Nevertheless, the event was a rousing success: it turned out that the appetite for atavism was robust among the drinky class in New York.

“Just because we’re older doesn’t mean we don’t like the same things as when we were kids,” explained Tim Donnelly, who helped organize the event. “We can just be drunk while doing it now.”

He restated the problem, “If there were a Chuck E. Cheese for grownups, I would totally go.”

As it turns out, there is; in fact, there are many of them. In the past half-dozen years or so—at an increasing rate—bars with children’s games have been opening in New York, particularly in the garland of yuppie Brooklyn extending from Gowanus to Greenpoint.

At Red Hook’s Brooklyn Crab, there is mini-golf and cornhole, a beanbag-tossing game. In Clinton Hill, there is the Brooklyn Tap room, with foosball and Ping-Pong tables. In Williamsburg, one finds Barcade, with its vintage video-game machines; Full Circle, a skee-ball-themed bar, and Bushwick Country Club, which features a down-at-the-heels putt-putt course out back. In Manhattan there is Susan Sarandon’s SPiN, a boozy table-tennis club, and the West Village’s Fat Cat, the apotheosis of the phenomenon, which features a myriad of games, including Ping-Pong tables for “$5.50/per person/per hour (prorated .09/min) Sun-Thu.”

And they have done very well catering to the new alco-lescent crowds.

But whatever happened to just having a drink and a lively conversation? The idea that intelligent, interesting adults could gather over some glasses of one fortified thing or another and carry on an exchange of sentiment and ideas while getting somewhere between reasonably and blindingly drunk? While such things do still happen in some corners of the city, there is an annoying emergence of these establishments that not only cater to but encourage patrons who prefer to behave like their much younger selves.

“Everyone knows this—it’s not something I think—there’s a very prolonged youthfulness now. It really seems to last forever!” author and conversationalist Fran Lebowitz told The Observer recently. “Their idea of being sociable is not to sit around and talk. Their idea of being sociable is to sit around and play games. To me, this seems childish. Whenever people ask me to play a game, I say, ‘I don’t play games.’ And they say, ‘Why?’ And I say, ‘Because it’s a game ... There’s been a general disappearance of adulthood.”

To Ms. Lebowitz, who will be in conversation onstage with Frank Rich at Town Hall later this month, there is little in life more important than the verbal arts.

“Conversation to me is something that requires lot of time. I don’t want to sound conceited, but I think you’d have to look long and hard to find someone who has wasted more time than me. I mean, I’ve wasted decades of my life—mostly talking! Talking to me is something that fills my life.

“When our current and perhaps endless mayor, when he was only in his like 10th term, whenever he made that smoking law in bars—which actually really shocked me—I actually said to him—although if you were questioning him, he would not recall this—I said, ‘Do you want to know what sitting around in bars and restaurants talking and smoking is called? The history of art, that’s what it’s called.’”

Indeed. It’s hard to imagine many great ideas have been hatched over a microbrew and a foosball table.

Nevertheless, The Observer and a companion decided to take a tour of these atavistic drink shops on a recent Sunday evening, starting with Williamsburg’s Barcade, to witness this Never Never Land of liquor and perpetual children.

A cavernous, characterless room with 1980s arcade games lining the walls, Barcade is a dystopian version of a teen hangout, Blade Runner meets Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

After securing a drink, our companion left to survey the room. The Observer approached a 20-something couple visiting from London, Amy Chapman and Chris Curd. They were huddled around a Frogger machine, by their account faring “piss poor” at the game.

Ms. Chapman was particularly impressed by the concept of Barcade. “It makes me want to go home and start one myself. It’s such an amazing idea,” she enthused.

“It’s awesome,” Mr. Curd concurred.

Agree to disagree. But did they not have similar diversions in London?

“Not in bars. It’s mostly gambling machines,” responded Mr. Curd

“It’s mostly a thing for kids,” added Ms. Chapman.

Fancy that. We rejoined our companion at the bar. He informed us of his attempt at regaining the gaming prowess of his youth. “I just made it 30 seconds into Contra and just died. I just blew a dollar on Contra,” he said. “Fucking Contra.”

But what of the vibe, the boozy teenageness of the joint?

