If you have a spare $60,000 to spend this holiday season.(Gilt.com)

Gilt Groupe wants you to treat yourself this holiday season. Why bother with Black Friday when you can experience the sensation of being beaten and robbed from the comfort of your own home? Which is ostensibly what you will feel after dropping $59,500 on a vintage Hermès Birkin handbag, in the flash sample sale that will end on Thanksgiving.

It's not as if you should be surprised ... after all, Gilt Groupe's luxury brand has been known to dabble in Jaguar cars that haven't even yet been released to the public for $155,875. They also offer vacation homes and travel packages that cost well beyond the price tag of the bags.

THAT BEING SAID: There is nothing currently listed in Gilt's clothing/accessories department that even comes close to the $59,500 range of that 30cm Bougainvillier Shiny Nilo Crocodile Birkin, which, by the way, is already reserved. So even if you wanted a jaw-droppingly expensive handbag, you couldn't get it.

And even more distressing is the fact that these bags are a steal ... on eBay, a slightly larger version of the Bougainvillier has a starting bid of $74,999, and at a 2010 Christie's auction, smaller versions went for $59,316. Take inflation into consideration, and you actually have a steal!

It's enough to make a gal think she's actually getting bang for her buck ... provided her buck has a very large checking account and is overly doting.

Jason Binn celebrates with DuJour's digital cover girl, Nicole Richie (PcM)

There were a lot of nontraditional elements to Jason Binn's new quarterly, DuJour magazine: It was partnered with online flash-sale site Gilt Groupe, had two co-editors, and launched earlier this month as both an online property for Gilt's members and a direct-mail glossy sent to 250,000 of the country's 1 percenters. Any one of these qualities would be enough to raise eyebrows ... especially for a brand that sought to woo luxury advertisers, many of whom are still wary of anything that strays too far from the Vogue norm.

But Mr. Binn—founder and former CEO of Niche media (the company behind Hamptons and Gotham magazines) who resigned in 2010 to work as a consultant for Gilt as chief adviser—had a plan to create an autonomous brand that would partner with his former employer to mine its membership data on one end, while creating a totally autonomous product on the other. And amazingly, he seems to have pulled it off.

"DuJour is a self-contained business," Mr. Binn told Off the Record proudly. "It's funny, people think that because I worked with Gilt and now they are our strategic partner, that there's something more there. Kevin [Ryan, Gilt's CEO and founder] and I joke about it. What really happened was that I sat down with Kevin for 30 minutes after working there a year, and said, 'What do you think about this business proposal?' And he thought it was a great idea. But he gives us complete autonomy: I was flattered when Mr.Ryan agreed to join board."

"But it's a company that I manage and run. Gilt is a distribution vehicle for the magazine, as well as being a shareholder. They are a limited partner. They're a strategic alliance for us, since they have such an amazing database. They are instrumental to the worlds we celebrate editorially."

In addition to Gilt, DuJour also partnered with James Cohen of Hudson News and Dufry. Both Gilt and Hudson get options in the DuJour for their role in the distribution. Mr. Binn has options in Gilt Groupe, as he maintains his position as chief adviser.

DuJour's model for its coveted print readership demo can be found in pie-chart form on the magazine's website: There are seven "filters" that factor into the top 10 markets in the United States, where approximately 80 percent of luxury goods and products are sold. In order to receive DuJour at your home, you have to fit at least five of these criteria, "whether that's a home valued at a million and a half, or a quarter of a million dollar income, or a $5,000,000 net worth, or a charitable donation of $10,000," Mr. Binn ticked off. "We hired about 30 mining companies to get us that information, as well as the email addresses of those people."

Another possible criteria were that they were not already Gilt subscribers, as a separate database was composed of Gilt's top 3 million members, who all receive an exclusive early edition of the virtual monthly magazine.

The first issue had Christy Turlington on the cover, and it surprised critics, who were ready to brush off DuJour as a Gilt advertorial catalog, with the quality of its content. Contributors in the inaugural issue included the photographer Bruce Weber, Vanity Fair’s Patricia Bosworth, and Vogue and Bazaar veteran Kate Betts. To share the role of editor in chief, Mr. Binn chose Elle.com's editorial director, Keith Pollock, and InStyle’s senior editor of entertainment and features, Nicole Vecchiarelli. They both admitted to Off the Record to having hesitations about sharing the masthead.

