Illustration by Jason Seiler

Amid all the speculation about Barack Obama’s newfound mojo, a hotly anticipated stiffening of his political spine inspired by his decisive victory in November, a somewhat more intriguing question has scarcely been asked.

Will Michelle finally step out?

The Harvard-trained attorney has always been, for those on the right, a more threatening character than her husband. After all, Mr. Obama merely received that famous fist bump—or as Fox News had it, “terrorist fist jab”—in the moments before delivering his speech at the Democratic National Convention; Michelle initiated it. It was she who revealed that the future president woke up “snore-y and stinky” in the morning, part of the campaign’s aggressive bid to humanize him that had the side effect of further elevating her (After all, if America’s demigod wakes up less than perfect, what would she think of us?) And it was Michelle who included a line about how the nation is “just downright mean” and “guided by fear”—in her 2008 stump speech—and once notoriously allowed that she was “for the first time in my adult lifetime ... really proud of my country.” And, of course, it was Michelle who finally extended the right to “bare arms” to political spouses and, as the Times Style section put it, “spurred an epidemic of sleevelessness.”

My goodness, the guns on that woman!

Whether the infamous “whitey” video—a Holy Grail of the right, in which Michelle is said to employ the dated epithet—ever existed at all outside the fever dreams of dirty trickster Roger Stone Jr. (which it almost definitely did not), the first lady has worked hard to dispel our fears. Over the last four years, the perceived Angela Davis-style radical has been replaced by a smoothly competent political professional, whose causes seem more Lady Bird Johnson than Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Not that there haven’t been a few missteps: wearing Lanvin sneakers to a food bank, eating Shake Shack (albeit in moderation) despite her healthy-food exhortations and hugging Queen Elizabeth. In general, though, Ms. Obama has been a notably careful FLOTUS, campaigning for exercise (what could be less controversial than that?) and embodying the role of wholesome mom-in-chief. Far from reinventing the job of first lady, the first black woman to set up house in the East Wing has turned out to be something of a traditionalist. At least so far. Now, with the exigencies of a second presidential campaign behind her, some are hoping Ms. Obama will finally let her freak flag—whatever that might look like—fly.

“There’s this sense that the real Michelle Obama, this endearingly frank woman we met in the spring of 2008, is going to come back to the fore,” noted New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor. “I think any change in her during the presidency is going to be one of degree. The real change is going to be in the post-presidency. Once she’s out of the White House and her husband will no longer hold office, she truly will be liberated. She will still be a young woman, and she’ll be one of the most famous and influential women in the world.”

“For first ladies, I do think second terms tend to be a bit more interesting,” said Daily Beast fashion writer Robin Givhan, whose beat is the intersection of style and politics and who has often written about Michelle. “It was in the second term when Laura Bush spoke out about Burma. So I will be intrigued to see if Mrs. Obama decides that she’s going to add a third leg to her platform, which now is divided between the support of military personnel and the Let’s Move campaign.”

While Ms. Givhan declined to speculate as to what that third project might be, conservatives are plainly terrified. As a piece on Right Side News ominously put it, “Much like Hillary, she will be assigned more involvement in affairs of state, appointed to committees, and public appearances of a political nature will become more frequent, not to speak of a barrage of friendly television repartee on shows like The View, late night talk, and more. In essence, the grooming will begin.”

Blame Ms. Clinton for the lofty expectations: the former first lady-turned-well-liked senator-turned-presidential candidate-turned-secretary of state-turned-beloved Internet meme is the new paradigm for first ladies. (Even Laura Bush, the very picture of a traditional political spouse, went on an extensive book tour in 2010, during which she spoke out on her policy differences from her husband. Turns out she’s pro-gay marriage and supports Roe v. Wade!)

Ms. Obama, in spite of her rather rocky introduction, has the skill set of a politician, as she amply demonstrated with her 2012 Democratic National Convention speech, in which she passionately recounted the story of her early marriage and her dad’s health struggles, making Ann Romney’s tuna-salad recollections look hopelessly drab and out of touch. Though Ms. Obama was hardly the first first lady to get an advanced degree or work outside the home—Laura Bush has a master’s and was a teacher and librarian, and Nancy Davis acted in films after her marriage to Ronald Reagan—she was the first one to have a higher-profile career than her husband for a time. While Barack was working on his memoir and commuting between Chicago and Springfield as a state senator, Michelle was climbing the ladder at the University of Chicago Hospitals system; even when he became a U.S. senator, she was the spouse bringing home the real bacon. It’s not surprising that with Illinois Senator Mark Kirk up for re-election in 2016, speculation has already emerged that Michelle will make a run at the seat. A recent poll had her trouncing the Republican 51 to 40 percent. Trouble is, the first lady may not be interested.

In her book The Obamas, Ms. Kantor reported that Michelle Obama strongly considered the idea of remaining in Chicago and letting Barry turn the White House into a bachelor pad in order to allow little Sasha and Malia to continue their school year in Chicago. “It’s hard to overstate how little she wanted to go into politics,” Ms. Kantor told The Observer, “and it wasn’t just because of the family reasons she sometimes cites. She had a real objection to the nature of politics. She thought it wasn’t the right way to create social change.”