“There’s something very nonthreatening about this place,” the companion mused. “There’s no one attractive. It’s like, ‘Let’s just go and play some video games.’ I mean, I guess they’re just nerds ... Alright, I’m getting some change.”

In addition to being childish and silly, there was something decidedly unsexy about the superimposition of adolescent accoutrements into the context of a bar. It took away the potential, the edge and the libidinous quality that the best boozing joints give off.

When we reached him by phone, Jason Kosmas, co-owner of the swank bar Employees Only, went even further, pointing out that games of this sort, while ostensibly sociable activities, are actually kind of antisocial.

“You go out with your friends and you spend time with your friends,” he explained. “You know, it’s a wagon train. You go out with your friends and you sort of form a little fortress, and nobody else really comes in.”

As opposed to his establishment, which he said is structured around possibility. “Ultimately, in those places [like his own], people are going to get laid,” he explained. “The word ‘laid’ has different connotations for different people. It might be that they want a great drink, or they might want to see someone famous, or they might want to make a business connection. Something’s gonna happen to them that is out of their ordinary life. Or, most importantly, get laid.”

Imagine as part of this metaphor getting the day’s high score on Galaga. Doesn’t work, right?
Cocktail guru Jim Meehan found that his bar PDT had so much sexual charisma—and such drinkable concoctions—that he had to institute a “No PDA at PDT, hands on the table, tongues inside your mouth” point of etiquette.
“It’s bizarre to me,” he said of the gaming bars. “I work all the time, so going to a bar with my friends to catch up is actually a luxury. I would never go to a place to play lawn darts.”
From Barcade, The Observer and our companion ventured next to the Bushwick Country Club, whose mini-golf course the bartender humbly described as “six holes which you can put a ball into with a club.” It did, however, have a windmill made of entirely of PBR cans. (Go Bushwick!)

There were no golfers present, so we asked the bartender about the proliferation of games in bars.

He responded with consternation that his friends had signed him up for a cornhole league.
Had anyone ever gotten laid by playing in a cornhole league?

“Probably,” he said. “Every team has to have at least one girl on it. I’m sure that someone can get laid from cornhole. You end up with a lot of guys with their shirts off. But those same guys would probably have their shirts off anyway.”

We headed over to Full Circle, a bar so wedded to its skee-ball-centric identity that its name is the term for rolling an expert-level round of the “sport.”

The crowd, if that’s the word, was exclusively male, save the bartender.

(After sinking $10 into the skee-ball alley in about five minutes, we realized another incentive for bar owners to feature games.)

We encountered George McNeese, co-owner of the buzzy Bed-Stuy eatery Do or Dine. He comes to Full Circle about once a week and is even in a skee-ball league with his girlfriend.
He apprised us of the tyranny of small differences within the alco-lescent demimonde.

“If you go to Barcade, it’s going to be filled with people who are more or less looking for a bar scene. You know, it’s going to be filled with hipsters and all sorts of shit that I don’t want to deal with,” said Mr. McNeese, who was wearing oversize clear-framed glasses, a tote bag that looked like a Nintendo controller and a phone cord as a necklace. “It’s gonna be packed, and the drinks are gonna be overpriced. You know, I just want to have a couple beers and play some skee-ball.”

This last reminded us of something Jim Meehan had pointed out. “In a city like New York,” he said, “where there are so many bars and so many people, each bar can fill a specific niche, because they don’t have the collective responsibility. For instance, I just got back from Michigan—there were like two bars in town. If you’re one of two bars, there’s probably more pressure to appeal to a broad audience, whereas if there are like a million bars for 6 million people you can, and especially if you’re small, you can fill a specific niche and be successful.”
Unfortunately, he was right: there is clearly a market for bars catering to nostalgic activity-philes.

Of course, the infantilizing of the bar-going experience is lent a kind of dismaying symmetry by the recent contretemps at the Park Slope beer garden Greenwood Park, where among Yelp reviewers there has been considerable outcry not about grown-ups behaving like kids, but about them actually bringing kids.

“It’s not daycare it’s a BAR,” groused one.

“Too many kids, and I don’t mean 20-somethings, I mean actual children,” bitched another.
And a third noted, “Bars also don’t have proper entertainment for kids.” Erroneously, it turns out. You guessed it, Greenwood Park has games!