"I think we both thought it seemed a little unconventional," Ms. Vecchiarelli said. "Jason wanted us to meet before we decided whether to come on board. I think Jason thought he'd be part of that conversation, but Keith and I discussed it and decided to meet, just the two of us. We ended up meeting three of four more times, but it was pretty obvious within the first 10 minutes that it was going to work out."

"Jason approached me, and he approached Nicole, and only in the second or third conversation did I realize he was actually talking to other people for a co-editorship," Mr. Pollock said. But he quickly fell in love with the arrangement. "It doesn't sound real, but it we haven't disagreed on one area of the website or paper," he gushed.

"For me, I've been working on websites for 10 years; the prospect of launching a new website was not appealing whatsoever. But to cross into print was incredibly exciting. And I think for Nicole, the most exciting part was to launch a website. We'd get together and I'd say 'I have an idea for the magazine,' and she'd say, 'Forget the magazine, I have an idea for the site!' We were attracted to such different parts."

Despite their differing interests, the two editors collaborate on both the print and online properties equally. "We do everything together," Ms. Vecchiarelli said. "We went to the meetings with Code + Theory—who developed our website—together, and we did all the editing together, made the lineup together, picked the stories together ..."

Mr. Binn said of the duo's relationship, "It took several months to get used to, but now they are literally best friends who talk several times a day, probably."

One thing all three agree on is that there's never been a product quite like DuJour. "It's really a new world we're creating," Mr. Binn said. "If you look at the brands who bought advertising with us for the first issue, they didn't buy this as a launch, they bought it as a business model and a concept."

"Even though we've only have one issue under our belt, going into our second it feels like we've already created a brand," Mr. Pollock noted. "Looking at stories, we can say 'This feels very DuJour.' It feels like a magazine that's been around for much longer."

In terms of tone, Ms. Vecchiarelli chimed in, "Just because it was luxury lifestyle magazine, we didn't want it to sound stuffy or dry. There's definitely a sense of irony that runs throughout the magazine, and also addresses a younger audience than other luxury publications. It was a great opportunity to bring in more of a voice."

Now that the first issue has sailed, and Kim Kardashian has shown up at its launch party, DuJour has a while before its next print edition. But that doesn't mean the editorial staff can relax. In the months they don't produce a physical product, they still have an entire magazine to run online. Next month's virtual cover features Nicole Richie.

"We've gotten a lot of great feedback on that," said Mr. Pollock.

Jason Binn with Kim Kardashian at a Golden Globes party.

When Jason Binn announced his return to the publishing business on Monday—with a multi-platform luxury lifestyle magazine sponsored by Gilt Groupe, Hudson News and Dufry duty free—the response was so big it crashed his computer.

“I tend to go out and meet people and I’m very engaging socially and it’s never happened before,” the Niche Media founder told Off the Record, from his home office in Manhattan. “I’ve had three tech people to my house and I’ve got Gilt people helping me out...it’s great because it’s horrible.”

The new magazine, a glossy, oversize quarterly called Du Jour, is Mr. Binn’s first major media launch since he sold Niche Media Holdings to the Greenspun Media Group in 2006. At Niche, Mr. Binn mastered the pre-recession game of controlled circulation with local luxury titles like Hamptons, Gotham and Ocean Drive. Du Jour follows similar principles. The magazine will print specialized editions for each market—New York, L.A., D.C., Dallas, Martha's Vineyard, Jackson Hole, etc.—with up to 50 percent local content. The 235,000 print run will target readers in those markets who meet five of seven criteria, which include “average net worth of $5 M.” and “liquid assets over $1 M.”

When a magazine announces a partnership with Gilt Groupe—the flash sale giant whose star rose as magazines struggled to survive the recession—one would think it's looking to implement e-commerce, or to get a revenue-share slice of Gilt's $1 B. pie.

Not Du Jour. Mr. Binn is after Gilt Groupe’s user data, a more finely calibrated tool for determining a reader's disposable income (i.e. the likelihood they will actually buy from the magazine's advertisers) than the stone-age business of flooding wealthy zip codes.

Monthly digital editions of Du Jour, in addition to its weekly newsletter, will be sent out to Gilt Groupe’s 3 million biggest spenders, who will also be able to opt-in to special Du Jour offerings and events, according to Mr. Binn. (As of July, Gilt Groupe reportedly had 3.5 million users.) Although the digital edition will be click-to-shop, Mr. Binn said he will not pursue any revenue-share partnerships during the magazine’s first year.

