Anne Hathaway, Reynold Levy, Audra McDonald.

As many high-style New Yorkers were fussing over how to select the perfect punk couture for The Met’s Costume Institute gala last week, another social set was breaking out its summer hats and Chanel bouclé, because while punks may get their chaos, ladies will have their lunch!

Never willing to miss a fancy plate of food, Shindigger joined in the festivities at City Harvest’s On Your Plate luncheon last Monday in the ornate Metropolitan Club. There, Martha Stewart dished healthy lifestyle secrets and tips while promoting her new book, Living the Good Long Life.

Ms. Stewart commended City Harvest on its mission of salvaging leftover food for hungry New Yorkers and then plunged into a lengthy yet informative spiel about all things Martha.

Topics discussed: how she became such a queen of the house and home; how she works her 153-acre farm in Bedford, New York; her somewhat bewildering advice that the event’s guests (mostly women, not all that spry) should try standing upside down for one to three minutes a day; and how, after watching the Kentucky Derby, she has now added mint to her daily leafy-green juice blend.

“I don’t use pesticides and weed-killers,” she explained proudly at one point. “I was out mowing this weekend, getting down the dandelions before they went to seed.”

Shindigger had a joyful moment imagining Ms. Stewart mowing all those acres.

“For me, a healthy lifestyle begins with eating right, and I congratulate the Metropolitan Club for serving us such a delicious salad,” she continued. “For dessert, well, my neighbors all had fruit plates. That’s much better. I had one little center of the chocolate molten cake.”

Which elicited more bewilderment from those in attendance. (Aside from Shindigger, it was not a room of dieters.)

A few days later, we headed uptown to Le Cirque, where our gal pal Jean Shafiroff, this year’s chairwoman for the 55th Annual Southampton Summer Gala, was hosting a kickoff luncheon in support of the Southampton Hospital.

The room was alive with the clinking of glasses of Mâcon-Villages and talk about the approaching warm weather.

“Where will you be this summer?” one woman in gargantuan freshwater pearls and an Oscar de la Renta dress cooed to another.

“Saint-Tropez, Capri and Sagaponac,” was the response.

“Usually I’d have you sit with me at my table, but they’re not allowing press,” Ms. Shafiroff said to us with polite disappointment. She added, “There is a lot of poverty in the Hamptons, you know?” And then she went on to explain how important it is for East Enders to give back and support a local hospital. “No one at the hospital is turned away, regardless of if they have insurance or not.”

Of course, luncheons weren’t the only place philanthropists were making a splash last week. Lincoln Center was the place to be for evening merriment, on both Wednesday night (for the New York City Ballet gala) and Thursday night (for Lincoln Center’s own spring gala).

On Wednesday, we ran into designer Joseph Altuzarra, seated in the upper foyer of the David H. Koch Theater, and pressed him for info about the Met Gala.

“I was really pleased with how people dressed,” Mr. Altuzarra said between a first course of lobster and corn salad and a grilled hanger steak with “21 Club” sauce. “I thought people did punk in a really upbeat, not obvious way. I don’t think anyone was really a miss.”

“Alison Williams looked fabulous,” Shindigger interrupted, knowing he had selected the HBO glamazon as his red carpet ambassadress.

“She was obviously my favorite,” he said.

At Thursday’s event, we chatted with Audra McDonald at dinner following her performance at Lincoln Center’s spring gala, which honored outgoing president Reynold Levy and helped raise some $9.4 million.

“I’m always nervous before I do a concert, but because it’s Lincoln Center and it’s kind of a place I’ve grown up, as soon as I step on the stage I go, Oh wait! I’m home,” she said.

The five-time Tony winner said she considers it a privilege to perform in New York. After Ms. McDonald’s beautiful renditions of “Moonshine Lullaby” and “Summertime,” the food became the main attraction. Marcus Samuelsson offered shrimp with dirty rice and lobster rolls, Daniel Boulud served charcuterie, and for dinner, Tim McLaughlin prepared chili and sea salt-crusted filet of beef with fava bean purée.

“I haven’t had a chance to eat a thing yet!” Ms. McDonald said, clutching her James Martin diamonds. “We’ll get some food and free pizza when I get home.”