As Fran Lebowitz pointed out, “Any environment devolves to the youngest person in the room.” So, why not gather around the bocce courts, young and old alike, and collapse the distinction? In no time, one could look from child to adult, and from adult to child, and from child to adult again, and already it would be impossible to say which was which.
bgallagher@observer.com

New York City icon, author, and essayist Fran Lebowitz needs little in the way of introduction. Via ANIMAL New York, she recently made an appearance at SoHo bookstore McNally Jackson for the release of the book 'While We Were Sleeping: NYU and the Destruction of New York' which was written by a group of NYU faculty members (but of course) who are in opposition to the university's president, John Sexton. Ms. Lebowitz was her usual, fiery self, which is to say: Utterly captivating and refreshingly impassioned.

Some highlights, with the full video below:

On NYU:

"I don't love NYU. I didn't hate it before. I just never thought about it. It's not of interest to me. And it really should be stopped from being called NYU, because it really has nothing to do with New York. It is Suburban. To. The Core. Those buildings they built on the south side of Washington Square Park are giant pieces of suburban junk. They have no place in any city. Even cities we hate! Even Atlanta doesn't deserve these! We have a mayor we don't deserve, we have a city council we don't deserve, and now we have a neighborhood we don't deserve."

On NYU's Student Body:

"The worst thing about being around these people, about these students, is overhearing their conversation. For that alone, I walk around my neighborhood in a constant rage, thinking I want to say to them: No, no you're not. NYU should move out of New York. A campus is a suburban entity."

On Michael Bloomberg:

"I said actually to Michael Bloomberg, 'I never thought I'd have the chance to vote against you three times.'"

On New York's Lack of Affordability:

"Whenever people say 'I can't really afford to live in New York,' I say 'No one can afford to live in New York! You just stay here and as long as you're not in jail, you're living in New York. You have no idea how you paid all this rent. If you add up all your rent from 1968, you realize you can be like, a prince from Dubai. How did you pay this? You don't know. The entire time I lived here, I lived inside. It's an amazing feat! I don't know how I did it. I don't. I don't know how you do it. Neither do you."

On Bloomberg's New Micro-Apartments: 

"Am I the only person who found it unbelievably offensive to see a billionare and a millionare—Bloomberg and [City Planning Commission chair] Amanda Burden—pacing off to see: How tiny a room can someone else live in?! There is a reason there are laws against apartments that are too small. There is a reason for it. There is a reason for it. He has to change the laws to make apartments this small. He's used to changing laws. It's his profession. [...] It's important that it's illegal to live in a place that small. It's important because laws show the value of the country, of the city. So we say, we have a value, our value is that people shouldn't live in a showbox. It's not good for human beings. We know you're going to go against this law. But we're gonna have the law to show that we believe you shouldn't do that!

But when you have a mayor who says: You know what? We just looked at the census and we see that there's all these people in New York, it turns out, this is news to him—everything's news to him, by the way—it turns out that fifty percent or sixty percent of the people who live in New York are single, or live in one or two-person households. So these people don't really need these gigantic, 350-square feet apartments! They could live in 245-square feet. Michael Bloomberg lives in a two-person household. In eleven houses. I am offended. Aren't you offended?"

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

During the cocktail hour preceding the screening, the premise of the show gave us an excuse to ask everyone : Who is your favorite vice president? Fortunately, guests were in a festive and charitable mood. No doubt they were already anticipating the post-screening filet mignon awaiting them at Porter House.

“You know what? I’ve never been asked that before,” Fran Lebowitz replied when we tracked her down in a corner of the 10th-floor reception area. "That’s a great question.” She thought a little. “Well, there was Johnson, and he became the president. Which is why you can’t nominate someone like Sarah Palin.”

Still, he wasn’t exactly her favorite. “I believe it’s possible that I do not have a favorite vice president. And if you asked a president he might say the same thing.”

Ms. Lebowitz was asked whether she’d been following the Republican primaries. “I feel more like they've been following me,” she said. “I see Santorum suspended his campaign today, so he doesn’t have to lose in his home state.” The Observer pointed out that Mr. Santorum was even unpopular in his home town. “Well, that isn’t such a bad thing,” she replied. "That’s why many of us came to New York!”