Mr. Binn will hire between 20 and 25 people, not counting developers, and has already procured 100 pages of advertising. Gilt creative VP Leah Park (formerly designer of the Bergdorf Goodman catalog) will oversee the templates, so the book looks  “super luxury,” he added.

After twenty years on the Hamptons-Miami-Aspen circuit, one imagines Mr. Binn’s Filofax brims with unlisted numbers. Off the Record wondered who was on Mr. Binn’s dream Du Jour cover.

“I think celebrities are really important, it’s a a lot of what I do with my cover parties and what I’ve done at events through the years,” he said. But for Du Jour, he’s looking for someone with “the power to move the needle and make a difference when they’re off-screen.”

Think Bono, Angelina Jolie...

“Even like a Christy Turlington is amazing, the time she puts into her causes,” he said. “When you’re married with three kids you’re always worried about where things will be in ten to fifteen years.”

Speaking of needle-movers, Mr. Binn told Off the Record that Goldman Sachs head of European financing James Esposito had been instrumental to the development of Du Jour.

“Our kids are friends and we spend a lot of time together,” he said. “He knows me very well.”

Mr. Binn was serving as adviser in chief to Gilt CEO Kevin Ryan when Goldman invested in the company.  Mr. Binn said Mr. Esposito suggested he use his media experience to leverage Gilt's “amazing” data on transactions.

“He’s a big mentor,” Mr. Binn said.

The last time we saw Mr. Binn, he’d been hosting a party at Capitale to welcome then-newlyweds Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries to New York City.

Off the Record asked how he was taking the whole divorce thing.

“I not only hosted that event but I went to the wedding, with the high excitement as she was getting married and everything,” Mr. Binn said. “Yeah, I was disappointed but obviously it wasn’t working. But yeah, that was something that was surprising.”

Fab.com is taking 23,500 square feet at 95 Morton Street, a 200,000-square-foot office building owned by the real estate company Brickman Associates.

98 Morton Street. (Courtesy Property Shark)

A spokeswoman at Fab.com said the new space, which comprises 95 Morton Street’s entire eighth floor, will be about double the size of the company’s current location at 330 West 38th Street and that Fab.com will be making the relocation in the spring.

Fab.com operates like (and has a similar layout to) other flash sale giants like Gilt Groupe but features a wider selection of products, so long as they boast a catchy design.

"We'll have everything from a $5 item to a $5,000 chair," the spokeswoman said.

On Wednesday, the site was featuring handsome wood rolling pins by Vermont Farm Table and $1,000 home entertainment system cabinets by Salamander Designs among other offerings.

The spokeswoman said that Fab.com’s growth has been rapid.

“Last year there were four of us,” she said, adding that the company now has 120 employees and plans to add more.

“We have lots of job postings on LinkedIn as we speak," she said. "We’re hiring."

The deal appears to underscore the explosive growth that is possible among tech sector tenants and has made the industry one of the fastest growing and most talked about space takers in the city.

Dgeiger@Observer.com

Mr. Green’s peers recognize it, too, and that’s why the Cushman & Wakefield executive director has been named this year’s Real Estate Board of New York “Young Real Estate Man of the Year” recipient.

David E. Green. (Illustration by Joao Maio Pinto)

Last year, The Commercial Observer profiled the 25-year real estate veteran’s success with turning around the arguably staid 2 Park Avenue, which once boasted blue-chip clients like the Hartford insurance company and Newsday during the 1980s, but had since seen its more prestigious clients flee to other submarkets—or out of the city altogether.

Mr. Green, 47, was able to spin the Midtown Art Deco building into a hip property once again by expanding the lease of Internet company Gilt Groupe and moving its offices into a 100,000-square-foot space. The online retailer, which offers customers limited discounts on upscale fashion brands, had already subleased space from Yahoo. But when Hartford chose to pull up stakes last fall, it made the bigger commitment—with Mr. Green’s help, of course—to expand its presence in the building.

“They felt that in the last few years the building had started to redevelop,” he told The Commercial Observer last month. “The area had become more cool, more hip. They felt they were part of that.”

Gilt Groupe’s presence in the landmark building, meanwhile, helped lure designer handbag company Kate Spade to a 95,000-square-foot space inside the property, further boosting its cred as a cool place to work.

