Not this again! (Getty)

Despite the rainy, windy weather that is set to hit New York tomorrow and a last-minute lawsuit filed to stop Extell from evacuating two co-op buildings adjacent to One57, plans to repair the crane broken during Hurricane Sandy are still moving forward Saturday morning.

Which means that the unfortunate residents of Alwyn Court, the landmarked building at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 58th Street, will either vacate the building voluntarily in the next few hours or face forcible eviction. The crane repair involves swinging a boom over Alwyn and two other buildings before hoisting it up the side of the unfinished tower.

The co-op board of the Alwyn reached a late-breaking settlement with Extell this morning after filing an injunction to block the emergency evacuation—an unpleasant reminder of the other emergency evacuation that ousted residents from their homes when the crane broke during Hurricane Sandy.

To see how things were going, The Observer checked in with Michael Gross, chronicler of high-end real estate, author of 740 Park and resident of Alwyn Court. Mr. Gross, who is unhappily adjusting to his unenviable, unexpected role in the city's super-luxury real estate saga, recently penned an angry op-ed in The New York Times about relative wealth and privilege in New York, questioning the Department of Building's decision to evacuate the buildings rather than force Extell to employ the slower, costlier method used at other construction sites around the city.

Mr. Gross was walking his dog in Central Park when we talked, getting ready to leave his apartment in the next few hours and check in at a nearby hotel. He said that though the details of the settlement had not been disclosed to residents at this point, his understanding was that it would involve Extell increasing its insurance coverage for the maneuver, and more compensation for residents (Extell had initially offered up to $1,500) without them having to submit receipts for all purchases.

"Frankly, I was not worried about the apartment so much as the corruption of the city and the unfairness of all this. Cranes go up and down in the city all the time and no one gets evacuated," Mr. Gross said. "Who is the city working for here? What they're doing is unsafe. The city is going to create a false emergency to save time and money. Extell has been undiplomatic, but I’m maddest at the DOB."

In response to questions about the method of repair, both Extell and the DOB told The Times that the completion of One57 was in the interest of the neighboring buildings, with an Extell spokesperson saying that "we understand, and apologize for the inconvenience caused by this disruption; however, this operation will allow for the safe completion of the building.”

Mr. Gross told us that some of his neighbors have said that they will refuse to leave Alwyn Court, even though eviction orders were posted on all floors of the building last night—including in the sub-basement where he and some of the other soon-to-be refugees store their suitcases.

And what of the comments on his Times op-ed that lambasted him for complaining about a $1,500 hotel stipend and not being reimbursed for "household necessities" from high-end retailer Gracious Home during the Sandy evacuation?

"You know what we bought from Gracious Home? We bought a travel iron for $20 because the apartment that we rented did not have one," Mr. Gross said. He added that he thought Extell should be paying residents $20,000 to leave for the weekend.

"They’re selling apartments for $90 million!" he griped. "The problem is that it’s in everyone’s interest to finish that monstrosity."

But now the Has Been, as this salmon-colored paper once crowned her, is finally making an attempt to reclaim the throne, Manhattan real estate chronicler Michael Gross reports. Mr. Gross, who recently penned an article in Avenue about the grand dame and her underpriced units, noted that one of River House's apartments—a 16-room duplex in the tower—just came on the market asking $25 million.

The other listings in the building—there are at least 13, which is rather embarrassing for a co-op that made its reputation by being impossible to get into—are all priced between $3.5 million and $12.5 million. No apartment has ever broken the $15 million mark. Which is shocking considering the undistinguished, cookie cutter condos that are asking, and getting, higher prices than that these days. Still, it's not as though River House or its sellers could be accused of low self-esteem. No, they were cowed into reducing their expectations slowly and painfully after their units languished on the market. One 14-room apartment even halved its $15 million asking price to $7.9 million between 2010 and 2012 (oh, the shame of it!).

