“Not much for you to do, huh?” said a security guard walking by. The girl smiled and didn’t respond. The Transom asked her if she was a lifeguard; she was. “Just in case anyone gets drunk and falls in?” we asked. “I guess so,” she replied. 

According to the Thompson Hotel’s general manager, Elizabeth Mao, a lifeguard has to be on duty whenever guests can access the pool, even if it’s a non-swimming party, in order for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to grant a pool permit.

The Hotel Gansevoort, which has a rooftop pool that is open year-round, also has lifeguards on duty even during photo shoots, when no one is swimming. The Soho House gets away with having a lifeguard until only 5 p.m., when they cover the pool and therefore make it inaccessible. The Empire Hotel, which has a rooftop pool deck, does not have a lifeguard since theirs is not a full-size pool, but a shallow plunge pool. (Though people can drown in inches of water!)

But the lifeguards who sit poolside have little to do but watch the guests sip cocktails in their loungers.

“They do just hang out, but they’re very nice, so when there’s no one in the pool, they help us straighten up, they make sure the guests are enjoying themselves and they just help with customer service up there,” Ms. Mao said. According to Bruce Meirowitz, vice president of the Jones Beach Lifeguard Corps, the hotel pool lifeguards are not part of the 1,200-member lifeguard union because they are not employed by the state. The training is also different. New York State lifeguards must pass a Red Cross lifeguarding course and a separate test and perform a two-year apprenticeship before they are accredited. “I guess it’s kind of soft and easy—you’re dealing with a more educated clientele,” Mr. Meirowitz said of the hotel gigs. “But I’d never want that job. I’d go stir-crazy.” 

Mr. Achenbaum also offered this update on the hotel's long-shuttered Jeffrey Chodorow restaurant, now under renovation:

He said his name was Eliot and that he worked at Fox News. “Dude, I just talked to Karl Rove on my fucking phone,” he shouted. “You think I’m fucking with you? Mike Huckabee called me, like, three hours ago. Dude, I’m the most brilliant of the brilliant.”

Mr. Brilliant was one of scores of freeloaders on hand for the second annual meatpacking district block party, sponsored by Details magazine, with nearly 50 neighborhood businesses, from Diane von Furstenberg to YOYAMART, offering discounts to shoppers and free drinks to all comers.

The Hotel Gansevoort served as the official party hub. The lines for free back rubs and free haircuts wrapped halfway around the rooftop pool.

It seemed the perfect setting. Centrally located smack in the middle of the Gansevoort Market Historic District, right across Ninth Avenue from the pioneering neighborhood restaurant Pastis, the modish 14-story lodge, with its steely facade and clubby purple lights, has stood since 2004 as a glaring beacon of the ever-gentrifying area.

Perhaps no place better symbolizes what the modern meat market has become. In standoffs with the community over noise and offensive billboards, the Hotel Gansevoort has clearly established itself as that loud obnoxious neighbor with fashionable aims yet questionable tastes.

But, nowadays, looking out on the area from the hotel rooftop, you can’t help but notice the much bigger, badder building looming ominously on the horizon and wonder if the entire neighborhood might be moving right out from underneath it.

“The meatpacking district is about to shift 500 feet to the west,” predicted Richard Born, the Hotel Gansevoort’s landlord.

Mr. Born was talking about the forthcoming arrival of the Standard New York, hotelier André Balazs’ ambitious 18-story, 337-room lodge, erected on pillars over the elevated High Line park at the corner of Washington and West 13th Street, less than two blocks away.

Standing four stories taller and with nearly double the room capacity as the Hotel Gansevoort, with a beer garden, a pool and two restaurants, the hugely hyped Standard threatens to depose its barely four-year-old neighbor as the area’s trendiest hub.

“I think it’s going to be ground zero of the meatpacking district,” Mr. Born said of the new hotel, which is scheduled to open up to 150 guests rooms later this month, with the goal of becoming fully operational by spring.