Not only did he give shelter to some of the city’s youngest and most creative companies this year, he also renewed several major leases among the city’s most coveted pool of white-shoe law firms.

In March, he assisted Lazard Frères in its renewal of a 21-year lease in its 400,000-square-foot office space at 30 Rockefeller Center, tethering one of the city’s top boutique financial firms to Midtown.

Mr. Green’s quarter-of-a-century-plus experience as a power broker for top city landlords like Harry Macklowe, Vornado Realty and Equitable Real Estate Investment Management has also made him the go-to agent for Wall Street titans like Morgan Stanley and CWCapital.

A capstone of his career, to give just one example of his prowess on Wall Street, was signing the New York Stock Exchange to a 350,000-square-foot lease renewal at 20 Broad Street in 2000.

But with the times rapidly changing, staying on top also requires focus. Indeed, a veteran like Mr. Green keeps up on the trends in the industries and the problems looming on the horizon. Clinging to modernity, Mr. Green believes, will be one of the largest challenges for Manhattan’s oldest buildings.

“The aging stock of Manhattan’s office-building inventory is a concern as tenants are increasingly looking for buildings that are technologically advanced to handle their business needs,” Mr. Green said.

New development, however, might satiate the needs of only the city’s largest commercial tenants.

“While future development on the West Side and other areas of Manhattan is starting to happen, it’s on a very large scale,” he said. “Smaller tenants will have more limited choices to satisfy those needs than larger tenants.”

Staying competitive is among Mr. Green’s specialties. But it’s his charitable work that he finds most rewarding and what prompted the Young Men’s/Women’s Real Estate Association of New York to honor him this year with its award, which is given in coordination with the REBNY accolades.

Indeed, for the past five years he has cochaired the association’s annual summer golf and tennis outing at Old Oaks Country Club in Westchester.

Mr. Green, who played tennis at Oyster Bay High School, led the organization’s fund-raising efforts, which were spearheaded by members last year to feed the city’s needy during Thanksgiving.

Thanks to the YM/WREA’s Feed the Less Fortunate program, in coordination with the charitable group RiverFundNY and local catering house iEat Green, 2,000 people over the past five years have received a hot home-cooked meal during the holidays.

The group spends the weekend prior to Thanksgiving cooking 50 turkeys, 200 pounds each of sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing and string beans.

They then serve the homeless at Rufus King State Park a few days before the holiday.

“It’s an incredibly rewarding experience,” Mr. Green said. “You get so much joy out of the whole thing.”
Given all this, it’s no surprise the organization chose to bestow Mr. Green with one of its top honors.

“Any time you are recognized by your peers for doing good it makes you feel good,” said Mr. Green, a Long Island native and SUNY Binghamton economics graduate who currently lives in Old Bethpage with his wife, Rhonda, and two children, Leah, 17, and Benjamin, 13.

“This is the pinnacle of my career,” he added, referring to the recognition. “It’s a great honor.”

David E. Green

Even in Manhattan, a building can go stale.

In Midtown South, for example, a commercial property can amass a litany of blue-chip legal practices and financial services firms in one decade, and then, 10 years later, watch as its tenant portfolio withers in prestige.

Take 2 Park Avenue. The building once served as the base of operations for Newsday and Times Mirror Inc. back in the 1980s and 1990s and more recently for The Hartford, the Connecticut-based insurance company.

But newspapers and insurance companies are far from lustrous in a real estate market that has seen an influx of younger and savvier tech companies infiltrate an area like Midtown South, which boasted the lowest vacancy rate in the country in the third quarter of 2011, according to a Cushman & Wakefield report released in October.

“Like anything else in life, things go stale, and you need a fresh face,” said David E. Green, 47, an executive director at Cushman & Wakefield who has also worked for Sutton & Edwards, Harry Macklowe and others through his 25-year career in the business.

Mr. Green and a Cushman & Wakefield team became the exclusive leasing agents for 2 Park Avenue in 2010. This was Mr. Green’s second time working with the vibrantly designed, landmarked, Art Deco building, the first coming during his time at Vornado Realty Trust, which owned the building then (Morgan Stanley Prime Property Fund now owns 2 Park Avenue).

When the Hartford agreed to take 90,000 square feet at 277 Park Avenue, moving its Manhattan headquarters uptown, it left three floors of vacant space on the hands of Mr. Green and the Cushman & Wakefield team.