She’s disappointed liberals before. Many expected her to advocate strongly for progressive causes during her husband’s first term, but she largely kept quiet. Historian and America’s First Ladies author Betty Boyd Caroli said that she’d expected Mrs. Obama to more aggressively champion the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, for instance. “I was disappointed,” Ms. Caroli said. “I expected her to be Superwoman. But it doesn’t work that way. Enough voters, it is feared, are not ready.”

And blame Hillary Clinton for that, too, having so disastrously overreached with health-care reform. “Everybody learned a lesson from that. It’s not good to be too political as a first lady,” said Dr. Caroli. (The PR disaster was compounded by Mrs. Clinton’s maelstrom of press over everything from Whitewater to her ever-evolving hairdo, and the fact that her ambitions for a time outpaced her political talent.)

The result: Hillary entered the East Wing as a full-throated political player and left as a Vogue cover-girl and hostess.

“Hillary’s trajectory was the opposite of Michelle’s,” noted Rebecca Traister, the author of Big Girls Don’t Cry, a book about women and the 2008 election.

As for Ms. Obama, the conservative blogosphere still lights up with outrage whenever the healthy-eating crusader is seen nibbling a French fry, but the first lady’s childhood-obesity-prevention campaign Let’s Move and her advocacy on behalf of military families are not exactly Hillarycare. As Ms. Kantor noted, “There’s the question with Let’s Move about how aggressive and confrontational she was willing to be when it came to taking on corporate interests. With the military families initiative, is it rah-rah patriotic, or does it get into darker material? I’m curious to see how complete and thorough a conversation she wants to have with the country about the issues veterans face.”

In the first term, Mrs. Obama’s “mom-in-chief” moniker, derided by the left, allowed her to occupy an apolitical space. “There was some frustration among women, thinking she should do more,” said Anita McBride, former chief of staff to Laura Bush and a scholar of the history of first ladies. “But the women’s movement is about choice, and this was her choice.”

Others agree that Ms. Obama’s old-school approach during the first term was in itself somewhat radical. “I consider myself a feminist,” noted MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry. “But I’m also a critic of second-wave feminism, which was bourgeois, white middle class, and said that work done outside the home is the most liberating kind of work. That ignores the fact that through vast periods of U.S. history, black women were not provided the income or space that they could make that decision. I find it kind of subversive and interesting that a black woman with a law degree from Harvard who’d been the primary breadwinner through college said, ‘I’m going to do what generations of white women have done, do the Junior League kind of work.’”

But even Dr. Harris-Perry sees an untapped political potential in the first lady. She cited Ms. Obama’s work negotiating between the University of Chicago and the city’s South Side: “It’d be really interesting to see if she could navigate that at a higher level—bridging this gap between the powerful and well-resourced and those that are being denigrated.”

Besides, a certain distaste for politics might just turn out to be an asset, creating a sense that, should she venture into the arena, she would be doing it not because she wants to—heaven forbid—but because her country truly needs her. A “Michelle Obama 2016” T-shirt with a snazzy stars-and-bars design can be found for about $25 on Google Shopping.

Ms. Traister compared Michelle to another formerly nonpolitical person who ended up taking out a sitting Republican senator. “Elizabeth Warren is somebody who did not have a political career, who was tremendously influential in terms of how we see the chasm between rich and poor,” Ms. Traister noted. Ms. Obama, she said, “could get very active in immigration reform, she could start talking about climate change.”

Dr. Harris-Perry had a different role model in mind: a first lady who, as “a dutiful soldier,” kept silent about her disagreements with her husband during his presidency but campaigned vociferously as a conscience of the Democratic party in the years that followed: Eleanor Roosevelt. “She became the legacy; she held the Democrats’ feet to the fire. She was very active in party leadership,” Dr. Harris-Perry said, adding that Ms. Obama “might be able to be a kind of queen-maker for women running for office. I could see her on the campaign trail.”

“It’s very natural for that to be the next-step fantasy for people who appreciate her brilliance—oh, she’ll run for office!” Ms. Traister said. “One thing all those who want her to run could think about is other jobs she may want to have in her life, using her own model of working within communities. We need to be aware of is not letting her identity as a former first lady hold her back from having an independent life.”

Then again, you never know. Back in the 1990s, Dr. Caroli predicted that Hillary Clinton would never run for office: “She didn’t look at ease with groups of people,” she said. “But people change!”

And if they don’t, there’s always Sasha and Malia. 2040, perhaps?

With weeks of media hype and White House blowback muddying the water surrounding The Obamas, one can imagine how the freelancer assigned to review it might not be able to pass up the opportunity to flay a Times reporter in her own backyard. (See Michael Kinsley's review of Times documentary Page One.) But Mr. Brinkley's review wasn't negative, it was just dismissive.

"Call it chick nonfiction, if you will," he wrote. (We probably won't, thanks.) "This book is not about politics, it’s about marriage, or at least one marriage, and a notably successful one at that."

Ah, books about politics are regular nonfiction and books about marriage are chick nonfiction. Got it. But what, according to Professor Brinkley, are the conventions of this newfound genre?