“There’s no way in the world it’s not going to be hugely successful,” added Mr. Born, who comes from a rather unique perspective on the area’s changing hotel landscape. In addition to owning the Hotel Gansevoort property, which he leases to developer and operator Michael Achenbaum, Mr. Born is also a partner with Standard builder Mr. Balazs in the popular Mercer hotel in Soho. He further co-owns and co-operates two smaller inns, the Maritime and the Jane, located a few blocks north and a few blocks south, respectively, from the two rival hotel towers.

ONLY A YEAR AGO, the combined synergy of four stylish hotels located in such close proximity would seem entirely justified. Demand for hotel rooms in Manhattan had never been higher, with nightly rates and occupancy levels reaching record levels. Now, amid receding numbers of tourists and business travelers and otherwise widespread economic chaos, it’s beginning to resemble a glut.

Flanked on either side by less expensive accommodations and priced more in line with the larger, luxurious newcomer, the Hotel Gansevoort, with nightly rates this week ranging from $325 to $725, is perhaps the most vulnerable of the group.

“When business is great, you could withstand a little bit of competition,” said Mr. Born, who noted that the Hotel Gansevoort and Maritime had mutually thrived for years despite opening within a year of each other. “The market was rising the whole time,” he said. “Everything was absorbed. Nobody felt the effects. We didn’t feel them. They didn’t feel us. Right now, it’s working the other way. Dropping 300-and-some-odd rooms into the market is not going to be helpful to anybody.

“It will be the attraction,” Mr. Born said of the new Standard, “and there will be fewer customers to go around. I think the Gansevoort is going to be the hotel most affected by it.”

Not everyone in the neighborhood agrees with Mr. Born’s Gansevoort-Standard death-match scenario, particularly the Gansevoort’s proprietor, Mr. Achenbaum. “We don’t see the Standard as directly competitive with the Hotel Gansevoort,” he wrote in an email. “The Standard is known for a lower price point with more limited services, while the Hotel Gansevoort serves the luxury market. I am confident the Standard will be incrediby successful as the Hotel Gansevoort has run at such high occupancylevels and there is more than enough business for everybody.”

David Rabin, president of the Meatpacking District Initiative, agreed. “I don’t see it as a Gansevoort killer.”

A self-described “rising-tides-lift-all-boats kind of guy,” Mr. Rabin, the founder of the seminal local club Lotus, which is now closed, stands to benefit greatly from the Standard’s highly anticipated opening. His 85-seat Mexican eatery Los Dados is just down Washington Street from the new hotel.

“I think even people who aren’t going to stay there are going to come to check it out, have a drink there or go to an event there, and then they’re going to spread out through the neighborhood and they’re going to eat their meals somewhere else and they’re going to shop on their way out,” Mr. Rabin said.

It nonetheless could present a formidable challenge for the Hotel Gansevoort, he added.

“André is a master at style and marketing,” Mr. Rabin said of the Standard developer, Mr. Balazs. “Everyone could take lessons from André. He has a huge public persona and a huge network of contacts in the fashion, media and arts worlds. He’s just unbelievably well known and well liked. He’s just hard to compete with. But, you still have an area that has 40 restaurants and bars, as well as 75 high-end retailers. So people want to stay in the area. I think the Gansevoort holds its own. Yes, I think there are people who always want to go to whatever is brand new. But the Gansevoort is still a great location.”

Even detractors of both properties assert that the Hotel Gansevoort won’t be so easily supplanted as the new neighborhood status symbol.

Take Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, who has railed against both the Hotel Gansevoort for its offensive billboards, which remain despite some slight alterations, and the Standard for its grandiose scale and the lack of public input that went into its planning.

“I would certainly say that the Hotel Gansevoort sort of embodied everything bad about the new meatpacking district,” said Mr. Berman, citing the fights with neighbors and “hideous architecture” in particular. “Whether the Standard is going to overtake them in that regard, we’ll have to wait and see.”

cshott@observer.com

[NY Times]

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Did we miss any New York City real estate news this morning? Please send along tips and links.

The Real Estate last week got a happy email from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. The email said the city had responded to complaints about the billboards by requiring the hotel to make adjustments to the billboards or to take them down. The city's angle measurements, according to society executive director Andrew Berman, were probably done last week.