We put the question to her pal, Frank Rich, who is executive producing. “That is a great question!” he said. “Favorite? Not the greatest, right? I guess Lyndon Johnson. Lotta drama, Macbeth-like conniving...”

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly went with John Adams. “He was the first one, he had to figure out the job. And he had a son who became president,” he said. “So if I had to pick one...”—yes, you can only pick one, that’s the challenge—“Adams. There was an HBO series about him!” Asked whether he’d consider the role himself, he replied, “I have the best job in the world.” He always says that.

Bill Keller thought it was a great question. (We were beginning to think this was a stalling tactic.) “It’s gotta be gotta be Spiro Agnew. As a journalist, how could there be anything better than that? I mean the wristwatch in the safe? Come on!” (Did he actually say this? We think so. But when we Googled "wristwatch safe Agnew," we got nothing, so maybe that particular nugget never made it into the paper of record.)

“The rest of them are all pretty much a bucket of warm spit,” he added. (This, he definitely said—quoting FDR veep John Nance Garner.)

What did Mr. Keller think were the most important traits of a successful veep, we wondered. “A masochistic tendency for subservience,” he replied. Not to say they aren't strivers. “Ambition is the ambient quality for anyone seeking a top job in politics—heart-attack-making ambition,” he elaborated. “But in order to be vice president you have to be willing to supress that ambition so totally that you’re willing to be somebody’s bitch for four years.”

“Or eight,” we noted, before remembering he was no longer in any position to give us a job, so why try so hard?

“Yes, or eight.”

Prompted by Mr. Keller’s surprising use of the B-word in a non-canine context, we asked how he was adjusting to life after giving up the reigns of the Times (translation: was he maybe kind of losing it?). “I’m very happy,” he said. “I’ve got a lot more control of my life. I don’t have to be in a lot of meetings. I don’t have to be in any meetings, as a matter of fact. Life is good.”

We grabbed art-world scourge Morley Safer and hit him with the evening's query. He was quiet for a moment. “Trick question,” we said.

“Even worse for him—he’s Canadian,” offered his wife, Jane.

“I’d say Lyndon Johnson,” Mr. Safer said. “He became a great President. Though he didn’t like me very much.” Mr. Safer didn’t elaborate, but we suspected he was referring to his report on the burning of Cam Ne, which helped turn American public opinion against the Vietnam war.

Johnson hated the piece, of course. No doubt the nabobs of the art world know just how he felt. We asked Mr. Safer how they’d reacted to his latest 60 Minutes salvo, in which he visted Art Basel Miami Beach and wondered pointedly whether contemporary art wasn’t perhaps “the biggest scam since Hans Christian Andersen trotted out the Emperor’s new clothes.”

“The Gray Lady of The New York Times didn’t like it very much,” he said. “But she’s clueless.” In case you weren’t sure just which gray lady he meant, he added, “Ms. Smith,” i.e., Roberta Smith, who had pronounced the segment “tired and formulaic.” Mr. Safer added, “Critics like Ms. Smith are part of what’s wrong with contemporary art. She writes in this impenetrable prose that makes it all seem important. But that’s why what she says is meaningless.”

We moved on to the subject of his own art. Mr. Safer is himself a painter, who described his work as “mostly" figurative "but not necessarily.” Years ago, he even had a few shows. Is he still at it? “I’m desperate to do it but my day job keeps me pretty busy,” he said.

Later, we ran into Ms. Lebowitz again (yes, her day job is still writing a book—two, in fact). She had a question for us. “Did anyone name Al Gore?” she wondered. They hadn’t. “Aw, that's too bad,” she said.

Ann Curry, Sheila Nevins, Gloria Steinem, Katie Couric, and Tina Brown. (Getty Images)

Gloria Steinem either was or was not interested in talking about The Playboy Club, the upcoming NBC series depicting the milieu in the buxom-bunny warrens where she’d worked, undercover, in the 1960s. “It’s defunct, it doesn’t exist anymore,” she told The Transom, adding to comments in another interview in which she told Reuters she hoped the show suffered a boycott. “It didn’t seem to be worth television time when it’s on, so why now?”

