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The Wee Hours

By Ted Gushue 3/28/12 3:16pm

The Wee Hours

This guy knows what time it is!

Time is on Our Side: The Royal Oak (It’s a Watch) Turns 40

Used to the more snug confines of downtown boîtes, The Observer approached the hulking Park Avenue Armory with trepidation last Wednesday.

We were there for what turned out to be a very manly party celebrating the birthday of a watch: the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak (starting price $10,500) was 40 years old, and some real guys were there to make sure the timepiece did not feel slighted on the momentous occasion.

Now, the nature of time is a subject we contemplate often—particularly as the sun creeps up over the ragged eastern edge of the city’s skyline—but never have we been confronted with it quite so literally. Read More

By Nate Freeman 2/01/12 12:10pm

The Wee Hours

He's Andre Saraiva. Who the hell are you?

Enchanté, Le Baron!: Andre Saraiva’s Parisian Bordello Lands in Chinatown

The huddled masses on the corner of Mulberry and Mosco had waited for a long time. They had waited through 700 days of planning, they had waited outside several hours on this first night, and then they had waited to get the nod from a doorman. They had waited for the opening of Le Baron, the Chinatown outpost of Andre Saraiva’s famous Paris club.

“Stand in a straight line!” a bouncer yelled. Read More

By Nate Freeman 1/10/12 7:41pm

The Wee Hours

A deep pour of self awareness. (Peter Arkle)

The Wee Hours Takes a Vacation—To Bahamian Dissipation

The grand plan was to stay sober for the month of January, and it failed. It collapsed the moment we touched down in the Bahamas and felt the silky warmth outside the Nassau airport. The whole place was wet with the prospect of booze—its bars, its dewy palm trees, its bikini-wearing swimmers, its cerulean wading pools. The plane’s tires hit the tarmac, and from then on, rum was god.

In the boxy cab we removed our loafers, took off our socks, stuffed them in a spare pocket of a hand-me-down attaché case and shoved our heels back into the miniature leather gondolas. The engine growled down hardy roads, handling the this-way-that-way roundabouts with the finesse of an arcade pinball.

It was 13 degrees in New York and we had taken up our father’s offer of a trip to Paradise Island. Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 11/30/11 9:16am

The Wee Hours

PeterArkle

Orphan Club Kids Spend Thanksgiving in Chinatown

We were waiting in line outside Red Egg, an unassuming Chinese restaurant in Nolita, a little before 1 a.m. on Saturday night, when we overheard something we wished we could unhear.

“I just love waiting in line like a nor-mal person,” said a female voice, dripping sarcasm.

We knew where she was coming from. There is a certain terror involved in toting one’s friends to an unheard-of ethnic restaurant in an unfashionable neighborhood with the promise of a good party and then finding oneself stuck in a line. In her defense, she was an abnormally tall, abnormally symmetrical and abnormally blond person.

But such is the hazard of clubs like Red Egg, especially tonight, with a party thrown by Interview’s hunky creative director Karl Lindman underway.

“I like the old New York mix,” Red Egg partner Travis Bass told The Observer. “Young, old, rich, poor, beautiful, ugly.” Read More

By Myles Tanzer 11/21/11 5:34pm

The Wee Hours

Illo: Zina Saunders

The Wee Hours: Bryce Dallas Howard’s New Film? Canon Fodder

Ron Howard fits snugly in the category of people and things that are loved unreservedly, along with pita chips, Gchat and money. So it was not especially surprising that his Tuesday-night event at the Museum of Natural History was attended happily by many a New Yorker and one ex-Real Housewife.

The occasion was the premiere of When You Find Me, a film Mr. Howard produced and his daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, directed. Read More

By Nate Freeman 10/18/11 6:46pm

The Wee Hours

Gutfreund

The Wee Hours: Occupy Easy Street!

Almost a month after a group of well-educated New Yorkers first unrolled their sleeping bags in Zuccotti Park, The Observer took a taxicab to 64th Street and Fifth Avenue to attend a gathering at the home of John Gutfreund. It was a cocktail party to celebrate The Artist, an Oscar hopeful that had just had its premiere at the New York Film Festival. Mr. Gutfreund’s wife, Susan, had been generous enough to invite the cast, crew, and producers to her and her husband’s home for a thing after.

Most of those involved in the film spoke French, and Ms. Gutfreund is fluent.

“This was all my wife’s idea,” Mr. Gutfreund told The Observer.

The 1980s boom-time chief of Salomon Brothers was slim beneath his suit, but not frail, and his thin oval spectacles only enhanced his stature. We spoke about his friend Katherine’s son, who used to write about nightlife for this newspaper. George, we told Mr. Gutfreund, is doing well. Then arms took other arms and we lost each other, for the moment, somewhere between Hamish Bowles and Harvey Weinstien.

Read More

By Nate Freeman 10/11/11 7:29pm

The Wee Hours

Ms. Mulligan, Ms. Williams, Ms. Dunst.

The Wee Hours: Sex and Death at Alice Tully Hall

“Wow, this is it, this view, New York City!” Michael Fassbender said after opening the door to the roof of the Standard, where the glass buildings lining the West Side bound forth from the meatpacking district toward midtown.

It was Friday night, and The Observer had just watched the New York Film Festival’s screening of Read More

By Nate Freeman 10/04/11 6:37pm

The Wee Hours

"We were a bit dinged up."

Big Snare On Kenmare: The Wee Hours Tracks Down the Men Who Mugged Us

The unmarked cop car sped out into the late night cobwebbed streets of Nolita at 3 a.m., bursting through red lights, sirens blaring, and ricocheting around turns that shook us back and forth, east to west. We had to lay low in the back seat, even for the quick trip to the corner of Mott and Houston. We pulled up next to three cruisers, sitting hotly in a giant cough of simmering exhaust, tire tread and the flash of red, white and blue. Read More