
But some things never change.
“What this night is really about is getting through these awards as fast as we can so we can all go drink again,” Mr. Stonestreet said, to cheers. Read More
At Dennis Rodman’s 52nd birthday party at Cheetahs Gentlemen’s Club on Monday evening, the flamboyant former basketball star slunk from one designated VIP section to the next, protected by bouncers and surrounded by throngs of obsequious followers. (They don’t call him “The Worm” for nothing.)
One can’t blame Mr. Rodman—wearing a relatively tame ensemble of Read More
The artist appeared on our block two weeks ago. A lean man with inky fingers covered in silver rings, he wore a cap, a small button fastened to the bottom of his shirt—“I love porn”—and a menthol-flavored Marlboro tucked behind one ear. He would arrive around 9 a.m., arrange his scroll of paper, his pot of ink and his various clips on the sidewalk between The Observer offices and the adjacent Japanese barbecue joint, remaining there, painting intently, until 6 or 7 p.m. As he painted, he scrunched himself into contorted positions and seemed not to take breaks or register the passersby, who invariably stared.
We were curious about the new arrival on our block. Though of course West 44th between Eighth and Ninth Avenues hardly belongs to us alone. We share it with a lumber yard, a theatrical supply company, the Intercontinental Hotel, several parking lots and a convenience store whose clientele appear to buy nothing but lottery tickets. And, as we recently learned, we also share it with the dingy walk-up where Cuban novelist and poet Reinaldo Arenas spent the last years of his life and committed suicide in 1990 at age 47, impoverished and suffering from AIDS. Read More
The James Beard Awards, which took place last week at Lincoln Center, have rightly been described as the “Oscars for the Food World.” But because they reward chefs and not good-looking people, and because many in the food world are functioning alcoholics, the whole point of the Beards isn’t the ceremony itself, which is boring, Read More
On the first Wednesday in May, a rather large tent pops up behind the Vanderbilt Gate on Fifth Avenue between 104th and 105th Streets with the sole purpose of shielding the over-the-top headgear of 1,300 ladies who lunch, a handful of men and one Martha Stewart from the elements as they duke it out for millinery supremacy Read More
Last Friday, one year to the day after the death of the Beastie Boys’ Adam “MCA” Yauch, the Transom stood at the far west end of Atlantic Avenue, in a small but familiar neighborhood park in the shadow of the BQE, for a dedication ceremony in which Palmetto Playground would be renamed Adam Yauch Park. Read More
Last Monday, five NYC power couples—and one real estate tycoon—opened their homes for dinner parties as part of the Parties of Your Choice Gala for the Women’s Campaign Fund, a night that began as a politically charged reception but slowly morphed into a cross between Million Dollar Listing and MTV Cribs.
“Our research shows that Read More