On Wednesday, The Real Estate got a two-sentence statement from a representative of Michael and William Achenbaum, the brothers who own the Hotel Gansevoort. The statement was attributed to Michael:

So, with the angle of the billboards being adjusted, perhaps the dispute has been resolved. Or has it?

"Signs like this belong in Las Vegas," Mr. Berman said on Wednesday, slicing to the heart of the billboards dispute.

Developing...

- Tom Acitelli

The Real Estate got a triumphant email on Friday afternoon from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which has opposed the billboards:

The boards' fate now seems to hang with hotel owner Michael Achenbaum:

The Real Estate has a call out to speak to Mr. Achenbaum.

UPDATE: A rep for Mr. Achenbaum emailed this statement on Friday afternoon:

- Tom Acitelli

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Alas, the elevator down was off limits due to an unexplained fire alarm. The choices were: either remain on the roof poolside with bellinis and the man in green who kept taking photos of us... or clatter down how many flights of stairs in heels?

We chose the stairs.

Clickety-clack. With lights and sirens, the FDNY heralded our arrival on the streets!

Kathleen and SASCHA.

Half a block over and we were at SASCHA restaurant. It just so happens that I knew Sascha before he was SASCHA - one of New York's most eligible male chefs. Sascha and I met each other when we were teenagers. We were in Santa Barbara. It was summer vacation...

SASCHA personally seated us immediately in the brasserie.

I told him I was getting married. "Oh that's too bad," he said. "Drinks?"

Yes, strawberry - rose petal - champagne drinks called "Aphrodisiacs," towers of oysters and shrimp and plenty of attention from the head chef.

Who needs a stripper when SASCHA's serving Aphrodisiacs?

Cheap white wine and guys in Hugo Boss suits sucking in their stomachs? Yep, th e National Magazine Awards are handed out today at a boozy lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria; lots of grumbling about blogs in the bog. Meanwhile, who says there's no future for a guy who designed the "Models Suck" T-shirt? Shawn Regruto enters the Tribeca Film Festival with his first feature , Point & Shoot , which tells the story of a fashion photographer named Shawn and his complicated love affair with model Athena Curry. The usual suspects abound: future Estonian E.U. representative and chess marvel Carmen Kass (left), shutterbug Patrick McMullan , designer Betsey Johnson et al. Of course it probably didn't hurt that one of the movie's producers is Jamie Patricof , whose aunt happens to be the festival's head honcho, Jane Rosenthal . Not that there's anything wrong with that!

[39th Annual National Magazine Awards, Waldorf-Astoria, 301 Park Avenue, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., by invitation only; Point&Shoot gala premiere, Pace University, 1 Pace Plaza, 9:15 p.m., by invitation only.]

Thursday 6th

Mother's Day is three days away , but the city is bursting with brainy broads today. First, wolf down some waffles at the "Celebrating Women" breakfast hosted by Candice Bergen (who should play Martha Stewart in the movie). Tennis genius Billie Jean King , former Texas governor Ann Richards and Liz ("I looooved The Alamo !") Smith give out over a million dollars in grants to local chicas . Then, when you get hungry for lunch, traipse to Tavern on the Green for a "Women Who Care" luncheon to benefit the fight against cerebral palsy. Diane Sawyer and Helen Gurley Brown help hand out prizes to women who've distinguished themselves professionally or privately (seems Melania Knauss did both, so why isn't she getting a prize?). Meanwhile, mid-masthead Vogue editors slip into the latest spring schmatte (bright colors, homeless-chic) for "Where Fashion Meets Art," an arty fashion scrum spread out over 29 Madison Avenue blocks (45 boutiques throw simultaneous receptions, everyone gets drunk , someone makes a scene at Dolce & Gabbana … ). Everyone congeals at the big granite Whitney Museum for a splashy after-party with a high sylph contingent: Kim Cattrall , Deborah Norville , Gillian Hearst Shaw , Cornelia Guest and accessoreiress Elisabeth Keiselstein-Cord . Speaking of cords , tighten the ones on your bustier and head downtown, where Lisa Wood Shapiro will read to you from her mammary memoir, How My Breasts Saved the World . "It's Curb Your Enthusiasm meets motherhood," she told us, modestly, from Cobble Hill. "I just thought I had it all together. I dressed well as a pregnant woman , and I know this makes no sense, but I thought, 'This mom thing-I'm going to be a natural. I can't wait to get back to work!' But I was completely floored and sucker-punched by the learning curve-no pun intended." A former TV producer, the 34-year-old now writes full time while caring for a 3-year-old daughter and a year-old baby boy. She told us she was about to go to Barneys -guess hubby pulls down some Big Daddy bucks!-to buy some new lingerie and added, "The hospital handout said to soothe engorged breasts with chilled cabbage leaves."