If The Obamas is an exemplar, chick nonfiction is a home for "dimly controversial palace intrigue" that "reconstructs a half-dozen or so strange, gossipy moments that hardly hold up as serious journalism, but provide insight nonetheless."

In other words, finding unreported, if minor, controversies and reconstructing them through conversations constitutes "insightful" chick nonfiction, which is not the same thing as "serious journalism." (We wonder if Ryan Lizza has been informed.)

We suppose Ms. Kantor (a reportorial Wunderkind, Mr. Brinkley says) was overjoyed to hear she has "gumption," at least. We're pretty sure that's, like, the chick nonfiction equivalent of talent.

We haven't managed to get our hands on a copy yet, but David Remnick's excellent review in this week's New Yorker relayed the anecdote:

"Two white aides objected, saying that having the First Lady appear in Vogue, inevitably dressed in expensive designer clothing, would look unfeeling when so many people were living in misery. Two black advisers, Valerie Jarrett and Desiree Rogers, argued that, on the contrary, having an educated, attractive African-American First Lady on the cover of Vogue could be a source of inspiration, and counteract a plenitude of negative images. In the end, Obama posed for the magazine wearing clothes from both a young American designer she helped discover, Jason Wu, and J. Crew."

As for whether Vogue editor Anna Wintour's fundraising for the Obamas played a role in her decision, we'll have to wait for the book.

Kids today! Mr. Lieber reports that he was flabbergasted, but that his wifeTimes journalist and former power punk Jodi Kantor—had an answer. She calmly explained "that if we had spent money on a second home, our daughter wouldn’t have been able to go to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival this year or on a beach vacation."

The lesson of the week, obviously, is that parenting is hard, even true for adults with extremely comfortable living situations: Mr. Lieber ends his column with the story of two men whose children complained about extra real estate.

According to several sources, Ms. Kantor's book will draw on the three years of reporting she has done since giving up the editorship of The Times' Arts & Leisure section, in 2005. During the campaign, Ms. Kantor produced a number of biographical stories about the president and his inner circle, including one on his time at the head of the Harvard Law Review, one on his career as a law professor, one on his basketball-playing and one on how his friends were bracing themselves for his presidency.

This follows the Times Magazine cover story that Kantor wrote on the Obamas' marriage last month.

The deal was the result of a heated citywide auction, and was brokered by independent lit agent Elyse Cheney. It comes on the heels of the 34-year-old reporter’s New York Times Magazine cover story on the Obamas’ marriage, which argued that “the Obamas mix politics and romance in a way that no first couple quite have before.”

It could not be determined whether Ms. Kantor has secured the Obamas’ cooperation, but the fact that her story featured an extensive interview with them in the Oval Office seemed to indicate that she is going into the project with a good working relationship with them.

According to several sources, Ms. Kantor’s book will draw on the three years of reporting she has done since giving up the editorship of The Times’ Arts & Leisure section, in 2005. During the campaign, Ms. Kantor produced a number of biographical stories about the president and his inner circle, including one on his time at the head of the Harvard Law Review, one on his career as a law professor, one on his basketball-playing and one on how his friends were bracing themselves for his presidency.

Ms. Kantor’s book will be edited by Little, Brown editor Geoff Shandler, who is also her longtime friend. Mr. Shandler declined to comment on the deal, as did Ms. Kantor and her agent.

More from Leon Neyfakh:

Virginia Heffernan Proposes Self as Sontag of the Internet

Drudge's Henchman Hits Bigtime with Book

Massive Times Mag Katrina Piece Could Be Book

At the beginning of the presentation, Mr. Nagourney discussed the recent endorsement of Rudy Giuliani by Pat Robertson as "freaky," "weird" and "a stunt." He also echoed a widespread criticism of Republican candidate Fred Thomspon, saying "I really think he's just not that into it."

At one point, Times assistant managing editor Rick Berke asked reporter Patrick Healy, who covers Hillary Clinton, whether the New York senator has forgiven him for the notorious A1 exegesis of the Clinton marriage he wrote last year. "No," Mr. Healy replied.

"She's never quite sure what questions are going to come out of my mouth," Mr. Healy continued. "We have these moments where her people have to assess beforehand, well is there anything you're going to spring on her?" For instance, will there be a "question on marriage for her in a health care interview."

"It's really complicated," he continued. "She thinks of The Times as her hometown newspaper and she also sees its readers as her people, by and large -- not only as New Yorkers, but also as Democrats around the country. So she cares a lot about everything -- what's on the blogs, what's on page 1. She can be very critical."

Referring to the crowds in Iowa, Mr. Nagourney noted: "The average age was about 64." You could say the same about last night's event. The discussion was endlessly promoted on WQXR, a favorite of the over-50 crowd, and the audience grew visibly irritated when it hit the two-hour mark. When Mr. Berke asked how many people in the audience read The Caucus, The Times' most popular blog, four people raised their hands.

Afterwards, salted peanuts and Blackstone wine was served for the few stragglers willing to stick around. Eventually, Mr. Berke and Mr. Healy, in separate groups, were the last Times staffers standing.