But River House is now doing its best to be a little less stuffy, a little more friendly than it once was, as Mr. Gross discovered by speaking with co-op board president John A. Allison (the co-op board president speaking with a reporter is, in itself, quite shocking).

It is, for example, "easing" the outright ban on open houses and rescinding the rule that residents not mention the building's name in listings or the press. Moreover, the River Club, an establishment so exclusive that residents had to apply separately even after getting past the fearsome co-op board, has now opened some of its facilities to shareholders: the garden, its restaurant, room service. Realizing, perhaps, that without membership in the River Club, living on a cul-de-sac by the East River can be a little isolating.

None of these changes are radical, of course (what would One Sutton and One Beacon think?), but they are changes. The co-op that daren't speak its name is now whispering. On occasion. To a few select people.

Indeed, Brown Harris Stevens broker Caroline Guthrie boasts about the tower duplex being located in "the legendary River House" in the first sentence of her listing. And the apartment, which belonged to the late Betty Evans, is so glorious, so graciously laid-out and so flooded with eastern light that if any unit can turn River House's fortunes around, this would surely be the one.

The apartment has four wood-burning fireplaces, a library designed by Billy Baldwin, a sauna, fur storage, an original silver safe, five bedrooms, 6.5-baths and—so exciting!—a bar room overlooking the river and skyline.

Sure, 15 Central Park West might command much, much higher prices. And it might have all the latest conveniences, including a condo board with more liberal admittance policies, but do any of its apartments have a bar room? We haven't heard of one. Perhaps Mr. Gross will consider writing a book about River House after he finishes his upcoming tome on the Stern/Zeckendorf collaboration.

kvelsey@observer.com

The billionaire's building.

The opening shots of Park Avenue: Money, Power and The American Dream show the famed avenue in all its moneyed glory: idling Mercedes, impeccably coiffed society women and stern limestone facades with white-gloved doormen stationed outside like sentries. It is a vision so lofty that it is almost otherworldly—can the vast majority of Americans even conjure this up as the apex of the American dream, let alone attain it?

It’s a question that director Alex Gibney revisits repeatedly in his documentary about the growing gulf between the rich and poor and how that gulf has been widened by the political manipulations of the country's wealthiest citizens.

The press release about the film, bashed by The Observer in a previous post, was indeed misleading, but only in what it represented the film to be about: the two Park Avenues. This is not a story about the low or lowly classes. Nor is it really a story about 740 Park, the Upper East Side, the South Bronx or even New York. Those things just happen to be convenient physical touchstones.

This is a story about the richest of the rich, as it were, the residents of 740 Park—a building that is home to more billionaires than any other building in New York—and how they have managed to claim a larger and larger share of the nation's wealth, or as Mr. Gibney puts it in his opening voice-over, how they have enjoyed "unprecedented prosperity from a system they increasingly control."

As Michael Gross, the author of 740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building, which Mr. Gibney bought the rights to, wrote us earlier this fall: "we're both more interested in the perps than the vics." (Mr. Gross also acted as an adviser on the film and is interviewed extensively alongside New Yorker scribe Jane Mayer, Yale professor Jacob Hacker and Bruce Bartlett, a historian and adviser to presidents Reagan and H.W. Bush, among others.)

Indeed, the documentary unfurls like a crime story, with a raft of damning evidence revealing the shameful acts committed by the masters of the universe in service of accumulating even vaster fortunes than they already have.

At least, it's a crime story as told by talking heads. This is not a human interest film—partially as a matter of necessity. None of the men at the film's center—the Koch brothers, Stephen Schwarzman, John Thain, Sen. Chuck Schumer or Paul Ryan consented to an interview. Their onscreen presence is limited to archived videos from dinners and conventions and voice-over explanations from experts. Nor did Mr. Gibney manage to get inside the famed building.

