Last night, at what is widely hyped as the best night in New York fashion, the attendees of the annual gala benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute did not disappoint. Patterns, we saw a few: a lot of black, a lot of neon, a lot of feathers, and a lot of sheer. And Beyonce's dress? We still don't know what to think. See our picks for best and most bewildering are in this slideshow, and read our rundown from the red carpet here.

Clinton.

It was Beyoncé Knowles who sang that “Girls (Run the World).” She would know, especially given Sunday’s mob scene outside Bar Pitti, where she and husband Jay-Z attracted an agitated crowd, frenzied by a rare public appearance of their new daughter, Blue Ivy.

For evidence, tune to HBO, which debuted a show Sunday night starring daughters of David Mamet, Brian Williams and Laurie Simmons, whose 24-year-old spawn, Lena Dunham, also wrote, directed and coproduced Girls alongside Hollywood’s favorite one-manchild movie factory, Judd Apatow.

Note that Beyoncé didn’t have “women” in the chorus of her song. Even though Hillary Rodham Clinton can cover the New York Post, drinking beer and earning a classic headline—‘SWILLARY!’—in the process, it would seem Old Age and Treachery are no match for the youth these days, or at the very least, the fawning attention youth commands. Like Girls, the exciting winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Nobody, sent the chattering classes into overdrive, but not quite the way 24-year-old reporter Sara Ganim winning a prize for investigative reporting did. At that moment, Arianna Huffington and the first Pulitzer for her news operation of largesse was an afterthought.

How obsessed are New Yorkers with fixating on young people? Just take the thousands who tuned into a live stream of the NYU Library’s most famous residents—two red-tailed hawks, Rosie and Bobby—as they hatched two new New Yorkers into the world. Elsewhere at the city’s finest factory of Drunk and Debt-Riddled Youth, NYU president John Sexton finally hammered out a deal with Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer for the university to continue to metastasize onto Manhattan like an invasive tumor.

Incredibly, it was only five years ago that Gossip Girl first premiered, and introduced the world to a new take on what happens when the young are left to their own hormonal devices. The first song on the show was a catchy 2007 hit with the saccharine-sweet chorus: “They don’t care about the young folks.” Things change quickly, especially since perpetual Peter Pans from Jay McInerney to Jerry Lewis all clamored for cameos on the show, which is now about as cool as April in New York City used to be (before young people ruined the ozone layer, too).

Perhaps Girls presents the only viable option for fighting the youth as an adult human, as evidenced by the way it closed out its pilot episode with a too-appropriate tune by Paul Simon’s 39-year-old songwriting spawn, Harper: If you can’t beat ’em, don’t join them, but spawn your own youth to infiltrate and conquer.  

The Observer had a mix-up… just a  hiccup, if you will. Somehow in the chaos of Prabal, meeting deadline, and chatting with Wes Gordon, we completely neglected our front-row seat at Hervé Léger. Now say what you will! No, we haven’t the foggiest idea who Harley Viera Newton is—or care to be seated even remotely near Tinsley Mortimer. But we cherish the talented Kristin Chenoweth, who ravished in a steel bandeau at the show. Beverly Johnson would have been fun to chat with too! Alas, no point in dwelling on the matter, we missed it.

For winter 2012, Max Azria and Co. gave their bandage dresses a gladiator edge with leather and fur accents. Except don’t be fooled—you’ll still have to watch what you eat to squeeze into one of these $1,000 designs. But if you do, your chances of getting laid are increased fourfold (by our rough calculations)!

Later that evening, the Max Azria lot invaded Meatpacking dinner den, Anja (formerly known as Buddha Bar), for cocktails and a seated dinner. Celebrity DJ Solange Knowles, at the turn tables, served as a marvelous dessert! (And yes, she did play plenty of Whitney).

Images: Getty and Patrick McMullan.

The Beyonce baby-bump/fragrance launch

Did you guys hear? Beyonce is pregnant! And this time it's definitely true, unlike the rumors in 2010, 2008, 2007, and 2005. (2009 and 2006 were off-years, apparently.) After over half a decade of the paparazzi tirelessly scanning photos of Ms. Knowles every time she has a large lunch, the "baby bump" brigade is finally vindicated, and they're going to turn to use the next seven months to make sure the "Single Ladies" singer is never snapped head-on again.

