Not a lot of visual noise going on here.

Greenwich can be lovely: it's quiet. The houses are huge. The lawns come in lush expanses rather than pots or postage stamps. But it's too quiet for some, or at least Dinesh Paliwal wanted a richer soundscape than what the tony suburb had to offer.

Mr. Paliwal, the president and CEO of audio systems giant Harman International, has purchased a two-bedroom, 2.5-bath apartment at the Plaza, according to city records. He and wife Ila are either picking up a new pied-a-terre or getting the hell out of the suburbs altogether.

Mr. Paliwal is, after all, at the helm of a company that specializes in noise.

The couple picked up their 14-floor condo for $8.5 million, a pretty nice price reduction considering that it was most recently listed at $9.5 million with Prudential Douglas Elliman brokers Jason Walker and Harry DiOrio. It was originally asking $9.9 million when it hit the market in December. We suppose that not even "sumptuously appointed tiled baths" or "amazing direct views of Central Park South" were enough to persuade the Paliwals to pay a little more? And we guess they were unswayed by the fact that the apartment came fully wired with high-tech lighting, sound and video.

Seller Ann-Kathrin Linsenhoff took a significant loss on the apartment—she paid $9.7 for it back in 2007. But Ms. Linsenhoff, an Olympic champion who won the gold medal in team dressage for Germany in 1988, apparently thought it was the right time to ride away. If a lifetime spent on the competitive horseback riding circuit doesn't teach a person to accept defeat with grace (and to have enviable posture), we're not sure what could.

Besides, Ms. Linsenhoff is undoubtedly off to greener pastures. You know, Central Park's bridle path is not what it once was.

kvelsey@observer.com

Going to the suburbs.

We all knew this moment would come—after all, what was conservative View co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck doing on the Upper West Side in the first place? Now she and ex-NFL-er husband Tim Hasselbeck have finally offloaded their four-bedroom condo at Ariel West, Gary Barnett's glassy tower at 245 West 99th Street.

Sure, the couple took a loss on the place. They paid $3.3 million for the condo in 2008 and only got $3.1 million in this sale, city records show. But at least they got out! The couple is moving to Greenwich, Conn. with their three children, where they can count on a backyard, a three-story house and at least a few neighbors who have similar political leanings.

The living room. Nice, but it's no mansion in Greenwich.

And it looks like the Hasselbecks were really desperate to go. They only asked $3.3 million for the 2,300-square-foot condo, listed with Brown Harris Stevens brokers Lisa Lippman and Scott Moore, and rather than holding out for the ask, they sold after only three months.

The couple will be moving into a sprawling suburban mansion that they bought for $4 million, according to The Daily Mail. When the apartment hit the market in February a rep for the Hasselbecks told TMZ "It's time for a backyard! Tim and Elisabeth have decided to trade in city living for the suburbs."

The new owner, who is listed on the deed as Mdbn Owner LLC, will enjoy a nice view from the 16th-floor pad, a formal foyer with a powder room and full bath, 10-foot ceilings and tony building amenities like a 52-foot indoor pool and a billiards table with a grand piano.

kvelsey@observer.com

Greg Skidmore: Asset Manager, Lottery Winner, Facebook user.

It's a story practically tailored to inflame the current climate of frustration towards the financial sector cultivated by the Occupy Wall Street movement. On Monday, news broke of Greg Skidmore, Brandon Lacoff and Tim Davidson together winning a record-breaking $254.2 Powerball jackpot off of a single Connecticut lottery ticket. This wouldn't be much for the press if the trio weren't wealth managers employed by the Greenwich-based Belpointe Asset Management, which, of course, they are.

The trio immediately set up the Putnam Avenue Family Trust and took the lump sum payment of $104M—tax-savvy men that they are—with their lawyer explaining to everyone who rang that they'd be donating a "significant" amount of money to charity. Of course, this didn't deter any of the news outlets who gave them exponentially more news coverage than most lottery winners, especially in New York, where the Post and the Daily News both opted to invoke the old "Rich Get Richer" idiom on nearly identical front-pages. It also hasn't detered Illuminati-esque conspiracy theories, as the British Daily Mail gave ink to a man who claims to know the truth of the matter: that a Belpointe client actually won the lottery, and the fund opted to set up the trust to keep him out of the limelight.

Whatever the case may be, it doesn't appear as if curiosity regarding the trio—or the attention given to them—is waning any time soon. The Transom heard from someone familiar with Mr. Skidmore—Bellpointe's president and CEO—that while the big winner is a "perfectly nice guy" who was very "of" his alma mater, Connecticut College—a member of the U.S. sailing team, Nantucket reds, "may have smoked pot once"—he probably should have been more careful about managing the assets of his personal Facebook page.

The page—now blocked—had a link to Belpointe manager David Nelson's blog, with the caption: "Greenwich Avenue had a little excitement this morning." The post Mr. Skidmore linked to was titled "Couldn’t Agree More" with the caption "Occupy Greenwich has finally arrived. I took this picture in front of our office today." The picture is of a man in a suit wearing a sign that reads "STOP Tax Breaks For Hedge Fund Managers."