“He’s an institution,” said one. “He’s a matchmaker!” said another. And: “He’s insane!”

“I swore I wouldn’t speak to you tonight,” Mr. Gerovitz told me, with his characteristic acidity. He dressed natty-casual in a blazer and jeans, his delicate-framed glasses perched atop his head—Mr. Gerovitz has one of those blank-slate poker faces instantly transformed by a grin. The broker implied that the evening was supposed to be about pleasure, not business. Allan M. Gerovitz—the Man Who Owns Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, some say—was trying to throw himself a party.

Most New Yorkers regard real-estate brokers as gutter scum; Brooklynites revere Mr. Gerovitz with a bizarre, often fearful obsessiveness. For over 20 years, Mr. Gerovitz has been the one-man co-op board for a string of random, pretty and pricy floor-throughs that have one big thing in common: They’re all inhabited by people deemed “good” by Mr. Gerovitz in buildings owned by landlords deemed “good” by him, too.

A neighborhood of Good People! Even with so many lawyers, so many media people, so many jewelry makers! It is Mr. Gerovitz who has overseen the change of neighborhoods into Manhattanized paradises for the bespectacled.

“It’s like stepping into another dimension. You think there must be some place where all the decent apartments are hiding,” said the novelist Susan Choi, who showed up at the party later. “When we worked with Allan, we thought, ‘Oh, this is where they are!’”

It works like this, or once upon a time it did: You decide to move to Brooklyn. Someone says, “Go see Allan.” Their confidence impresses you, and you think, “Yay!” And then come the more difficult instructions: “But be very nice, and say I referred you and— Jesus Christ!—be on time. He’ll only help you if he likes you.”

You will be offended in advance and return to your comfortable despair. (What indignity—to be rejected by someone you desperately want to give money to!) Then they’ll say again, “But, really, go see Allan.”

And perhaps you too shall rent 700 square feet near the subway. After a bit of ritual suffering, that is. (I know. He found me my first place.)

Mr. Gerovitz had divided his party into two shifts: landlords and renters. “You don’t often see a flamboyant guy like him hanging out with Italian guys, but there they are,” a former client said. At the party, men in floral button-downs and shorts and ladies in print dresses and pumps milled around, basking in their “I Own Property” confidence. A table of presents was packed—wine, cards, pretty gift baggies, some from as far as Martha’s Vineyard. A large blue hand-painted banner declared, “It’s About Us!” Signed: “AMG.”

The invitation had also declared “It’s About Us!” (The front read “The Party You’ve Requested.”) “Us!” apparently referred to all of Prudential Douglas Elliman, the enormous real-estate firm that bought mom-and-pop Marilyn A. Donahue Real Estate, Mr. Gerovitz’s longtime home, a few years ago.

But celebrating Allan, who endured quite a few changes during the corporate transition (technology, seminars, suits), seemed to be the point. At such a party, Mr. Gerovitz could show his new co-workers the result of two decades of work. And he could show the neighborhood that his man-of-the-street image hadn’t gone the way of Corcoran.

“He’s more like a matchmaker,” said Elizabeth Betteil, who’s lived on Henry Street for seven years. She and her husband admitted they’d rather charge under-market rates, as Allan suggests, than work with any other broker. “We told him we wanted a single female; he came back with a man with a child. He’s found us perfect tenants. Allan’s the reason I work in the industry.”

Laura James, a fund-raiser who’s owned in Carroll Gardens since the 80s, also invoked Cupid. “He’s the only broker I give an exclusive to; I love all my tenants,” she said. “Julianna Margulies was a tenant of mine.”

At some point in the evening, a younger and more boisterous group of people had gathered together, talking loudly, throwing their heads back, gesticulating in exaggeratedly joyful ways, every now and then pretending to dance. These were the Douglas Elliman brokers. Marilyn Donahue, Mr. Gerovitz’s old boss, dutifully led me to their new boss, Dottie Herman, the C.E.O. of Elliman. She was tan and blond, and dressed in a white blazer and white heels; a zebra-ish print skirt swung somewhere in between.

“Tell her how many rentals you do!” someone said to Mr. Gerovitz. “One hundred and fifty a year!”

“The cell phone! He has a cell phone!” Ms. Herman said of Mr. Gerovitz, who someone had dragged over.

“I never used a cell phone before. I hate cell phones,” he said.

“One hundred and fifty apartments?” I said.

“One hundred and twenty, 150,” he said.

“What’s normal?”

“Thirty,” another guy said.

“Is this true?”

“He’s an icon. An icon!” Ms. Herman said. “In rentals.”

Real-estate brokers are chatty and tiring, so I sat down next to three middle-aged native Brooklynites. They were not going to the French bistro Bar Tabac. “I’m hungry, you hungry?” “I’m hungry.” “We’ll go to the dinah.” “The appetizas didn’t quite do it!” “You got a big appetite!” “Where will we go?” “The dinah! I said, the dinah across the street!”