We do get a glimpse into the hallowed halls (or at least the lobby) of 740 Park thanks to a former doorman, who talks about witnessing an eerie shift in the children of the super-rich: as little kids they joke and share special high-fives with the staff, but between the ages of 12 and 15, they shut off completely, emulating their parents' cool reserve. Also, David Koch is incredibly cheap, giving the doormen who regularly loaded his Hamptons-bound cars with heavy bags a $50 check at the end of the year.

Alas, Mr. Gibney uses such anecdotes to buttress one of his flimsier arguments, backed by a study by UC Berkeley professor Paul Piff: that wealth destroys empathy. The question of why the super-rich behave the way they do, and why they feel the need to claim even greater quantities of wealth, is a complicated (and fascinating) question that demands more in-depth exploration. As such, it's one which the film should have either mentioned in passing or left alone. Certainly, wealth can and does breed entitlement, but as Mr. Gross says at one point, "some people are just dicks."

The film includes trips to food pantries in the South Bronx and Wisconsin, an interview with a young social worker speaking about how early opportunity or the lack thereof begins to shape a life and plenty of shots of embattled-looking impoverished Bronx residents, but this all feels like window dressing for the takedown at the heart of the film.

Mr. Gibney is clearly most interested in illustrating how the nation's wealthiest have rigged the game, not only claiming a disproportionate share of the nation's wealth via devices like the carried interest tax rate, but using that wealth to fund groups and candidates who have by and large succeeded in turning the dwindling middle class against the the less fortunate, unions and each other. The latter accomplishment is arguably the largest battle won by the one-percenters in the wake of the financial crisis. After all, the great recession began with anger at greedy financial titans and foolhardy hedge funders, but somehow shifted to rage at greedy teachers and foolhardy middle-class home buyers.

And while the outcome of the most recent election at least proves that money is a deciding factor, not the deciding factor in a presidential election, dulling Mr. Gibney's argument slightly, he makes a compelling case that inequality imperils democracy and that the victims of the inequality include not only those who find themselves in the rapidly expanding underclass, but the American dream itself.

kvelsey@observer.com

Shalom Harlow of the Model Alliance (Jason Seiler)

On a rainy Wednesday evening in the middle of June, Sunshine Cinemas was bright with flashing bulbs as photographers snapped pictures of a gaggle of impossibly tall, impossibly beautiful women. The angelic onslaught was not a coincidence: they were all there to see a special screening of Girl Model, a documentary by Ashley Sabin and David Redmon that was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Girl Model follows a 13-year-old Siberian girl who wins a modeling competition and is whisked off to Tokyo, where a modeling agency has promised her fame and fortune.

The documentary paints a grim, Dickensian portrait of the unpleasant, exploitative working conditions endured by some the world’s most attractive people; the situation depicted is not at all uncommon, and the audience, made up of dozens of models—blondes, brunettes, the occasional redhead—was rapt.

After the credits, French model Rachel Blais addressed the room. Her struggles are featured in the film, and she has become a spokesperson for better treatment for fashion models, traveling to screenings and other speaking engagements. Because of her outspokenness, she noted, she is now treated like a pariah.

“I was dropped by my French agency, by my American agency ... everyone dropped me after the movie came out,” Ms. Blais told the crowd. “The only reason my Canadian agency kept me on was because I appeared on TV so much they couldn’t drop me without drawing attention. But I haven’t worked in six months.”

This is the less-than-glamorous side of the modeling world, and it’s increasingly coming to mainstream attention: behind the Photoshopped editorials and heavily made-up surfaces, the industry still relies on unsafe, exploitative labor practices and a desperate workforce of scared young women.