Speaking of diamonds, we asked her if she had seen The Great Gatsby.

“I haven’t seen it yet. I’ve been rehearsing for this,” she told us. “I can’t wait to see it. Baz Luhrmann always gives you something to look at.”

Kelly Ripa, looking charming in a floral Erdem dress, was also seated at table 27 for dinner. “It’s like wearing pajamas out,” she said of her look. “For Audra, I’ll do anything. She is talent personified.”

Unlike the famed singer, Ms. Ripa did get a moment to enjoy portions of the meal. “I loved the fava bean salad,” she said. “I love fava beans.”

Martha Stewart would be proud.

Park Avenue promenade.

“Nobody on Park Avenue walks,” Michael Shvo said last month, standing near the back of the Drill Hall inside the Park Avenue Armory.

The Fund for Park Avenue was hosting a private cocktail reception to honor donors to its annual holiday tree-lighting drive, a signature project that dates back to 1949.

Mr. Shvo, the 40-year-old retired real estate glitz guru, was among the few dozen guests at the reception. Wearing a white dress shirt with black top-stitching unbuttoned past his clavicle, he was talking about a recent art transaction with a fellow developer when The Observer interrupted them to ask about the future of Park Avenue. Maybe there was room on it for a pedestrian pathway down the middle, so we could all enjoy the malls?

“I stopped walking a decade ago,” said Mr. Shvo nonchalantly, a statement of success rather than disability.

Nearby was Irwin Cohen, the man who turned the old Nabisco factory into the Chelsea Market. With the High Line nearby, he had seen the transformative power of an impressive infrastructure project firsthand—so how might he feel about reclaiming the Park Avenue median as an actual park?

“That’s ludicrous,” his wife Jill Cohen said. “What if you’re coming here? Where would your driver stand the car?”

“I don’t know that Park Avenue needs it,” a friend piped up. “The sidewalks are plenty wide already.”

“As long as they don’t make it bike lanes,” Mr. Cohen said.

Concerns over parking spaces and bikes aside, a clever group of planners and activists would like to transform the street into a world-class gathering place rather than a mere thoroughfare. In the middle of October, barely a week before the city was swept away by Sandy, two different designers on two different panels at the Municipal Art Society’s third annual MAS Summit hit upon the same radical idea: to build a pedestrian promenade down the middle of Park Avenue.

In various ways, the architects proposed to widen the lush mall running along the middle of the road, allowing for a path that could be home to benches, sculptures, even—gasp—food stands. It would be New York’s newest public space, and not one without precedent; the Bloomberg administration has reclaimed the streetscape to create plaza, piazzas and pocket parks everywhere from Times Square to Jackson Heights.

Just imagine ... It could be the Upper East Side’s very own High Line, a recreational and cultural destination to rival any in the city or the world, a place to relax, stroll, maybe buy a coffee or a Shake Shack burger from a kiosk. It could be the capstone of Mayor Bloomberg’s unorthodox reappropriation of the city’s streets, one that would take place right in the mayor’s backyard—a fact that, ironically may be the very reason this daring idea may ultimately die without ever being realized.
Both proposals, it turns out, started with the same inspiration: a somewhat well-known (at least within wonky planning circles) black-and-white photograph of gentlemen and ladies in repose in the very middle of the Park Avenue Mall. The photo was taken in the 1920s, a decade into Park Avenue’s life.

Park Avenue may seem like the last redoubt of grand old New York, but the street is younger than most. Built a century ago as a deck over the New York Central rail yards that once ran through Manhattan’s heart, Park Avenue, for a brief time, was an idyllic spot. A park ran down the middle, dotted with benches, trees and a pathway for the common man to enjoy.