A young lawyer named Rachel Zublatt showed up. Before finding her and her boyfriend Andrew their apartment on Baltic between Court and Smith, Mr. Gerovitz said to her: “I think you’re a strong couple—you’re a little too loud and he balances that.” Andrew, standing nearby, pretended to choke to death.

“We canceled a trip to Napa to take this apartment,” Ms. Zublatt said gravely.

A FEW DAYS LATER IN HIS OFFICE, Mr. Gerovitz was only too happy to dwell on his customers’ satisfaction. And, as if it has been staged, a woman eventually shuffled in bearing gifts: She’d painted him a small watercolor. “See, this is why I needed a new apartment. I do these on my floor,” she said.

“Look at this! Look at this! Right in front of the reporter!” he exclaimed, grinning broadly. Mr. Gerovitz happily pointed out his new gray-blue Theory blazer, found after three and a half hours at Bloomingdale’s, and sipped on a Dr. Pepper. He merely smiled when asked his age. At one point, he put his bare feet on the desk. Books were lined up: The Tipping Point, Change the Way You See Everything, Ken Blanchard’s Raving Fans, Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi. When I had first stepped into Mr. Gerovitz’s office, as a client, some years ago, the desk had been decorated with thank-you letters. They were gone.

“A couple of years ago, I threw about 100 letters out,” he said, citing depression. But Mr. Gerovitz eventually revealed two binders stuffed with thank-you letters; he encourages clients to write in. One was from Ms. Choi, printed on New Yorker letterhead and titled “Annals of Apartment Hunting.” Another was from the novelist Rick Moody (“P.S. Book collectors pay money for my signature, so save this letter.”)

Mr. Gerovitz laid out his philosophy. He gives weight to referrals and repeaters. He demands that clients see no other brokers. When people come to see him, they must pass “sit-down time,” in which he figures out why they’re moving and what their needs are: And the couple counseling? “I don’t want to see one person dragged into an apartment that won’t be good for them,” he said. Lastly: “The most important thing,” he said, “is that people don’t overspend so they can save money and buy eventually.”

As for landlords, he’s stopped working with them if they aren’t up to snuff. If they reject someone with a baby, “I read them the riot act,” he said. Once, he told a landlord to spend more time with her noisemaking child. “It’s nice that everybody doesn’t feel they have to gouge,” he said. “It’s going to be pretty boring around here if everybody pays over $2,000 in rent—that’s not the kind of neighborhood I want to live in.

“I like to like the customer. And if somebody is like this”—he turned his nose up with his pointer finger—“it doesn’t work for me,” he said, and acknowledged his own blue-collar roots. He’s from Bloomfield, Conn.

But what about the yelling?

“Yeah,” he said, matter-of-factly. “It’s fair, as long as you’re tough on everyone. I want to believe your story, to learn what I’m hearing is real. So I push a little bit.”

THE INITIAL VISIT TO MR. GEROVITZ'S involves a combination of demands, suspicion and odd insults. And some people—frightened, angry—never go back.

“There’s something Machiavellian about what he does,” said one former client, who added that the broker “worked a fucking miracle” for him. “It’s 60-40: his own craziness and the Machiavellian thing. His way of testing your reliability is to press you, and it isn’t pleasant …. A lot of kids who come and want to live in Brooklyn, and they think they know everything about the world because they read Gawker, and they want a real-estate broker to be a certain way—his method goes against that grain.”

In my case, Mr. Gerovitz took note of my height (I’m tall). One meeting, he didn’t like my hat; the next, it was my skirt that disappointed him. A friend recalled the time the broker called him a “pig” in Yiddish—merely for wondering if there were any places in the neighborhood closer to his partner’s work.

But rarely is the thick-skinned Allanite disappointed with their apartment. Mr. Gerovitz is typically insightful enough to land a client a dwelling on the first try, often in mere hours and—most surprisingly in this post-gentrification depression era—for a relatively decent price. (“Suzy,” he said to me like a game-show host, “I think I have the apartment for you.”)

The referrals help. Ms. Choi hired Mr. Gerovitz on novelist Francisco Goldman’s word; Mr. Goldman, by e-mail from Mexico, expressed guilt for having not visited Mr. Gerovitz in a while. (Mr. Gerovitz is good at eliciting guilt.) Of Brooklyn, it’s tough to say which came first, the writers or Mr. Gerovitz.

But it’s true that he likes “creative types.” Mr. Gerovitz particularly loves New York Times Magazine editor Alex Star, who used Mr. Gerovitz twice, and recommended Mr. Gerovitz to New Yorker writer Alex Ross.

Mr. Ross, in turn, said that during his introductory interview with Mr. Gerovitz, he met Ted Koppel, who’d come into the office with his son. “It’s the closest I came to being a guest on Nightline,” Mr. Ross said. He recalled a bit of dialogue from the day: “Mr. Koppel, this is Alex Ross. He writes for New York magazine,” said Mr. Gerovitz. “Indeed!” said Mr. Koppel. “Uh, actually, The New Yorker,” said Mr. Ross. “Well, I won’t hold that against you,” said Mr. Koppel.