That, anyway, is the allegation put forth by seven-month-old advocacy group the Model Alliance, which hosted the Girl Model screening. Facing down an industry mired in secrecy and reluctant to change, the Model Alliance has nonetheless won a series of small victories. As yet another fashion week gets underway, the women behind it are hopeful the group might become the “in thing” this season.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average income for a model in America in 2010 was $32,920 a year, and though that might seem like a reasonable rate for standing around all day, consider that that is the average salary of all 1,400 registered models. The bottom 10 percent earn approximately $9.53 per hour, while the few supermodels (those that are left, anyway) skew the numbers. In 2011, the combined total of the top 10 highest-paid supermodels, according to Forbes, was just under $100 million. Almost half of that number was earned by number one on the list, Gisele Bündchen.

Of course, that figure only accounts for models who report their income properly—not those, like Girl Model’s Nadya, who have been told to lie about their age or have conditional work visas and aren’t going to be filing taxes anytime soon.

Not only is the pay meager and often late, very few employers offer models overtime. Since they are essentially freelance contractors, they aren’t provided with health insurance. Subtract out of their pay the standard 20 to 25 percent fee per gig that goes to a model’s agency, plus another 20 percent finder’s fee the agency collects from the model’s employer, as well as repayment of any advances the agency fronted, for instance, to put up young models in one of those infamously cramped ghetto colonies known as model incubators: three bunk-beds in a room, six girls in an apartment, $1,600 each for rent. Often, models end up in debt to the very people who are supposed to be making them money.

This assumes they get paid at all. In early March, 17-year-old Hailey Hasbrook complained on her Tumblr that she had worked 30 unpaid hours, some of them very late at night, in preparation for Marc Jacobs’s Fall 2012 Fashion Week show. Her post was picked up by women’s blog Jezebel, sparking outrage. Even more galling was Mr. Jacobs’s brand’s matter-of-fact response—via Twitter: “Models are paid in trade [meaning free designer clothing]. If they don’t want to work w/us, they don’t have to.”

The Council of Fashion Designers—which elected Marc Jacobs to its board five months earlier—had recently released its annual health initiative, strongly recommending that models under 16 not be hired for shows and that fittings never go past midnight. And industry guidelines aside, it is illegal under New York Labor Laws for children under 17 to work past 10 p.m. while school is in session.

Despite this flap—and in contradiction of the guidelines—Mr. Jacobs’s show included two 14-year-old models, Ondria Hardin and Thairine Garcia, who walked down the runway sporting giant, face-concealing hats and swallowed up in layers of coats and wraps. He told The New York Times, “I do the show the way I think it should be, and not the way somebody tells me it should be.”

Of course, he can say that because he knows there are plenty of young women who will accept whatever terms he sets—and never breathe a word about it. In 2004, when a class-action lawsuit was brought against 10 of the biggest fashion agencies, including Elite, Next, Wilhelmina and Ford, for price fixing, the agencies decided to settle to the tune of nearly $22 million, to be divided among “models who have or had a written or oral contract with one of the Settling Defendants.”

One problem: In the end, the court couldn’t find enough models to step forward and receive the money.

Either not enough of them knew about the lawsuit to cash in, or most of the wronged parties decided that stepping forward wasn’t worth the risk to their reputations in the industry. In the end, several million dollars went uncollected. It was donated to, among other charitable causes, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center’s Eating Disorders Program.

That climate of fear also explains why the Model Alliance promises to protect its members’ identities while speaking on their behalf.

According to its mission statement, the Model Alliance aims to provide a “platform for models and leaders in the fashion industry to organize to radically improve the conditions under which models work.” They provide services to members who have been sexually or otherwise abused, and have teamed up with the Actors’ Equity Association and the American Guild of Musical Artists to offer a “free and discreet” reporting service to put models in touch with labor attorneys and union leaders who can advise them on workplace-related issues.

The organization’s long-term goals—put forth in a Bill of Rights—include an overhaul of the fashion industry’s labor practices: provisions for health insurance, proper immigration status, negotiable commissions, harassment-free workplaces, age-limit enforcements and clearer financial contracts for working models. The group is not a union, founder Sara Ziff is quick to point out, but an advocacy group.