So it would remain until the end of the decade, when cars began to dominate the city’s streets. Park Avenue was widened from two lanes to three, and what was left was a glorified, and at times grotty, median. “When we took over, it was basically a dog run,” said Ronald Spencer, an attorney and chair of the Fund for Park Avenue, which has been maintaining the strip since the 1970s. “People would take dogs there to do their business. It was just filthy with trash and debris, the grass run down to dirt.”
The fact that people used the median at all underscores a natural tendency to gravitate there, possibly because the green-space-starved Upper East Side consistently ranks near the bottom of the city’s precincts in park acreage per capita. Even with Central Park nearby.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, director of Columbia’s Center for Urban Real Estate and a principal at SHoP architects, believes a pathway could actually solve another of Park Avenue’s problems: traffic.
Currently, one of the biggest bottlenecks on Park Avenue comes from drivers making left-hand turns, according to Mr. Chakrabarti. He would engineer a smoother flow of traffic, carving at a left-hand turning bay by extending the medians to take up half, but not all of the middle traffic lane. He would then take this extra space, push the vegetation to the sides, and run pathways and mini plazas down the middle. “I think you could have a really great public space, and you could also improve traffic flow,” Mr. Chakrabarti said.

The trees and tulips so tenderly cared for by Mr. Spencer and his fellow funders would remain intact, and now people would be able to enjoy them up close, while the foliage would provide a subtle barrier from the cars whizzing by.

And the same would go for the sculpture, the Fund for Park Avenue’s other big project. Not only would there be more room for art, but people could actually interact with it. It could even be argued that this is an act of historic preservation, of returning Park Avenue to its original state. And everybody knows how much uptown loves historic preservation.

Currently, Mr. Chakrabarti’s proposal only calls for building the project from 46th Street to 59th Street, as a component of the city’s proposed Midtown East rezoning.

“I think people will fall in love with it and there will be a good chance it will get extended further north, but you have to take it slowly,” Mr. Chakrabarti said. “You know, the High Line was built in phases, and this isn’t dissimilar to the High Line. There will be people who say it could be a great new experience for New York. I think it could be sensational for public art, for tulips and all the other things that Park Avenue is known for.”

Mr. Chakrabarti believes the plan, or something like it, is an imperative for Midtown and the Upper East Side to remain attractive. He points to Google’s then-surprising decision to buy 111 Eighth Avenue two years ago for $1.8 billion in Chelsea, of all places. Looking at the attractive amenities, like the High Line, it starts to make sense. But a Park Avenue promenade wouldn’t need to be High Line fancy, he said, pointing to Columbus Circle as a modest yet inviting space.

Even more ambitious was the proposal for Park Avenue from SOM (though it gained far less attention than the other suggestion made by the firm at the MAS Summit—for a floating disc of a public plaza hovering over Grand Central Terminal). Created by SOM principal Roger Duffy, the firm’s plan would pedestrianize the entire length of Park Avenue, running from Union Square all the way to 125th Street.
Like Mr. Chakrabarti, Mr. Duffy sees this as a public priority. “When’s the last time we made a great civic gesture in northern Manhattan?” Mr. Duffy said, giving Ground Zero and the High Line their due. “The real issue here is the priority of money. The same money exists, there’s just less desire to use it for these things. It’s somehow a question of social priorities.”

Local Councilman Dan Garodnick believes that a revamped Park Avenue mall bears a look, albeit a cautious one. “It’s a novel idea, especially given how starved we are for open public space in the area, but it would need considerable study—particularly on traffic impacts—before it could be seriously evaluated,” he wrote in a brief email.

And perhaps the Bloomberg administration could be persuaded. “It’s consistent with what they’ve done in the past,” said Mr. Duffy, “but it also is perhaps better because it’s a feature that could be restored.” Play it as historic preservation, and the old dogs of the Upper East Side might just be won over.

It appears other city officials could be as well. At a transit conference last month, The Observer asked firebrand Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan if she might support the plan. “It’s certainly an interesting idea,” she said. “We’d have to study it, of course, and consult with the community, but it is intriguing.”

The community, the very one the promenade ostensibly benefits, may well be the biggest challenge to its survival. Mayor Michael Bloomberg may call the Upper East Side home, but in the 11 years he has been in office, remaking whole swathes of the city, few places have changed less. Sure, everything costs more, but the Greek diners, the galleries, the socialites are pretty much the same. There are few stunning new condo towers, cultural institutions or pocket parks that have been created on the mayor’s watch. There are no bike lanes. Every corner of the city has been reshaped, from Chelsea and the Village to Williamsburg and the Rockaways, Flushing and the South Bronx. Just not the mayor’s backyard.