Belpointe, while not technically a hedge fund, has noted their own advising on hedge fund investments. Whether or not they advise on how to handle a winning lottery ticket professionally or on a strictly inside-the-firm basis, however, remains to be seen.

Richard Geoffroy, Olivier Zahm, Dree Hemingway

THE SUNDAY TRAIN TO GREENWICH left near the brunch hour and wound fast from Grand Central up out of the city, through the tree-dotted commuter towns, decrepit cities and expanses of green space. Just across the Connecticut border we stopped and at the taxi stand we spotted an editor from Interview magazine in red, bulb-shaped sunglasses. Her date wore a chrome sport coat with mannered rips below the lapels. We were going to the same address. “The Brant Foundation,” the editor said, and the cab took us there, sliding by the outsize faux-Place Vendôme homes that inhabit North Street.

The Observer looked up to see the stone building built by Peter Brant, the billionaire art dealer whose mansion lay across the street. It was stuck there, a rock fortress of art, surrounded by finely manicured grass that first rose up and then flattened into an immaculate polo field.

The man in the ripped chrome sport coat was talking with the editor about Josh Smith, an artist who writes his name in childish script on canvasses the size of elephants, and whose show had recently opened at the Brant Foundation.

“Peter lives there,” the editor said, pointing toward Mr. Brant’s mansion. It was completely obscured by foliage. “Can you see the puppy?” Puppy is a two-story, canine-shape topiary artwork by Jeff Koons, wrapped in kaleidoscopic vegetation.

On the wooden patio flanking the entrance, white-jacketed waiters set the table with placards, and once The Observer procured a flute of rosé, by Dom Pérignon, Allison Brant—whose father had opted to stay on in Basel after the art fair—led us through the Smith exhibition. The paintings were very much in his style—his name in various shades and scripts, the curling serifs of the letters repeated, one after another, lining the walls down to the barnlike skyroom.

“He did it with cranes, in a few weeks, here at the foundation,” Ms. Brant reported. She was talking about the work depicting a T. rex, which rose dramatically toward the ceiling. It was a fire-breathing dinosaur of a kid’s imagination: enormous and crude, surrounded by volcanoes. Beside it was another painting of the same size. “Josh Smith,” the painting said. Olivier Zahm knelt to take a picture. The exhibition is called “The American Dream.”

The Observer looked at our empty glass of rosé and went upstairs for another. We had several, and then it was time for lunch, presided over by Richard Geoffroy, Dom Pérignon’s chef de cave, the man who oversees every bottle of vintage. “We believe in the power of Champagne, the family method,” Mr. Geoffroy said. He was flown in for the day from France. “So raise your glasses, and toast,” he said. We did. The bubbly was the Dom Pérignon Oenotheque 1996.

There was to be a polo match but it was canceled, and a scrimmage would have to do. There were just lakes on the pitch, we heard.

As dessert cheeses arrived, a steed galloped toward the deck, the rider swinging his polo mallet up and around his head. The fashion designer Johan Linderberg walked over to watch his date, Dree Hemingway, run her hands through the mane.

“I never ride,” she said. The model sat with The Observer on the steps and had a cigarette. The green field spun like a carousel in the lenses of Ms. Hemingway’s black, crescent sunglasses. She had recently moved from the Lower East Side to the West Village. “I just got the cutest red bike,” Ms. Hemingway said. We were now standing together and the wind peeled from the green. “Do you bike? I’ll help you find a new one.” And then with a peck to our cheek, she hopped into a car with Mr. Linderberg back to the city.

Everyone was leaving, it appeared, but there would be a quick detour to see the Puppy. Someone said they had the code for the gate, but when we arrived it would not open. And so The Observer craned our neck, and over the wrought-iron spokes we could just see it, the live flowers piled all over the body, the floral beast in the Brant front yard.

 -- The Helmsley Trust was not the only one involved in a fire sale in the past week. According to city records, Neil and Nancy Fire Breslau have sold their penthouse at 111 Central Park North. The Real Deal noted last year that the couple had bought the apartment for $4.975 million with the intent of flipping it, listing the top-floor, 2,897-square-foot apartment for $6.4 million that July. So how did it all work out? The deal closed on Sept. 27 for $4.525 million. Ouch! The Breslaus even threw in a parking space -- an expensive commodity still -- on top of the four-bedroom, four-bathroom, glass-walled pad. The buyers were Richard and Freya Block. Perhaps this is a deal from one designer to another, as that is the profession of both Ms. Breslau and Ms. Block.

 -- Count on a construction executive to have good taste in apartments. Cary Coltun, a senior vice president at megabuilders Bovis Lend Lease, has just bought a 2,000-square-foot condo duplex with his wife Michelle. The unit, which features a sexy spiral staircase, has commanding views from the 34th floor of 45 East 80th Street, which overlooks Madison Avenue. The final price was $3.1 million, a $200,000 discount from the first ask in January of this year. The seller was the Miami-based Lindy Assets, LLC.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo

The biggest issue at stake here is whether or not Mr. Brant can find adequate chaps to play polo with as he resides in this concrete jungle. How will the one-time high-ranked amateur player cope with the lack of pitches in Manhattan? Oh, right: he still has his homes in the Hamptons, Palm Beach and Greenwich.