Sarah Ziff, founder of Model Alliance

Ms. Ziff, a tousled blonde who has walked the runway for Prada and graduated summa cum laude from Columbia, has partnered with Fordham University’s Fashion Law Institute and filled the nonprofit’s advisory board with prominent mannequins like Coco Rocha, Milla Jovovich and Shalom Harlow.

“It’s important to get the right message out there,” Ms. Ziff insisted. “It’s not about finger-pointing, or saying that this agency is bad or this client is bad. You need to give people the chance to do the right thing. It’s easy to blame, but there have been no standards. The way you get results is by sitting down with them at the table and encouraging them to improve their business practices.”

Support for the Alliance is stronger than ever, but it remains quiet. Even the donors are anonymous: Ms. Ziff told The Observer that one big-name model had donated an impressive amount when they began their organization, but only on the condition of anonymity. Supermodels whom the Alliance has reached out to, like Cindy Crawford and Tyra Banks, have been hesitant to throw their full support behind what would seem like a no-brainer cause, possibly for fear of industry retribution. Ms. Banks told us she had been contacted by Ms. Rocha about the project and expressed interest in its goals, but added, “I’ve been so crazy lately, I haven’t had time to really look at the group yet.”

Jenna Sauers, a model-cum-Jezebel blogger who serves on the Model Alliance board (and has also written for The New York Observer), told us about her own experience in the industry over a dinner of spider-crab rolls. Ms. Sauers, a New Zealand-born beauty, began as a child model for department store catalogs at eight, took three years off at 11. When she returned to the game at 14, she found herself in an entirely new business.

“Going from child modeling to adult modeling—which is a funny term, because it’s basically dressing kids up as adults—there was a new level of, ‘Well this seems slightly odd, but I guess I’ll go with it because all the adults around me are acting like it’s totally normal,’” she said. “Like the fact that once you hit 25, you’re considered ancient. It’s like Logan’s Run.’” (Ms. Sauers is 26.)

Ms. Sauers explained that the modeling business operates behind a very well-established scrim of secrecy to protect shady business practices. “The fashion industry has been so skittish about embracing public attention on anything other than its own, very well-defined terms for such a long time,” she pointed out. “Nobody is supposed to reveal what’s behind the curtain.”

This might explain the actions of Ms. Hasbrook, the unpaid Marc Jacobs model, who recanted her complaints after her Tumblr post went viral (thanks to Ms. Sauers’s posts about it on Jezebel), in terms so affectless they sounded like the videotaped confession of a POW: “I loved working and doing looks for Marc Jacobs. I was actually one of the favorite jobs I have had so far,” she wrote. “I actually preferred to be paid in trade ... There was an entire room filled with clothes and shoes that I was asked to choose from. Everything was amazing.”

In her comments at the Girl Model screening, Harvard researcher Briana Goodale helped explain Ms. Hasbrook’s flip-flop. (A paper she co-authored, Why peers reject whistleblowers: A social cognitive examination, won a grant from the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, and has established her as something of an authority on the subject.)

“What we found during our two years of research is that it takes a pretty significant amount of wrongdoing for people inside your own peer circle not to dismiss you as a tattletale,” she said.

“You actually end up attributing traits to people who are whistleblowers, depending on the level of ‘badness’ they dealt with. For example, if you take two underage models, and one speaks up about being sexually molested by a photographer, and the other speaks up about being kept past certain hours on a school night, we found that people attribute positive personality traits to the person who spoke up about the really, really bad thing. On the other hand, people will associate negative traits to the person who spoke up about staying late ... that they’re a tattletale.”

The fear of being blacklisted is so ingrained in the fashion world that only one person still working in the business agreed to speak to The Observer on the record. Supermodel Shalom Harlow is on the board of the Model Alliance. In 2007, the 33-year-old was named one of the top 15 highest-earning models in the world. (She was also the first-ever winner of Vogue/VH1’s Model of the Year, an award we honestly thought was made up for Zoolander.)