Last night's debut of Beyonce's fragrance Pulse at the Dream Hotel was a perfect opportunity for reporters and photogs alike to milk the star for info about the famous baby inside of her.

Here's a look at some looks from last night.

Beyoncé, at The Standard Tuesday night.

This how Beyoncé walks into a room: transmissions ripple through the air and into headsets of guards and PRs, who toss off clipboards, mutter back into the receiver and scuttle off to their places when in a flash a barricade of arms come into the room, fending off fans and photographers, and in the middle, flanked by a publicist or six, stands the biggest pop star in the world. And she's smiling.

The most recent of her high-profile arrivals took place last night at The Standard's Rosé Lounge. (Ha, there's not actually a new place or anything -- despite the name of the location on the tip sheet this big loud place is still just the Boom Boom Room, like any other night, only in this case with unlimited Moët & Chandon.)

On paper, the bash was a celebration for Kelly Rowland and her new album, Here I Am. But all that was unraveled a bit by the appearance of Ms. Rowland's former Destiny's Child partner, who has a new album, 4, good enough to merit at least two or three release parties.

Not that there appeared to be bad blood. Ms. Knowles, Ms. Rowland, and Michelle Williams sat together -- and hugged a lot! -- in the banquette adjacent to the door.

We decided to stop by for a chat.

"You can try, but I'm just saying," a publicist working that night told The Observer. "You'd have to get through that."

The "that" was a line of three bodyguards creating an airtight wall at the entrance. We walked back toward the bar.

The Observer had, however, already talked to Ms. Rowland earlier in the evening. We had been corralled into a cramped office space two floors below, packed with assistants and other writers. Ms. Rowland sat next to us on a couch.

"I love the fact that Destiny's Child inspired so many women," Ms. Rowland said. "We were just excited about music and just ready to share that with the world, and we did. And that's a really good feeling, that we changed lives."

We chatted about her new album, then about our shared love of Boys II Men, then about her dream collaborators.

"Kaaaaan-ye," Ms. Rowland said in response to the last question.

We don't expect to be too hard. Mr. West has admitted, in verse, to having been at one point rolling with "some light-skinned girls and some Kelly Rowlands."

We would see the singer again later in the night, this time with her former Destiny's Child partners. We walked around to the back entrance of the heavily guarded corner and approached Ms. Rowland, who complimented our shirt and introduced us to the woman across from her.

"Hi," the woman said, extending her hand for a shake. "I'm Beyoncé."

At that point one of the bodyguards asked where we worked. We told him. He asked us to leave, and we thanked Ms. Knowles as we walked out.

She kept her place there on the caramel-colored couch for the rest of the night. When Ms. Rowland came to the DJ booth to thank those who came, a huge firecrackers on a celebratory cake placed in front of her, she did it solo. Nearly all the attendees, too, hung by the entrance, hoping to snag another glimpse -- or maybe, when she was leaving, they could touch her.

Then Ms. Rowland finished her remarks, and she walked back to join the scrum that surrounded Beyoncé, the oversize candles left sizzling on the cake.

Such praise would not go uncompensated. The owner, Mark Iacono, a neighborhood native who learned the secret method of dough kneading from Di Fara’s Dom DeMarco, has been known to ensconce the couple in a secret service–level nook in his already tiny spot, on Henry Street between Carroll and Summit. They receive special treatment. Those displaced from their hard-won seats have tweeted and blogged about their troubles, the accounts often seething with outrage.

One such anecdote landed in the lap of a writer for the Huffington Post. “Something came up!” Mr. Iacono told blogger Jane McGivney, upon realizing who was on the way. “I’ve got a situation! I need this table. I’ll pay for your dinner.”

It came as a shock, then, to hear that Mr. Iacono had been stabbed in broad daylight by the serial ex-convict Benny Geritano just a few blocks away, bleeding onto the sidewalk from his thigh and head. And the Lucali owner fought back—he had a knife on his person as well. And then the news that these co-assailants were old friends, going at each other in a neighborhood where these days skirmishes are usually reserved for loud-yipping Labradors that cross leashes or strollers caught headlong in collision paths.