[Celebrating Women breakfast, Hilton Hotel, 1335 Sixth Avenue, 7:30 to 9 a.m., 212-414-4342, ext. 15; Women Who Care luncheon, Tavern on the Green, Central Park West at 67th Street, 11 a.m., 212-683-6700, ext. 205; Where Fashion Meets Art, Madison Avenue between 57th and 86th streets, 6 to 9 p.m., after-party at Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue, 9 p.m. to midnight, 212-671-5305, www.whitney.org; How My Breasts Saved the World , Barnes and Noble, 396 Avenue of the Americas, 7:30 p.m., 212-674-8780.]

Friday 7th

The movie Mel Gibson doesn't want you to see: Sister Rose's Passion , a documentary about a Catholic nun, Sister Rose Thering , who helped convince the Second Vatican Council to repudiate charges of deicide against the Jewish people, is screened tonight at the Tribeca Film Festival. (P.S.: Sister Rose is still kickin', as a distinguished professor emerita at Seton Hall University.) If you're one of those guys in your mid-30's who collects comic books and keeps a Game Boy under your bed , curl up in the cool darkness of Film Forum (the thinking person's Angelika) for a screening of the original Godzilla . At Webster Hall (Mecca for underage college girls and the overage Hoboken men who lust after them), the man Liv Tyler called "Dad" until she was 12- Todd Rundgren -bangs the drum with the Liars.

[ Sister Rose's Passion , 9:30 p.m., UA Battery Park Stadium 11, 102 North End Avenue; Godzilla , Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, call 212-727-8110 for show times; Todd Rundgren and the Liars, Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, 8 p.m., 212-353-1600.]

Saturday 8th

Aggressive moms set their strollers on "four-wheel cry" and roll past the Crafts on Columbus tchotchke fair. Or, if you like it raw, learn how to prepare ceviche, sashimi and other still-wigglin' seafood in a class taught by Daniel Angerer , the executive chef at fresh. (uncapitalized AND always ends in a period, if you can believe it). Here's what Mr. Angerer told us: "It's always important to have a trusted source for freshness. My menu for tomorrow is always decided at the end of the day, when I talk to fisherman and see what they've brought in. Hence the name 'fresh.'! How can you do really fresh food when your menu doesn't change all year round? Everything has its seasons. Right now it's Alaskan king salmon . Soon it'll be beautiful, gigantic tuna!"

[Crafts on Columbus, Columbus Avenue from 77th to 81st streets, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., 212-866-2239; Cooking class, fresh., 105 Reade Street, noon to 3 p.m., 212-727-2220.]

Sunday 9th

'Tis Mother's Day, that holiday when some moms go on and on about how long they were in labor even when you were adopted …. There's a Mother's Day Festival in midtown, which will be exactly the same as yesterday's fair, but with more strollers and doting dads. Keep an eye out for our city reporter, who likes to strap on his "man papoose" to tote his tyke around. At Makor -the Upper West Side's naughty answer to the 92nd Street Y-there's a Mother's Day Jazz Luncheon. "Seating extremely limited," reads the invite, and you know what that means: laps !

[Mother's Day Festival, Lexington Avenue at 42nd through 57th streets, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., 212-809-4900; Mother's Day Jazz Luncheon, Makor, 35 West 67th Street, 1 to 3 p.m., 212-415-5452.]