The administration has been good enough to give the pathway over to bikers and walkers three times a year, for the summer streets program that shuts down Lafayette Street and Park Avenue from the Brooklyn Bridge to 72nd Street, so it can be done. But then again, who on Park Avenue is home on a Saturday in August anyway?

The rest of the year seems doubtful.

Of all the people The Observer spoke with at the fund’s cocktail hour, only Jean Shafiroff, one of the queens of the social circuit, thought plans for a pedestrianized Park Avenue were a good idea. “The city changes, and that is for the best,” she remarked. “There must be something for everyone.”

But for all the clinging to Gilded Age grandeur that goes on on the Upper East Side, all the Sturm und Drang about historic preservation, few want anything to do with restoring Park Avenue to its former pedestrian glory. As one woman, wearing a large pearl brooch and standing just behind Ms. Shafiroff, declared when she overheard the plans, “It’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. Soon they’ll be camping out,” she said, “like at Zucotti Park.”

Connie Chung (Getty Images)

After getting us in touch with our inner child earlier in the week with her confidence-booster, head-banded socialite Arden Wohl’s treating us to a cupcake—or five! Tonight, she hosts a fund-raiser for Barack Obama with vegan cupcakes she baked herself at Little Cupcake Bakeshop. Hope they pair well with cocktails ... Meanwhile, Jean and Martin Shafiroff, among others, celebrate the city’s grown-up women at the New York Women’s Foundation 25th Anniversary Celebration, honoring a quarter-century of working to bring women out of poverty. Connie Chung serves as mistress of ceremonies and Tony-Award-winning playwright Sarah Jones performs; we doubt there’ll be any cupcakes for this serious-minded crew!

Little Cupcake, 30 Prince Street, 7pm, tickets and information can be found at littlecupcake.eventbrite.com; New York Women’s Foundation, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, 6:30pm, tickets and information can be found at nywf.org.

Madame Mayhem. (Patrick McMullan/PatrickMcMullan.com)

“This is insane...it’s like a Fellini film,” The Observer overheard one guest murmur as we arrived at the Southampton Hospital gala last Saturday evening. The theme of the evening was Grand Prix Monaco, though many of the high-paying donors didn’t seem to have gotten the memo—or known what it meant, perhaps. Women wore colorful dresses in every conceivable hue and style, while the men ranged from casual checkered shirts to top hats and tails.

Though this was a charity event, there was a measure of self-interest on the part of the attendees: after all, the Jenny and John Paulson Emergency Department of Southampton Hospital is the only emergency room facility for 50 miles. As opposed to say, giving money to Haiti, this was clearly a cause that could potentially affect donors directly.

“This benefit is considered sort of the social benefit of the season,” gala chair Laura Lofaro Freeman told The Observer. “It’s really to update and upgrade the equipment in the emergency room, make sure it’s cutting-edge…et cetera.”

When we asked what was the most common kind of emergency they dealt with in the Hamptons—beyond the expertise of the handsome doctors in Royal Pains—Ms. Freeman ticked off a list. “Terrible car accidents, surfing accidents, bike accidents...and, you know, a lot of a heart attacks.”

Heart attacks were a prevalent theme at the gala, particularly when the president and CEO of the hospital, Robert S. Chaloner, took the stage during dinner.

“Our dream was to get 800 people in a tent, crank the heat up to 100 degrees, and hope that someone has a heart attack, knowing that our hospital is only a block away,” he joked.

To drive the point home even further, an ambulance appeared on the lawn, with its lights on, during cocktail hour. Someone had already taken a nasty spill in the grass, we were told. Despite the fact that the party was held on the hospital’s grounds on Wickapogue Road, the emergency truck was on call all evening. You know, just in case.

Of course, the costuming alone was enough to give an elderly patient a cardiac episode. Joy Marks and Leesa Rowland were in hot pink, while Archie Comics publisher Nancy Silberkleit wore construction-area neon (“I’m more of a Veronica than a Betty tonight,” she told us), a look copied by Dr. Lewis Feder. Global head of marketing and investor relations for Ares Management Suzanne Murphy went with a subtler tangerine gown. Somers Farkas chose a lighter shade of gold to accent her deep tan, while Jean Shafiroff had changed from her polo daywear of bright yellow to a white ball gown featuring lemon-colored daffodils.