“At this stage in my career, I may not have to worry whether I’ll be paid for a job, or if I’m going to be properly fed, or if someone is going to be sexually inappropriate toward me, but I’m the exception,” she told us by phone.

“Unless you are in that minority, there is no protection, no recourse. You could try to go through your agency, but oftentimes those agencies are the perpetrators. Until the Model Alliance, that is,” she added. “Now at least there is the beginning of some systematic order for change.”

It seems to be working. When Vogue announced in May that it would no longer be using underage models in its editorials, which pay approximately $150 (so now only lucky girls aged 16 and up will be considered), it was thanks in part to a CFDA and Model Alliance partnership. The group also holds workshops like “The Business of Modeling,” in which board member Doreen Smalls—an adjunct professor at the Fashion Law Institute, who taught the first-ever course in Fashion Modeling Law—gives members advice on how to read contracts and negotiate with agencies.

But while most everyone The Observer spoke to was supportive of the Model Alliance’s goals, some were doubtful about the group’s chances at achieving massive reform.

“I just think what [Sara Ziff] is doing is very quixotic,” said Michael Gross, author of Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women. “She’s tilting at windmills. Because when you have a 14-year-old modeling, the problem isn’t the agencies. The problem isn’t the fashion magazines. It’s not Marc Jacobs. The problem is the parents. What kind of idiot parent lets their 14-year-old go off to a big city to model without being on top of them?”

Perhaps, but if the industry weren’t ready to take advantage of poor parenting, its consequences wouldn’t be so destructive. As we dive into another Fashion Week, sure to be marked by waifish girls who look—though, fingers crossed, aren’t—prepubescent, tottering down Lincoln Center’s runways, it seems impossible to imagine that until recently there was so little oversight governing the role these young swans play in the multibillion-dollar apparel trade.

Still, as one model management veteran sniffed, “What model wouldn’t want to work for Marc Jacobs? He can make your career!”

Nonetheless, The Observer has learned that Mr. Jacobs’s company has adopted a new policy for this Fashion Week. According to a rep for the designer, “all model agencies [have been] made aware” that the young women who stomp down the runway in his ultra-chic looks on September 10 and 11 will now be offered a choice: they will be paid either in trade or in monetary compensation.

Who's paying to cut the grass?

New Yorkers who live on Central Park certainly reap the benefits of parkside abodes, especially when it comes to resale values, but they're less than generous about giving back.

Only 17 percent of parkside denizens have donated to the Central Park Conservancy since 2010, according to a recent story in Crain's by Michael Gross. And Mr. Gross, chronicler of luxury New York real estate and the author of consummate building biography 740 Park should know. Not only does Mr. Gross seem to have his eye on every move that uptown dwellers make, but he's also a parkside resident himself.

And local residents certainly make good use of the most ballyhooed of all New York apartment amenities. As Mr. Gross writes:

According to the conservancy, 550,000 people live within a 10-minute walk of the park, 65% of the 40 million or so bodies who enter annually are regulars (presumably neighbors) who come once a week or more, 31% use it every day, and yet only 55,000 generous souls help pay the 85% of its budget that is raised privately.

Perhaps the most egregious show of non-support comes from 15 Central Park West. Despite the fact that developers Arthur and Will Zeckendorf bought each initial purchaser a one-year membership, only 16 out of 201 households activated them.

"Whether they live here or not, the park elevates the value of their apartments," Terri Coppersmith, the vice president for development and visitor experience told Crain's. "They need us."

Perhaps residents are just waiting for better opportunities to endow benches and lawns? After all, philanthropy doesn't count unless your name is prominently attached to it, right?

kvelsey@observer.com

Michael Gross

When we heard Michael Gross was working on yet another book about an uber-rich New York residential building, our eyes rolled ever so slightly. The Observer had read and loved his opus on 740 Park ("The World's Richest Apartment Building"), but with one in the works about 15CPW, titled The House of Outrageous Fortune,  what more could he possibly have to say about the nesting habits of the extraordinarily wealthy? Beyond what he had already written on the subject for us, of course.