Urban legend has it that another magazine writer was thrown out of Mr. Gerovitz’s car. A couple of people suggested it was Mr. Ross (it was not). Instead, this unfortunate writer, who requested anonymity, clarified that “it was not quite that dramatic,” but that after seeing three apartments and finding them sub-par, Mr. Gerovitz did in fact say, “That’s it! You’re hopeless! Get out of my car!”

New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor endured a sort of rental bake-off with other potential clients, in which the landlord got to choose who they liked better—as they anxiously stood around in the landlord’s living room. On another occasion, back in the slightly sketchier late 90’s, Ms. Kantor, just out of college, had brought her mother along on the hunt. Ms. Kantor hesitated before jumping at an apartment that Mr. Gerovitz had shown them. “Your daughter is a princess!” Mr. Gerovitz said. “If my daughter were a princess,” Kantor mère replied, “she wouldn’t be looking in this neighborhood.”

Sadly, Ms. Kantor didn’t make it to the party, though she expressed affection for Mr. Gerovitz. Two journalism types who did show up for the late-night festivities were New York magazine editor Jared Hohlt (who also said it might have been the ubiquitous Mr. Ross who recommended him, but he’s not sure) and reporter Felipe Ossa.

“When he met me and my boyfriend, Allan declared that I was the ‘dry white wine of the relationship,’” Mr. Hohlt said later by e-mail, “which wasn’t exactly flattering but wasn’t entirely inaccurate, either.”

Mr. Gerovitz was right about my hat, too. Perhaps that’s why he did not invite me to the party, but word travels fast in his weird sub-community. That night, across the room, I spotted the woman who rents to my friends, the ones who told me to go through Mr. Gerovitz. And standing outside the restaurant later, the music having faded from Motown to the Killers, I ran into someone I’d sent along to him: Mina Mishrikey, a 28-year-old sales trader.

Inside, Mr. Mishrikey introduced me to two lawyers he’d just met: Vivian Huelgo, 33, and Emilia Sicilia, 32. “We totally love Allan,” Ms. Huelgo said. “We developed a relationship—we even asked him about single men.”

I mentioned this to Mr. Gerovitz later. “Well, you can say: I’m looking too,” he said. “I’m ready.”

“He’s an institution,” said one. “He’s a matchmaker!” said another. And: “He’s insane!”

“I swore I wouldn’t speak to you tonight,” Mr. Gerovitz told me, with his characteristic acidity. He dressed natty-casual in a blazer and jeans, his delicate-framed glasses perched atop his head—Mr. Gerovitz has one of those blank-slate poker faces instantly transformed by a grin. The broker implied that the evening was supposed to be about pleasure, not business. Allan M. Gerovitz—the Man Who Owns Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, some say—was trying to throw himself a party.

Most New Yorkers regard real-estate brokers as gutter scum; Brooklynites revere Mr. Gerovitz with a bizarre, often fearful obsessiveness. For over 20 years, Mr. Gerovitz has been the one-man co-op board for a string of random, pretty and pricy floor-throughs that have one big thing in common: They’re all inhabited by people deemed “good” by Mr. Gerovitz in buildings owned by landlords deemed “good” by him, too.

A neighborhood of Good People! Even with so many lawyers, so many media people, so many jewelry makers! It is Mr. Gerovitz who has overseen the change of neighborhoods into Manhattanized paradises for the bespectacled.

“It’s like stepping into another dimension. You think there must be some place where all the decent apartments are hiding,” said the novelist Susan Choi, who showed up at the party later. “When we worked with Allan, we thought, ‘Oh, this is where they are!’”

It works like this, or once upon a time it did: You decide to move to Brooklyn. Someone says, “Go see Allan.” Their confidence impresses you, and you think, “Yay!” And then come the more difficult instructions: “But be very nice, and say I referred you and—Jesus Christ!—be on time. He’ll only help you if he likes you.”

You will be offended in advance and return to your comfortable despair. (What indignity—to be rejected by someone you desperately want to give money to!) Then they’ll say again, “But, really, go see Allan.”

And perhaps you too shall rent 700 square feet near the subway. After a bit of ritual suffering, that is. (I know. He found me my first place.)

Mr. Gerovitz had divided his party into two shifts: landlords and renters. “You don’t often see a flamboyant guy like him hanging out with Italian guys, but there they are,” a former client said. At the party, men in floral button-downs and shorts and ladies in print dresses and pumps milled around, basking in their “I Own Property” confidence. A table of presents was packed—wine, cards, pretty gift baggies, some from as far as Martha’s Vineyard. A large blue hand-painted banner declared, “It’s About Us!” Signed: “AMG.”

The invitation had also declared “It’s About Us!” (The front read “The Party You’ve Requested.”) “Us!” apparently referred to all of Prudential Douglas Elliman, the enormous real-estate firm that bought mom-and-pop Marilyn A. Donahue Real Estate, Mr. Gerovitz’s longtime home, a few years ago.

But celebrating Allan, who endured quite a few changes during the corporate transition (technology, seminars, suits), seemed to be the point. At such a party, Mr. Gerovitz could show his new co-workers the result of two decades of work. And he could show the neighborhood that his man-of-the-street image hadn’t gone the way of Corcoran.