Luckily for them, online retailer the Gilt Groupe, which offers its members discounts on top designer apparel and other deals, was a subtenant in 2 Park Avenue. The company had subleased 50,000 square feet from Yahoo, and with Gilt’s growing profile, was looking to take on even more space.

“They felt that in the last few years the building had started to redevelop, the area had become more cool, more hip, they felt that they were part of that,” he said.

“Staying there was the right thing to do—staying and expanding,” he added.

And expand they did. The company eventually agreed to take 98,000 square feet and two additional floors. In Mr. Green’s mind, having Gilt Groupe expanding in 2 Park Avenue was just as invaluable as a multimillion dollar capital improvement plan. The building officials had already renovated its lobby prior to Cushman & Wakefield’s arrival, he said.

“The physical changes had already been done, but we had reinforced in the marketplace that 2 Park was a cool place to be and come to, which is why it resulted in the kind of the tenants that we got,” added Mr. Green.

Securing Gilt was enough to lure designer Kate Spade away from her old headquarters at 48 West 25th Street and relocate to 86,000 square feet of space at 2 Park Avenue.

“After nearly two years of hunting for the perfect home, we believe we have found it at 2 Park Avenue,” said Craig Leavitt, CEO of Kate Spade, in an interview with The Real Estate Weekly.

Also this year, Mr. Green worked—alongside team members Tara Stacom and Cynthia Foster, who also work at 2 Park Avenue—with boutique investment bank Lazard Frères to remain in 370,000 square feet of real estate—with desirable views of Central Park and Midtown—at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The lease renewal for 21 years, signed in March of this year, also gave Lazard 60,000 square feet of additional workspace.

The firm had been looking at new offices elsewhere—and had they done so, it would have been a huge undertaking of relocating over five full floors of operations and executive staffs.

“We’re were very much out in the market,” said Mr. Green. “The deal was a huge undertaking because it was our job to have them out in the market.”

Eventually, the deal was closed and Lazard now has 21 years to remain neighbors with NBC and Rockefeller Plaza.

When tasked with repositioning the 350,000 square foot office building on 114 West 41st Street, Mr. Green said the massive renovations to the building’s lobby helped keep two major tenants in the building.

“It is one of the nicest side-lobbies you will ever see,” he said.

Two tenants seemed to agree. Tzell Travel renewed its lease and took on additional space—for a total of 65,000 square feet—at the building, which in 2009 was facing imminent foreclosure. Guess Jeans also renewed in the building for 10 years and 16,000 square feet.

If those deals weren’t enough to make Mr. Green’s year, in November he was named the 2011 Young Real Estate Man of the Year by the Young Men’s/Women’s Real Estate Association, where he had been a member since 1995.

“I guess what’s nice about it is that I was selected and recognized by my colleagues and peers for my personal and professional contributions to the organization,” he said. “That’s what makes it really feel good.”

The tennis-loving Mr. Green, who played in high school and taught the sport at Camp Greylock in Massachusetts, co-chaired the YM/WREA’s tennis outings between 2006 through 2010, and coordinated the association’s annual “Feed-the-Less-Fortunate” campaign, which fed over 400 needy people at Rufus King Park in Jamaica, Queens, last year. With a daughter heading to college and more repositions on the horizon in 2012, Mr. Green believes the next year will be a solid one for him and his firm.More repositions in 2012 means more results to a building’s bottom line, he said.

“You’ll see shorter lease-up time and higher rents, that’s what every owner wants to see,” he said.

drosen@observer.com

The site also features instructional pieces aimed to help the men-about-town perfect their toilette. Featured articles include “How to avoid ingrown hairs while shaving: Four Easy Steps for Keeping Things Moving in the Right Direction” and “How to Pack a Suit in a Carry-On: Because Convenience and Style Needn’t Be Mutually Exclusive.”

But the site ventures well beyond the world of grooming, offering advice extending into all walks of the genteel gentleman’s lifestyle. “How to Deliver an Unforgettable Two-Minute Toast,” for example, provides a vaguely ironic check-list for toast-givers to avoid adding “another eye-roll-inducing log to the pyre of modern manhood.”

According to the Park & Bond, the site’s name references Park Avenue and Bond Streets, “two of New York’s most stylish streets… which together embody the mix of classic and contemporary that defines men's style right now.”