For the time being there’s visible damage. By all accounts there has been no Jay-Z, no Beyoncé. Mr. Iacono can walk only a block or so at a time. For now, he’s passed on the job of flipping pies to an assistant those close to the restaurant would only name as “Travis.” The place will shift hours or close on a whim. And the reputed mob connection threatens the chic appeal that attracted everyone from Josh Hartnett to Joel Klein. The story of the duel has overwhelmed Lucali’s once impenetrable lack of pretense, its focus on farm-based ingredients and Mr. Iacono’s unmatchable taste. Now, it’s owned by a man charged with attempted murder. So, then—is it still Lucali?

BEFORE STARTING MONTHS of late-night low-paying shifts at Lucali, Dominick “Black Dom” Dionisio racked up charges relating to a murder in the Colombo Wars of the 1990s, racketeering and heavy involvement in the drug trade surrounding Manhattan hotspot Limelight. Facing house arrest, he was placed under the watchful eye of Mr. Iacono, who kept his shady pal no further away than the next bucket of flour. He’s currently awaiting trial for the alleged misconduct and in the intervening period eluded house arrest by hanging out at the eatery owned by Mr. Iacono. (Calls to the lawyer James Froccaro, who works for Dionisio and will also be representing Mr. Iacono during his June trial for attempted murder, were not returned.) Prosecuting attorneys attempted to discredit Dionisio’s role in the workplace, but a verdict in 2009 sided with the account of parole officers who approved the position, and the slice pusher kept his $300-a-week gig as he waited out the time before his trial.

The scene that unfurled Friday, April 15, brought Dionisio’s ties to the Brooklyn crime underbelly back to the forefront. When Mr. Iacono and Geritano reached for their knives the violence came back out, and the man harboring a Colombo wise guy faced the man doing business with the Genovese hustlers.

Around 2:30 the lithe master of mozzarella and red sauce emerged from Joe’s Superette, on Smith Street, in a fiery entanglement with a loutish and hulking man, who soon brandished a knife. Geritano, witnesses said, sliced deep into Mr. Iacono’s neck, slashing up his back and legs as well. As a crowd grew on the otherwise sleepy stretch of Smith, Mr. Iacono fished out his knife too and carved up Geritano’s hands before Annette Angeloni, a desk girl at a local greeting card store, swung her car around, grabbed Benny Geritano, and sped out of the neighborhood. Mr. Iacono was left to bleed on the street.

“I didn’t do anything,” Geritano, who has 10 arrests and three prison terms on his record, said upon his arrest. “I’m the victim here.”

For those still in doubt, he stood up in the middle of his arraignment, lifted his shirt and poked his finger into the wounds.

They wouldn’t be the first to question his sincerity. Geritano beat a murder rap in 1991, and has wandered in and out of prison through a series of arrests for unlicensed weapons, harassment and general bedlam. A source within the local law crew referred to Geritano as a mad dog with mental problems.

His family ushered Benny into the business, having maintained close ties—amicable and otherwise—with the John Gotti clan. His stepfather, Shorty Mascuzzio, was a member of the Teflon Don’s inner circle and got gunned down on family business at a nightclub in 1997. His uncle, Preston, was in 1991 accused of aiding in the murder of Gotti’s driver (a charge on which he was never convicted). He was fatally pummeled with slick blades outside a Bay Ridge restaurant in 2004. At the time of the most recent stabbing, Benny Geritano was said to have been working with his half-brother Anthony Mascuzzio—the Son of Shorty—in a loan-shark scheme backed by a series of massive bank robberies in Brooklyn.

James Geritano, Benny’s uncle, runs a slightly less gruesome racket. He owns the Gowanus Yacht Club, that misnomer of a patio-flanked bar known for its dirt-cheap buckets of beer, and the adjacent Bagels by the Park, where his nephew was said to work before his relocation to Riker’s Island.

“I don’t know why anyone ever said that,” James Geritano told The Observer. We had walked into his bagel shop to find the owner back at a table, folded hands on the polo shirt that stretched over his gut.

“I really don’t want to talk about it. Benny was a great guy, but I really don’t want to talk about it.”

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON in Carroll Gardens, the end of a workday. The Observer was on a self-guided tour of the landmarks of the case, and afterward headed to Marielena’s Card & Gift Shop on Court Street by 1st Place. This well-intentioned shop—“Gifts For All Occasions”—was the presumed employer of Annette Angeloni, the shared lover behind Geritano’s getaway Lexus and, according to some accounts, the woman who led the men to draw blood. They were shouting about her before the fight, witnesses claimed.