“He’s more like a matchmaker,” said Elizabeth Betteil, who’s lived on Henry Street for seven years. She and her husband admitted they’d rather charge under-market rates, as Allan suggests, than work with any other broker. “We told him we wanted a single female; he came back with a man with a child. He’s found us perfect tenants. Allan’s the reason I work in the industry.”

Laura James, a fund-raiser who’s owned in Carroll Gardens since the 80s, also invoked Cupid. “He’s the only broker I give an exclusive to; I love all my tenants,” she said. “Julianna Margulies was a tenant of mine.”

At some point in the evening, a younger and more boisterous group of people had gathered together, talking loudly, throwing their heads back, gesticulating in exaggeratedly joyful ways, every now and then pretending to dance. These were the Douglas Elliman brokers. Marilyn Donahue, Mr. Gerovitz’s old boss, dutifully led me to their new boss, Dottie Herman, the C.E.O. of Elliman. She was tan and blond, and dressed in a white blazer and white heels; a zebra-ish print skirt swung somewhere in between.

“Tell her how many rentals you do!” someone said to Mr. Gerovitz. “One hundred and fifty a year!”

“The cell phone! He has a cell phone!” Ms. Herman said of Mr. Gerovitz, who someone had dragged over.

“I never used a cell phone before. I hate cell phones,” he said.

“One hundred and fifty apartments?” I said.

“One hundred and twenty, 150,” he said.

“What’s normal?”

“Thirty,” another guy said.

“Is this true?”

“He’s an icon. An icon!” Ms. Herman said. “In rentals.”

Real-estate brokers are chatty and tiring, so I sat down next to three middle-aged native Brooklynites. They were not going to the French bistro Bar Tabac. “I’m hungry, you hungry?” “I’m hungry.” “We’ll go to the dinah.” “The appetizas didn’t quite do it!” “You got a big appetite!” “Where will we go?” “The dinah! I said, the dinah across the street!”

A young lawyer named Rachel Zublatt showed up. Before finding her and her boyfriend Andrew their apartment on Baltic between Court and Smith, Mr. Gerovitz said to her: “I think you’re a strong couple—you’re a little too loud and he balances that.” Andrew, standing nearby, pretended to choke to death.

“We canceled a trip to Napa to take this apartment,” Ms. Zublatt said gravely.

A FEW DAYS LATER IN HIS OFFICE, Mr. Gerovitz was only too happy to dwell on his customers’ satisfaction. And, as if it has been staged, a woman eventually shuffled in bearing gifts: She’d painted him a small watercolor. “See, this is why I needed a new apartment. I do these on my floor,” she said.

“Look at this! Look at this! Right in front of the reporter!” he exclaimed, grinning broadly. Mr. Gerovitz happily pointed out his new gray-blue Theory blazer, found after three and a half hours at Bloomingdale’s, and sipped on a Dr. Pepper. He merely smiled when asked his age. At one point, he put his bare feet on the desk. Books were lined up: The Tipping Point, Change the Way You See Everything, Ken Blanchard’s Raving Fans, Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi. When I had first stepped into Mr. Gerovitz’s office, as a client, some years ago, the desk had been decorated with thank-you letters. They were gone.

“A couple of years ago, I threw about 100 letters out,” he said, citing depression. But Mr. Gerovitz eventually revealed two binders stuffed with thank-you letters; he encourages clients to write in. One was from Ms. Choi, printed on New Yorker letterhead and titled “Annals of Apartment Hunting.” Another was from the novelist Rick Moody (“P.S. Book collectors pay money for my signature, so save this letter.”)

Mr. Gerovitz laid out his philosophy. He gives weight to referrals and repeaters. He demands that clients see no other brokers. When people come to see him, they must pass “sit-down time,” in which he figures out why they’re moving and what their needs are: And the couple counseling? “I don’t want to see one person dragged into an apartment that won’t be good for them,” he said. Lastly: “The most important thing,” he said, “is that people don’t overspend so they can save money and buy eventually.”

As for landlords, he’s stopped working with them if they aren’t up to snuff. If they reject someone with a baby, “I read them the riot act,” he said. Once, he told a landlord to spend more time with her noisemaking child. “It’s nice that everybody doesn’t feel they have to gouge,” he said. “It’s going to be pretty boring around here if everybody pays over $2,000 in rent—that’s not the kind of neighborhood I want to live in.

“I like to like the customer. And if somebody is like this”—he turned his nose up with his pointer finger—“it doesn’t work for me,” he said, and acknowledged his own blue-collar roots. He’s from Bloomfield, Conn.

But what about the yelling?

“Yeah,” he said, matter-of-factly. “It’s fair, as long as you’re tough on everyone. I want to believe your story, to learn what I’m hearing is real. So I push a little bit.”

THE INITIAL VISIT TO MR. GEROVITZ'S involves a combination of demands, suspicion and odd insults. And some people—frightened, angry—never go back.

“There’s something Machiavellian about what he does,” said one former client, who added that the broker “worked a fucking miracle” for him. “It’s 60-40: his own craziness and the Machiavellian thing. His way of testing your reliability is to press you, and it isn’t pleasant …. A lot of kids who come and want to live in Brooklyn, and they think they know everything about the world because they read Gawker, and they want a real-estate broker to be a certain way—his method goes against that grain.”