She paraphrased the author Rita Mae Brown for us. “Under assault from women, or the gay movement, men in power have two responses: the very worst indulge in sadomasochism, the rest indulge in nostalgia.”

Happily, the girls’ club at La Grenouille was much more pro-feminist (every invited guest was a woman, though the reporters were all men, a group to which Ms. Steinem referred in a brief speech as “honorary women”). That doesn’t mean that the group was anti-nostalgia, though: each attendee, including reporters who’d never met Ms. Steinem, was asked to summarize her memories of Ms. Steinem in three words or less.

“No ashtrays,” said Fran Lebowitz.

“Opened all doors,” said Glamour editor Cindi Leive. (“Not all,” rebutted Ms. Lebowitz.)

“Essential. Formidable. Witty,” said Tina Brown.

“I have four words: a woman who loved us,” said Ann Curry, employing five.

“Autonymous,” said Kim Cattrall. (“Can you spell it?” asked her tablemate Peggy Siegal.)

“No midriff bulge,” said Ms. Siegal.

Reader, we said “Electrifying.”

But is Ms. Steinem “influencing viewing habits”? (That three-word limit is hard for those not seeking to pull a Curry.) We asked HBO documentary president Sheila Nevins if she’d boycott The Playboy Club. “I have very bad feet. I don’t think I could march. My marching days are over. Is she marching?”

The Transom told her we believed Ms. Steinem was just trying to convince people not to watch the show. “That won’t be hard,” said Ms. Nevins.

We interrupted a conversation between a Condé Nast editor and Sex and the City actress Kim Cattrall over Ms. Cattrall’s inability to lure a romantic interest to visit her on location. “We’re having too much fun!” said Ms. Cattrall.

Would the woman who played Samantha Jones watch The Playboy Club? “I don’t think so, no. I don’t think I would.” Feminist leanings? Ms. Cattrall’s voice went cold. “I think I’ve seen enough, really.”

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

“He was just giddy,” said Philip Gourevitch, who took over the Review after George Plimpton passed and handed the reigns to Lorin Stein last year. Mr. Gourevich and wife, Larissa MacFarquhar, had been sitting at Mr. Talese’s table. “All dinner he was the same grumpy Gay, but Jim connected with him.”

Mr. Salter was in town to collect the literary magazine’s annual Hadada award, which is named for its mascot, an African bird. “I can’t pick this up, it’s too heavy,” Mr. Salter said upon lifting the funny avian statue. He spoke at length about his long involvement with the Review, starting with a phone call from Mr. Plimpton asking permission to publish his first masterpiece, A Sport and a Pastime.

The legendary writer was clearly touched.

“This is my Stockholm,” he said before walking off the stage with Mr. Stein.

The ceremony also honored -- and with fanfare! a roaming jazz band! endless cocktails! -- the young April Ayers Lawson with the Plimpton prize and Elif Batuman with the inaugural Terry Southern Prize for Humor.

“I wonder if Terry Southern would have won a Terry Southern award for humor,” said practiced prize presenter Fran Lebowitz. “The answer, of course, is no.”

Ms. Lebowitz also regaled the crowd with one of the many stories she has neglected to actually write down. This anecdote involved Robert Redford, who was slated to appear on stage later and introduce Mr. Salter.

“In the late 1970s I was on a plane with Robert Redford, an L.A. to New York flight,” Ms. Lebowitz said. “As soon as he boarded he was instantly surrounded by all the stewardesses on the plane. The entire flight, all the stewardesses were around Robert Redford. ‘Would you like a drink, would you like a lobster, would you like a steak, is there anything possible we can give you’ -- ignoring every other passenger. They reduced all the other passengers to waving their arms in the air saying, ‘Excuse me! Excuse me!’ to no avail. Finally halfway across the country I leaned over, tapped him on the arm and said, ‘I’m very sorry to bother you, but could you please order me a club soda?’”

“Fran, I’m sorry,” Mr. Redford said as soon as he took the microphone. “I don’t remember you, but I do remember the stewardesses.”

After the ceremony, Mr. Stein arranged for an impromptu after party at The Campbell Apartments, an old-time bar in a corner nook of Grand Central Station. Sam Lipsyte and Gary Shteyngart made the trip across the street. We introduced ourselves, and Mr. Shteyngart mentioned an old article about his first novel, which he referred to in the moment as "The Russian Debutante's Handjob." We corrected him.