Then there was the black brigade: Madame Mayhem, the Chanel-sporting goth-chic singer who was the “surprise” guest of the evening, joining bandleader Alex Donner for his 10th year at the event.

“I usually sing Lady Gaga, but I think tonight that will be Madame Mayhem,” Mr. Donner laughed. We couldn’t tell if this was a joke. Ms. Mayhem ended up performing “Mony Mony”…an unusual selection, but one that got the audience dancing (without regard for their blood pressure).

We asked Ms. Freeman about the origin of her outfit, a deceptively simple but complexly constructed bodice-and-gown affair that floated open whenever she embraced a new guest.

“The idea was to make it ethereal and fun and French…sort of like Grand Prix Monaco,” Ms. Freeman said, twirling around in a spray of baby blue.

Helpfully, Ms. Freeman kept her designer by her side. “Two things that Laura mentioned when she told me about her idea for the dress: she wanted it to open up in the wind when she walked,” Project Runway veteran Wesley Nault told The Observer, “and the other is that Laura loves construction, so she literally wanted it to stand up when she sat down. So you can sit the dress on the bed and it looks like someone’s in it.” Eerie!

Once everyone had flounced their way into the tents, we found ourselves sitting at the table of Howard Lorber, chairman of Prudential Douglas Elliman, the evening’s biggest sponsor.  (Also from the firm was top-selling broker Lisa Simonsen.) Chris Del Gatto of Circa was to our left, looking a little bit glum despite the presence of his gorgeous fiancée, model Veronica Webb. We don’t blame him: during a game at the Bridgehampton Polo Club earlier that afternoon, one of his team’s horses had died during a match against Nacho Figueras’ team.

We asked Mr. Del Gatto why polo wasn’t played at the Olympics anymore.

“You get very particular horses,” he sighed. “And the travel can be very tough on them.”

That didn’t explain why dressage is still an Olympic sport, but we decided not to press it, especially since Social Life publisher Justin Mitchell was sitting right across from us, and as it was the media sponsor of the evening, we didn’t want to speak too ill of the Sport of Kings, which the magazine covers extensively. Besides, we were here to talk about human health, not horses! (Not to mention that Peter Brandt and Stephanie Seymour were in earshot.)

The gala also featured a silent auction, in which guests could bid on a number of interesting items, including a watercolor portrait of your child, home or pet (but no snakes) by artist Katrina Vanderlip. By evening’s end, more than $1.6 million had been raised for improvements to the emergency unit.

Nevertheless, Ellesse CEO Byron Hero was still wary. “Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to get sick here,” he quipped.

dgrant@observer.com

Because it’s not a party without Bachmann’s Party Mix.

I made sure to grab a window seat because I was determined to keep an eye on the road. It was time for me to figure out where exactly the Hamptons were. The last time I ventured a guess, it was deemed so clueless that my publicist, R. Couri Hay, had to step in, spinning my ignorance as some kind of adorable party trick.

“Drew, guess where the Hamptons are!” he would exclaim, shoving me in front of a group of strangers.

“Um, upstate?”

“No, tell them what you said before! About New Jersey!”

You see, I was a Hamptons virgin. Everything I knew about the area came from my somewhat sketchy memory of reading The Great Gatsby in high school, which took place on the North Fork (yes, I know), but close enough. At one point I leaned over to my seatmate and asked her where the Dr. T.J. Eckleburg sign with the big eyes was going to be.

The young lady, bless her heart, didn’t miss a beat. “Those were in New York,” she whispered. “Also, you have orange crumbs on your shirt.”

After some sort of time distortion—a common occurrence on the LIE I’m told—I arrived in Bridgehampton, where I was to rendezvous with my guide for the weekend, Cassandra Seidenfeld, whom I had met through Mr. Hay. Here is what I knew about her: she was an actress, she would almost definitely be on Real Housewives this season, and she had offered to host me for the weekend.

“I’m not mad that you’re late,” Ms. Seidenfeld chirped, heaving my gigantic Yankees beach bag into the trunk of her Audi SSL (which had a Ferrari engine, I was reminded frequently). “The Jitney has been terrible,” she said. “I saw a pile-up of six cars. Someone probably died today.”