There was no Ms. Angeloni at the card shop. In fact there wasn’t a soul—the place has closed down, the windows boarded up, door welded shut. We asked a maître’d at Fagole, the joint next door, and when he looked at the shuttered shop literally abutting his own place he furled his brow, confused. He swore it was there a week or two ago, he said.

Then the scene of the crime. The Superette Deli that became a fighting ring had again gone silent. In fact it was closed, unexpectedly onlookers said, and the rust-iron shade locked down in front of the windows. The sign had lost the “U” in “SUPERETTE” and the “A” in “CATERING.”

The evidence of three-hour waits and citywide renown can still be seen at Lucali’s little hut of a location. It reopened, albeit without the Iacono personal touch, in late April. Hours are infrequent. The Observer approached to find an ambiguous notice: “For the next month or so Lucali will be closed Mondays & Tuesdays. Thank you.”

Stained cardboard pizza boxes were sprawled akimbo on the sidewalk. Smacked on the window were stickers—one for GQ’s best pizza places in America, another for the Italian American Civil Rights League. Right at the supposed 6:00 p.m. opening time a Brooklyn Heights-based family approached, one child in a stroller and the other slung between the father’s cradled arms. They were distraught to find it closed. He said he would come back if he could. He was not afraid of the violence.

“As long as there’s other people in the restaurant, I’m O.K.,” he said as his wife began to push away the stroller. As the family puttered down the block there came a faint noise from inside the empty Lucali, the restaurant Mr. Iacono named after his only daughter. It was the sound of the house telephone, ringing, and it rung on as we walked back down to the subway.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Among the week's other discoveries: Radar Online's surprising ability to drive the news cycle (or not); Mayor Bloomberg's commitment to cosmetology; and word that British pod hotels are coming to New York. Also: There's such thing as pod hotels! We love learning.

View the slideshow >

I can't think of anything really funny to say about this. But I'm sure you can.

1. Obsessed: $28.5 million ($28.5 million total)

Idris Elba, box office superstar! Er, well, not really. As much as we like the former Stringer Bell (and Beyoncé for that matter), credit for this opening must go to the marketing department of Sony Screen Gems. They treated Obsessed like a one-off slasher film and reached their desired audience—58 percent was female, 51 percent over the age of 25. Before everyone gets too excited though, consider how slasher films usually depreciate at the box office. In February, Friday the 13th opened with $43.5 million over Presidents' Day weekend and dropped 80 percent the following week. We don’t expect as big of a fall for Obsessed, but unless the word of mouth is stellar expect a sizeable tumble next week.

2. 17 Again: $11.7 million ($40 million total)

Zac Efron’s movie stardom tour continues to roll along, as 17 Again dropped 51 percent from last weekend to land in second place. While that might seem steep, remember that the similarly themed 13 Going on 30 crumbled 53 percent in its second weekend and still wound up with $57 million in total grosses. We might be blinded by by The Efron and his floppy bangs, but we think 17 Again has another $25-30 million left in its coiffeurs.

3. Fighting: $11.4 million ($11.4 million total)

Yawn. While under any metric, $11.4 million for a movie about street fighting has to be considered a win, something about this number screams apathy. The problem here is that while the Channing Tatum vehicle was positioned as an opportunity for women to see the beefy star sans shirt, exit polls showed that males made up 58 percent of the audience; all the girls were too busy seeing Obsessed. Better luck next time.

4. The Soloist: $9.7 million ($9.7 million total)

As much as we’d like to spin this opening into something positive— The Soloist will have legs and wind up grossing close to $50 million, just you watch!—we can’t do it in good faith. This is a bomb. When other adult-minded pictures like State of Play and Duplicity find themselves opening up in the teens, anything less than that is unacceptable. Blame Paramount: while the reviews weren’t through the roof, they were still good enough to play last November, when the film was originally scheduled (The Soloist has a respectable 61 percent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes). Opening The Soloist in the spring felt like pushing a square peg into a round hole. This is a fall movie, plain and simple.

5. Earth: $8.55 million ($14.2 million total)

Reason number 2,168 to buck the trend and buy Disney stock: they were able to pull in almost $9 million this weekend for a movie that is ostensibly a feature length version of a television show people could have watched for free.