Then, upon learning The Observer’s age, the author fondly recounted his follies of youth.

“When I was 23 I was addicted to horse tranquilizers,” Shteyngart said.

A veterinarian friend provided the goods.

“It was a disassociated state. Ah, you just sail off into the sky. It’s used to pacify the horse but I ain’t no horse, I’m a 135-pound man!”

He got over it.

“I just started drinking. It’s more treatable. I’m about to treat it now.”

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

A Film Forum rep explained to the Observer: "When Rialto [Pictures] picked it up, they thought it had a wider audience beyond HBO--it's such a New York movie, and so perfect for the Film Forum audience and the New York audience." The film is to run for a limited engagement; Scorsese's Taxi Driver is to screen there March 18 through 31.

This may be the first time Scorsese's spoken at Film Forum, the rep told us, in about fifteen years--he presented Mean Streets there, ages before winning an Oscar--though he's active in film preservation. Margaret Bodde, executive director of Scorsese's Film Foundation, helped broker Scorsese's appearance, for which demand was clearly pent-up. "It was an instant sell-out," after an email blast to those well-heeled cineastes who opt in on the mailing lists. So, any room for the Observer to hear our favorite director talk about filming our favorite curmudgeon? "No."

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Intellectuals, unite. This fall, the ideas and ideologies will be flying at New York museums. Here's a look at some of the more important, or interesting, lectures and readings coming up.

The Morgan Library & Museum

Reading Mark Twain

Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2010, 6:30 p.m.

$30 for non-members

As part of its commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain's death, the Morgan Library presents three writers who have, in their own way, aspired to Twainness. Toni Morrison represents the serious novelist, Frank Rich the social critic and Fran Lebowitz the literary gadfly. Put them all together, and you'll have a nice facsimile of the great man himself--excepting the mustache, of course. Ten points to any wag who can make them discuss Twain's celebrated speech, "Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism," a favorite of 14-year-old boys.

www.themorgan.org

New Museum

Gysin's Ghost: Poetry Marathon

Saturday, Sept. 25, 1 p.m.

Free with museum admission

In September, the New Museum hosts a day long poetry reading--an event whose oh-so-downtownness is meant to be in keeping with the current exhibition: a retrospective of the works of Brion Gysin, heppest of the hep beats. His most striking piece on display is the Dream Machine, whose flickering lights are meant to be viewed with one's eyes shut. As poets Kenneth Goldsmith, Bernadette Mayer and Anne Waldman read, feel free to leave your eyes closed and imagine.

www.newmuseum.org

The Museum of
the City of New York

Who Broke
New York?

Wednesday, Sept. 15, 6:30 p.m.

$12 for non-members,
reservations required

There was a moment when everyone liked John Lindsay. Lanky, handsome, with the amiable patrician cluelessness of a Gary Cooper character, his mayoralty was undone by a snowstorm and looked even sillier in retrospect, as his policies ushered the city into fiscal quicksand. But though it's tempting to blame the WASP, 1975 was not wholly Lindsay's fault. The Museum of the City of New York, as part of an ongoing attempt to rehabilitate the tall man's legacy, discusses.
www.mcny.org

The Frick Collection

Drawings by Ribera, Murillo, Goya, and Their Contemporaries in North
American Collections

Wednesday, Oct. 6, 6 p.m.

Free

In October, the Frick shows off a bevy of drawings by the Spanish Old Masters, many of them now in U.S. collections. Iberian art was first imported en masse by the nation's kindliest plutocrats-J.P. Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt, particularly-but after the pesky Spanish Civil War, it became much trickier to export. This lecture tells how museums and collectors managed to get Franco to let go of his Goya.

www.frick.org

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Celebrating the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela

Friday, Oct. 1 and 29, 6 p.m.