A lot, it turns out.

So, is 15 Central Park West really is so different from 740 Park that it warranted an entire tome? "It couldn't be more different now could it," he said. "It's condo versus coop, Central Park West versus Park Avenue, and a 75 year old building versus a four year old building," he told The Observer by phone, apparently without irony.

"After 740 I resisted mightily the allure of doing another New York apartment house," Mr. Gross continued. "If you were looking at buildings that housed great wealth, great power and great standing in New York, at that point in 2005 they were pretty much on Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue and I really didn’t want to write the same book again."

Plus, so much had changed in such a short period of time. "We’re seven years past the publication of 740 Park, and you know, I don’t think it takes very much to understand that we’re in a very different world than the world I was writing about then. And if you're looking for the symbolic piece of real estate for the world we’re in, I can’t think of a better focus," he said of 15 Central Park West.

We pondered his point. It's true, that in the post-recession era foreigners seem to control more capital than born-and-bred New Yorkers, a fact that is certainly true at 15CPW. Within the past five or six years, the most powerful people buying New York real estate don't want time-tested coops, it seems. Rather it's the gleaming new developments that are continually closing eight figure deals.

Still, after writing 740 Park, not to mention his recently published book about real estate in Los Angeles, what motivated him to begin work on yet another residential drama? "Paying the maintenance," he told The Observer with a laugh.

eknutsen@observer.com

Michael Gross

After reveling in the publication of his new book on Los Angeles mega-mansions, Michael Gross let the Post into his own personal abode.

Naturally, the Alwyn Court apartment is prewar, and has an impressive pedigree which he was more than eager to share.

It was once the most expensive in Manhattan,” says Gross of the 12-story building at 58th Street and Seventh Avenue. “Tenants rented for $10,000 a year back in 1909. Back then, there were only two apartments per floor; after the Depression, they turned it into six.

To that end, the co-op is filled with photos by Bert Stern, Richard Avedon, Slim Aarons and William Wegman; lithographs by Larry Rivers; pieces by Raoul Dufy; and, of late, Egyptian pieces — “we love classical antiquity.”

The updated version of Model includes a new twelve page afterword called "The Last Word," according to reports. The book, which details the dark side of the modeling industry, was originally released in 1995.

Sunrise, sunset. Sunrise, sunset. Swiftly fly the years. (Getty)

Things are looking up, up, up at the World Trade Center—not even Hurricane Irene could slow down preparations for 9/11—but who ever imagined it could go from tragedy to punch line? That's what Michael Gross, who has avoided the site for years, finds in his monthly Crain's column.

Then came Bloomberg Businessweek's cover story, “The Saving of Ground Zero,” earlier this month. It not only was a great read but also made me smile—a reaction I had never associated with 9/11.

The story wasn't “funny ha ha,” as my mother used to say. It was “funny peculiar.” Yet it delighted me no end, because when developer Larry Silverstein—who controlled the entire complex before the attacks—was asked how the 10-year logjam in rebuilding the site had been broken, he replied, “The key was Condé Nast.”

[...]

But, seriously, isn't it kind of awesome that Condé Nast gets to be the key to ground zero's rebirth? Si's stable of glossies celebrates everything that the jihadists and their ilk despise. They are full of images that entice both women and men with deliciously extreme displays of freedom, and articles that shine a light on society's chaos of truths.

Let freedom be glossy!

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Also in the More of the Same department: The National Journal hiring spree continues. Editor in chief Ron Fournier announced today that he hired political columnist Beth Reinhard away from the Miami Herald to work as his chief political correspondent. Ms. Reinhard is an "old-school story-breaker and a writer of of uncommon authority and grace," Mr. Fournier said in a release.