In my case, Mr. Gerovitz took note of my height (I’m tall). One meeting, he didn’t like my hat; the next, it was my skirt that disappointed him. A friend recalled the time the broker called him a “pig” in Yiddish—merely for wondering if there were any places in the neighborhood closer to his partner’s work.

But rarely is the thick-skinned Allanite disappointed with their apartment. Mr. Gerovitz is typically insightful enough to land a client a dwelling on the first try, often in mere hours and—most surprisingly in this post-gentrification depression era—for a relatively decent price. (“Suzy,” he said to me like a game-show host, “I think I have the apartment for you.”)

The referrals help. Ms. Choi hired Mr. Gerovitz on novelist Francisco Goldman’s word; Mr. Goldman, by e-mail from Mexico, expressed guilt for having not visited Mr. Gerovitz in a while. (Mr. Gerovitz is good at eliciting guilt.) Of Brooklyn, it’s tough to say which came first, the writers or Mr. Gerovitz.

But it’s true that he likes “creative types.” Mr. Gerovitz particularly loves New York Times Magazine editor Alex Star, who used Mr. Gerovitz twice, and recommended Mr. Gerovitz to New Yorker writer Alex Ross.

Mr. Ross, in turn, said that during his introductory interview with Mr. Gerovitz, he met Ted Koppel, who’d come into the office with his son. “It’s the closest I came to being a guest on Nightline,” Mr. Ross said. He recalled a bit of dialogue from the day: “Mr. Koppel, this is Alex Ross. He writes for New York magazine,” said Mr. Gerovitz. “Indeed!” said Mr. Koppel. “Uh, actually, The New Yorker,” said Mr. Ross. “Well, I won’t hold that against you,” said Mr. Koppel.

Urban legend has it that another magazine writer was thrown out of Mr. Gerovitz’s car. A couple of people suggested it was Mr. Ross (it was not). Instead, this unfortunate writer, who requested anonymity, clarified that “it was not quite that dramatic,” but that after seeing three apartments and finding them sub-par, Mr. Gerovitz did in fact say, “That’s it! You’re hopeless! Get out of my car!”

New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor endured a sort of rental bake-off with other potential clients, in which the landlord got to choose who they liked better—as they anxiously stood around in the landlord’s living room. On another occasion, back in the slightly sketchier late 90’s, Ms. Kantor, just out of college, had brought her mother along on the hunt. Ms. Kantor hesitated before jumping at an apartment that Mr. Gerovitz had shown them. “Your daughter is a princess!” Mr. Gerovitz said. “If my daughter were a princess,” Kantor mère replied, “she wouldn’t be looking in this neighborhood.”

Sadly, Ms. Kantor didn’t make it to the party, though she expressed affection for Mr. Gerovitz. Two journalism types who did show up for the late-night festivities were New York magazine editor Jared Hohlt (who also said it might have been the ubiquitous Mr. Ross who recommended him, but he’s not sure) and reporter Felipe Ossa.

“When he met me and my boyfriend, Allan declared that I was the ‘dry white wine of the relationship,’” Mr. Hohlt said later by e-mail, “which wasn’t exactly flattering but wasn’t entirely inaccurate, either.”

Mr. Gerovitz was right about my hat, too. Perhaps that’s why he did not invite me to the party, but word travels fast in his weird sub-community. That night, across the room, I spotted the woman who rents to my friends, the ones who told me to go through Mr. Gerovitz. And standing outside the restaurant later, the music having faded from Motown to the Killers, I ran into someone I’d sent along to him: Mina Mishrikey, a 28-year-old sales trader.

Inside, Mr. Mishrikey introduced me to two lawyers he’d just met: Vivian Huelgo, 33, and Emilia Sicilia, 32. “We totally love Allan,” Ms. Huelgo said. “We developed a relationship—we even asked him about single men.”

I mentioned this to Mr. Gerovitz later. “Well, you can say: I’m looking too,” he said. “I’m ready.”

I am pleased to report that Arts & Leisure has a new editor. She is Ariel Kaminer.

Ariel was deputy editor of the section under Jodi Kantor and, before that, an editor on the Magazine under Adam Moss. She brings to the corner office of A&L a prodigious talent for developing ideas and writers and a keen eye for the changing currents of American and international culture. She knows the terrain and the horses riding upon it. And she has a fast wit and immense patience, two traits that will prove helpful as she works with me, Jim, and the subject area editors to realize the final chapter of the Culture Desk's reorganization: full integration of Arts & Leisure into the department's affairs.

Clues to what sort of things to look for in the Kaminer era can be found in the annals of TimesPast: provocative critical essays from our critics (think of Michael Kimmelman on museums and money, or Kelefa Sanneh on rockism); and richly marinated narrative journalism of the sort so often delivered to our brunch tables by Dan Wakin, Randy Kennedy, and Jesses Green and McKinley, among others.

Ariel is a champion of excellence. She is an enemy of the mundane.

Please welcome her.

Sam