We got into the Audi. “Okay, we’re going to Pierre’s!” she suddenly announced.

With that, we were off.

Ms. Seidenfeld then hung a left and parked her car just 50 feet from where she had picked me up.

Over mussels, the restaurant’s owner Pierre Weber, a dashing, older Frenchman in a white open shirt and yellow slacks came over to greet us. Mr. Weber made it clear he did not want me writing a review of his restaurant. He told us an anecdote about how he’d once had to banish Gael Greene, lest she write about the food.

“Don’t worry, Drew’s writing is off the charts!” Ms. Seidenfeld vouched.

I promised not to write a review, although he didn’t have anything to worry about. The food was spectacular! And the service? Doting. Pierre kept coming over to flirt in that European way, you know, holding my hand, stroking my tattoos, and offering that old-fashioned remedy, “kissing it better,” after I literally bit my lip during a particularly racy joke.

“You seem nervous,” he told me. “We have to get you to loosen up.”
“You have to stop flirting with Pierre!” Cassandra scolded on our way out.

We then drove two and a half blocks to the Bridgehampton Inn, which had some connection to Matt Lauer and his wife, although I’m not exactly sure what it was.

Saturday morning I found Ms. Seidenfeld downstairs at the Inn, conferring with Seren, one of hotel’s employees. Seren was also a fortune teller, and Ms. Seidenfeld had some questions. Out of courtesy to the woman upon whose kindness I was completely reliant, I had promised not to write about her affairs d’amour, which were...complicated.

Seren was in the middle of telling Ms. Seidenfeld that she would meet a guy like [REDACTED], and his name would be a combination of [REDACTED] and [REDACTED].

You read it here first.

Lobster cum lobster

And then, finally, it was time for the beach! Actually, first it was time to buy big floppy hats at TJ Maxx, which Ms. Seidenfeld did while having me circle the lot. “The police here have no sense of humor, so watch it!” she told me before dashing off and leaving me in charge of a Ferrari engine.

Of course, my first thought was: Do any cops have a sense of humor?
The second being: I don’t have a driver’s license on me.

After the hat excursion, we drove to Montauk, stopping on the way for lobster rolls at The Clam Bar. This was the first of three lobsters I would eat in under 24 hours.

Once situated on the beach, we somehow downed two bottles of Domaines Ott, which was probably not the best idea since we were planning to attend a party for God’s Love We Deliver at the home of interior designers Randy Kemper and Tony Ingrao at 6.

Things got blurry, naps were taken, and before we knew it, we were late.

Cassandra Seidenfeld, Randy Kemper, and someone trying not to fall over. (Patrick McMullan)

The estate was an incredible labyrinth of topiaries. I soon learned that Mr. Kemper and Mr. Ingrao have done homes for Kim Cattrall, Howard and Beth Ostrosky Stern and Suzy and Jack Welch, in addition to designing this insane palace of shrubbery. My heels kept getting stuck in the mud—dead giveaway of a Hamptons newbie, I soon learned. (Real women wear wedges.) Since the party ended at 9, we scrambled around the maze looking for our hosts. We needed a picture with our hosts! Due to our tardiness, we’d already missed a bevy of celebrities: Donny Deutsch, Aviva Drescher, Ford Huniford, Marjorie Gubelmann, and every socialite in the entire world.

Cassandra was on a tear, desperate to have Patrick McMullan take my photo with Mr. Kemper. Finally, a beleaguered Mr. McMullan came over and I traded him a cigarette for a snap.

And then it was off to the Hamptons Players Club, where partner Frank Cilione sat us at a prime table and I ordered a lobster stuffed with lobster and topped with lobster bisque (sounds redundant but it wasn’t).

The next morning, after I devoured Ms. Seidenfeld’s leftover lobster for breakfast, she and I and our floppy hats braved the traffic back to Manhattan.

Dropping me at my apartment, Cassandra insisted I come to Jean Shafiroff’s party next week. With that, she hopped back in her Audi with a Ferrari engine and peeled away.

“You bet your [REDACTED],” I mumbled, sliding into my cool sheets, already counting the sheep that would graze on the lawn behind the high privet hedge in whichever Hampton I would one day have the good fortune to live in.