But here's the kicker, Gilt: Park and Bond don't actually intersect in New York, and there is a similar disconnect with the site. High fashion brands including Alexander McQueen, Versace and Elie Tahari come to an awkward head with more ubiquitous names like J.Crew, New Balance and Brooks Brothers. Only time will tell if the recent-grad prepster and the haute-couture homme can (or care to) join forces.  Will the site be the Bond that binds the high and low echelons of fashionable gentlemen?

Ms. Maxwell, who is British, will be in charge of the US site’s editorial strategy as well as direct the launch of a new Jetsetter UK site.

She will “develop the visual language and the voice of Jetsetter, and she will serve as an ambassador of the Jetsetter lifestyle and represent Jetsetter in the media interviews, including appearances on the TODAY Show,” the press release notes.

Ms. Maxwell has experience on the Today show—she has been a regular contributor to the program as well as an articles editor at Conde Nast Traveler.

Although Ms. Maxwell is not the first to leave Conde Nast’s old-fashioned print titles for Gilt Groupe’s mixture of e-commerce and content, the break won’t be a clean one—the press release notes that Ms. Maxwell will continue at Conde Nast Traveler as a contributing editor.

Euan Rellie, John Auerbach, Jason Binn

Last night, advertorial king Gilt Groupe booked an entire wing at The Dutch -- a new drooled-over West Village eatery that Sam Sifton deemed the "song of the summer" -- to celebrate the advent of their partnership with GQ, Park & Bond. It's a full-priced online marketplace hawking upscale menswear.

The new Gilt-y site launches August 8, and for Kyle McLachlan, it couldn't come soon enough.

"I'm of the age now that I've been through a number of generations and I think I know what works for me," the actor said to The Observer. "Just pull out a pair of old Helmut Lang pants from the nineties -- I can still fit into those!"

These pants, we pointed, these pants are from the nineties? They were off white and, yes, they did still fit.

"I'm gonna say mid-nineties, whenever that was," he guessed. "Probably a little past Twin Peaks."

Kyle, get some new clothes!

"Oh I will," he said. "I'm sure I'll be checking out the site."

Mr. McLachlan embraced the classic cocktail hour spirit, too, and got down to some networking.

"I was just talking to Neal about doing another guest spot on How I Met Your Mother!" he said giddily. He filmed an episode for last year's season.

But Mr. Harris was more in the mood to talk about his most recent work on the big screen rather than the small one

"Ah, yes, Smurf Week," he said to The Observer. "You know a declaration was made -- sorry, a proclamation was made. We've lit the Empire State Building! So I'd say this is a small indie film that we hope will get some traction."

He hasn't gone full-Smurf yet -- "dosen't that involve paint?" -- and won't anytime soon.

"They can only see through the pupils, so they stumble into people and run into posters and things," he said.

That's really awful, we noted.

"But funny! It's funny to watch the big stuffed Smurfs fall over and not be able to stand back up, isn't it? Wait, should I not push them?"

Mr. Harris admitted that he had not yet taken a meal at Andrew Carmellini's super-hyped new spot, and many others were in the same boat (you just go and try to get a reservation there these days).

"Lemme ask you this," Mr. Harris said, leaning in and whispering as if the place were bugged. "Since we're at a private function, are they going to be serving second-tier food? Is the good stuff over there, in the main room?"

A few minutes later, sitting at a table of natty-suited designers, glossy mag editors and Gilt Groupe execs, The Observer discovered that Mr. Harris was very, very wrong. The food was delicious, exciting and plentiful. There was a dual-tiered platter of seafood, followed by fried oyster mini-sandwiches and salads, and then enormous servings of fried chicken, rare hanger steak, and lemongrass curry snapper. A four-word Observer restaurant review: Go to The Dutch.

Toward the end of the meal John Auerbach, the Gilt guy in charge of Park & Bond, rose amidst a clatter of knife-to-glass bell tones. He explained, solemnly, that company founder and CEO Kevin Ryan would not be able to make the dinner.

"Kevin had a commitment," he said. "In Europe."

Everyone nodded and after looking upon our clean plate, The Observer thought, "His loss!"

"If you think you’ll never forget the moment when marriage equality was signed into law, just wait until you celebrate your nuptials in the Del Posto fashion," says GiltCity's copy. You won't have to wait long--the deal (which expires in just over seventeen hours!) is good for one of six dates before August 7. The first of them is July 25--the first weekday on which a gay wedding can be legally performed.

Guess gay marriage really is good for the economy!

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_