Monday 10th

Before another silly summer gets under way, this town is still swooning with smarties . Vagina Monologue ster Eve Ensler and Reading Lolita in Tehran author Azar Nafisi volunteer their work to be read by saucer-eyed Iranian temptress Shohreh Aghdashloo (below) and the just plain great Swoosie Kurtz aspartofthe P.E.N.Foreign Exchanges program. Skip down theroadtothe Fifth Annual Dramatists Guild Fund Gala Dinner , hosted by Time style and designs editor Kate Betts and playwright Wendy Wasserstein . Or catch the tail end of Helly Nahmad's gallery opening of a new Kandinsky exhibit: Sounds of Colours . Pop some Schoenberg in your iPod and everything will fall into place.

[P.E.N. Foreign Exchanges, featuring Eve Ensler and Azar Nafisi, the Laura Pels Theatre, 111 West 46th Street, 7 p.m., 212-334-1660, ext. 111; Dramatists Guild Fund Gala Dinner, Hudson Theater, Millennium Broadway, 145 West 45th Street, 7 p.m., by invitation only; Sounds of Colours , Helly Nahmad Gallery, 975 Madison Avenue, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., by invitation only.]

Tuesday 11th

Now that The New York Times has finally discovered South Park -and heartily congratulated itself for doing so-come see Chef (a.k.a. Isaac Hayes ) as he croons at the B.B. King Blues Club and Grill tonight. For those who can't stand the heat , the Chelsea Art Museum has model Shalom Harlow , rocker Moby , actor Liev Schreiber (in absentia) and a gaggle of hip young things hosting a benefit for The Kitchen . Liev won't make it : He's blissfully stuck in Prague, where he's preparing to direct the movie version of Everything Is Illuminated . If you're never making it downtown , head up to the 92nd Street Y for the GiftofGameforGirls ,where Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug , Olympic heptathelete Jackie Joyner-Kersee and WNBA All-Star Teresa (The Spoon) Weatherspoon hang out with sports psychologists and nutrition consultants to raise money for the Y's Youth Athlete Scholarship Fund.

[50th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll, B.B. King Blues Club and Grill, 237 West 42nd Street, 6:30 p.m., 212-255-8455; Take Off!, The Kitchen's Junior Council Launch, Chelsea Art Museum, 556 West 22nd Street, 8 to 11 p.m., 212-255-5793, ext. 29; the Gift of Game for Girls, 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, 6:45 p.m., by invitation only.]

Wednesday 12th

Esquire 's Papa Smurf, David Granger , has hired a new Smurfette to serve as fashion director. His name is Nick Sullivan, and tonight Mr. Granger-still glowing from all those Ellie nominations-throws a welcome affair in the slick penthouse of the Hotel Gansevoort. Watch for senior editor A.J. Jacobs to do his lewd "Banana Man" dance . Meanwhile, every time we start to feel good about ourselves , we interview someone like 28-year-old Dustin Thomason , who graduated from Harvard in '98 after winning the Hoopes Prize for undergraduate writing, and then went on to receive his M.D. and M.B.A. from Columbia. Now he's co-written a book called The Rule of Four . Plot: Two Princeton seniors decipher the Hypnerotomachia 's riddles, uncover its secrets, endanger their lives and still have time to hit the eating clubs! So what is this Hypner -business anyway? "It's a text that was published in 1498 or '99, written in seven different languages and contains a bunch of illustrations, " Mr. Thomason told us. "It's a very ethereal, dreamy text about a man's journey as he seeks the woman that he's in love with, and his obsession with nature and architecture. There are racy parts, too-like at one point, he's actually having sex with a building." Tonight, Mr. Thomason reads from the book with his co-writer and childhood best friend, Ian Caldwell, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton. "Our senior year of college, Ian and I had the notion to try to write a thriller mixing history and the present day," said Mr. Thomason. "Then we learned about the Hypnerotomachia , and it sounded like the perfect subject. This was back when Ian was taking a Princeton seminar called 'Renaissance Art, Science and Magic.'" Gotta love the Ivy League.

[ Esquire party, Hotel Gansevoort, penthouse, 18 Ninth Avenue, 7 to 10 p.m., by invitation only; The Rule of Four reading, the Corner Bookstore, 1313 Madison Avenue, 6 p.m., 212-831-3554.]