Free with museum admission

The spectacular Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela has been attracting long lines since the ninth century. Traveling mostly by foot, pilgrims came from as far as Eastern Europe to pay penance in front of the remains of St. James, one of the 12 apostles. To mimic the experience in microcosm, try walking to the Metropolitan Museum on a Friday night to learn about the industries--artistic and commercial--that sprang up on the road to the shrine. Dubbed "The Way of St. James," it has drawn believers to the Holy City of Galicia, Spain, for a thousand years.

www.metmuseum.org

Japan Society

Mark Epstein & Lewis Hyde: Mindful Living

Wednesday, Oct. 13, 6:30 p.m.

$20

No matter what he claimed, that way enlightened dude who lived in the dorm room next to yours was not the first to ask, "What's the sound of one hand clapping?" He should have credited Hakuin Ekaku, an 18th-century Zen master who posed the question in painting, as the slightly more tidy query, "What is the sound of one hand?" That painting and dozens more go on display at the Japan Society in October, along with a lecture presented by the adorably named "Tricycle: The Buddhist Review." www.japansociety.org

The Museum of Modern Art

Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement

Monday, Oct. 18, 12:30 p.m.

$5

A highlight this fall of MoMA's smart Brown Bag lunch program is this talk celebrating public architecture projects that seek, in ways big and small, to change the world. Amid fruit cups and paninis. lecturer Margot Weller will talk about how the architects featured in the exhibition became agents for social change simply by designing particularly vibrant houses, schools or community centers. Visitors are permitted to trade snacks, but anyone whose mother packed their lunch will be roundly snickered at.

www.moma.org

The Observer caught up with Mr. Carter at the party, and it turns out that David Remnick of The New Yorker isn't the only editor at Condé Nast who won't have to meet with the McKinsey consultants currently trawling the hallways of 4 Times Square.

We asked Mr. Carter if he'd already had his meeting.

"What meeting?" he said. 

The one with the McKinsey people!

"No, no," Mr. Carter said, emphatically. "They're not gonna meet with me."

They're not?

"No."

Then how are they going to decide what to do with your magazine?

"How are they what? I have no idea," Mr. Carter said cheerfully. "We haven't found out yet. I'm sure they'll have some brilliant ideas."

As The Observer reported, Mr. Remnick was told personally by Si Newhouse that he wouldn't have to worry about meeting with McKinsey consultants. It's unclear if Mr. Carter had a similar arrangement. But what is known is that Vogue editor Anna Wintour's magazine is one of two books at Condé Nast (the other is Traveler) that has gotten the closest inspection by the McKinsey minions.

A few minutes earlier, Mr. Carter had been talking more generally about the difficulty of running a media business during the recession.

"It's actually a great time to be an editor," he said, "because there's a lot of great stories out there. It's a tougher time to be a publisher."

Mr. Carter's longtime pal and Vanity Fair contributing editor Fran Lebowitz was spotted a little later sitting with her feet up in one of the booths in the front part of Monkey Bar. "This place could use a few ash trays," she said.

We brought up the McKinsey thing.

"You know, I'd never heard of these people," Ms. Lebowitz said, sharply. "I'd never even heard of this kind of thing, where they come in and tell you what to do. I've certainly heard of it since they arrived!"

She went on: "Why do you need to hire anyone to tell you what to do? If I owned a magazine and I needed advice, I'd ask myself. I don't understand this. I don't understand what their purpose is."

We suggested that maybe people who've worked at a place for a really long time might feel incapable of making tough, objective decisions?

"Well, I don't think it's anyone working there who hired them!" Ms. Lebowitz said. "The thing is, everyone seeks a lot of advice now. People who make $40,000 a year have financial consultants. 'How should I deal with my money?' Don't spend all of it! It's just common sense."

More on Condé Nast:

The Gilded Age of Condé Nast Is Over

Ms. Aleksander also stopped by Barneys on Monday evening for a book party celebrating Graydon Carter's new tome, Vanity Fair: The Portraits, A Century of Iconic Images, where she asked champagne-sipping guests like Barry Diller, Richard Meier, and Fran Lebowitz how the latest financial news would affect the city.

George Gurley headed to the Soho Grand to hang out with the stars of the new film Ghost Town, where he found James Lipton gruff, and Greg Kinnear and Ann Dexter-Jones characteristically sunny. She loves orchids! And her kids!

And Spencer Morgan speaks to one of the partners of beleaguered downtown club The Box, whose liquor license is up for review. In this city, hell hath no fury like a neighbor who can't sleep!