She's living out front, with one of those cabanas to call her own.

When Nina Lorez Collins and her husband moved into 212 Columbia Heights in 2005, The Times declared that "the Manhattanization of Brooklyn took a great leap past the point of no return." One violent divorce later, Ms. Collins, a once celebrated literary agent, put the house on the market last fall. The listing bragged of "harbor views from every floor," which helped it fetch a record $11 million, the most ever paid for a home in Brooklyn Heights.

So would Ms. Collins be returning to Manhattan after her journey in the wilderness? It turns out she could not even abandon those harbor views, as she has moved down the hill to One Brooklyn Bridge Park, the hulking Jehovah's Witnesses printing plant turned condo complex.

A spacious square. (Streeteasy)

Two days after the sale of her townhouse closed, Ms. Collin's paid $3.51 million for a four bedroom condo at the development on January 19, according to a freshly filed deed. That is more than the $3.08 million asking price from the summer of 2010, though the premium not only reflects a stronger real estate market but also the inclusion of a terrace unit, one of those clever carve-outs so popular during the real estate boom—might I interest you in your own private cabana?

The unit is one of the townhouse-style homes facing the harbor, with its own private entrance and a pocket terrace. Built as a duplex, the living area and one bedroom are located on the upper floor with two more bedrooms and the master suite on the lower level spread across an ample 3,482 square feet—not quite the 7,000 footer Ms. Collins once called home, but still none too shabby. Plus, Brooklyn Bridge Park is right out front her door, no need to cross the BQE anymore to get there.

"One Brooklyn Bridge Park is a monumental building, grand in scope, scale, and style," MNS broker Rachel Poggi writers in her listing. Kind of like Ms. Collins, who has become HuffPo's own Carrie Bradshaw, writing about the travails of her friend's marriages and her own. After spending two decades in the publishing industry, Ms. Collins is now at work on a memoir of her own.

But with only four bedrooms, where will Ms. Collins' four children, whom she often writes about, stay? Perhaps the naughtiest child can take up residence in the cabana.

Want to see the place for yourself? Someone posted an incredibly thorough (and rambling) tour on YouTube.

And the cabana.

This guy is good.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

On the third anniversary of the beginning of the current Iraq war—or, as it was known in Manhattan, Monday night—a number of musicians held a “Bring ’Em Home Now” benefit concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom.

Moby was sound-checking. “Anybody that comes that’s with the artist—don’t make them wait,” said a coordinator named Josh, in a bright orange Blondie T-shirt, to a minion. The minion ran to the side door and returned with two women, a brunette and a redhead, on her heels.

“Hi, you’re with Rufus? His manager was supposed to get the tickets. I don’t have any all-access passes right now, so I’ll have to peel some off somebody,” Josh said.

“There is a list, right?” whined Redhead.

“Yeah, we’ve got the list.”

Josh huddled with his team: Where was the V.I.P. room? Where? Up on the balcony?

How did these women know Mr. Wainwright?

“We’re his publicists.”

Names?

“Uhhh, no,” the redhead scoffed. The two turned to each other and snickered. “Did you see his sound check?”

No. But there were some dancers up there.

The redhead crinkled her nose. “Dancers. Really? For who? That’s weird.”

Cindy Sheehan arrived just in time for the press conference. Does the anti-war mom find that getting arrested gets easier each time?

“Weeeeell, no,” she said. “It gets harder every time. Every time, they hurt me a little bit more. I had to spend the night in jail this last time. That wasn’t fun. It was horrible, but I don’t regret it because it was ‘Wow, what an experience!’” Her voice was surprisingly soothing without microphones. She wore no makeup, but her strawberry bob looked freshly colored.

Who had she come with?

“Myself. I’m a loser.”

Then Ms. Sheehan and some musicians signed a super-sized version of a “Bring ’Em Home” postage stamp. She went first, then Mr. Wainwright, Michael Stipe, Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner, and Steve Earle. “Who wants red?” asked Peaches, who signed her name while waving a pink “wand.”

Ms. Sheehan hit the V.I.P. room—it was on the balcony, where Long Island ice teas cost $10.

Margaret Cho watched Ms. Sheehan greet people in the warm, motherly way that she has. “I think she’s done an amazing job,” Ms. Cho said. “We’ve actually not met face to face, but we’ve talked a lot online, and you know, she’s an amazing woman, and she’s done so much to mobilize this country—and what a terrible sacrifice she’s already had to make. But what a great thing has come of it. And in so many ways, she’s like the reason the war has turned around.”

By the end of the evening’s performances—after Susan Sarandon introduced Ms. Sheehan to the crowd, and after Mr. Stipe closed the show—many of the young folks appeared to be quite drunk. “Let’s go to Schiller’s!” said one. Outside, a few especially young-looking people seemed immune from the below-freezing wind that whipped up their bare legs and into their miniskirts as they struggled into a black Xterra.

One couple was more sensibly dressed, in matching “Dick!” and “Bush!” T-shirts. How had their evening been? “Don’t ask me, I’m drunk. Ask him,” said Morgan Masterman. She nudged her hubby, Bob Graybill. “Chuck D. bumped into me at the bar,” she said.

The couple had wed in October; they had both graduated from Penn State with political-science degrees. “I work in a factory, so I’m looking for a job,” said Mr. Graybill.

“We were supposed to go into the Peace Corps, but that didn’t work out,” said Ms. Masterman. “They wanted us to wait for six months, so we decided to get jobs instead. But we’re accepted for four years, so we might go eventually.”

“Yeah, finding jobs sucks,” said Mr. Graybill.

—Amy Odell

Choice Feminisms

Last Wednesday evening, Erica Jong, the proto-feminist and author, was folded up on Georgette Mosbacher’s couch. She was receiving well-wishers like a queen with a mild case of A.D.D.

“Tomorrow I’m going to be in Boston, and on Monday I’m doing the Today show, and then I’m going to Washington and Philadelphia and God knows what,” Ms. Jong said. She clearly had a taut publicity schedule for her new book, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life. “Then a week in California. I don’t even think about it—Hi, Linda! How’re youuuu? How’re you? Oh, stop it, stop it. Hey, Harold!”

Ms. Jong was wearing black lace pants and sparkly earrings, and her shoes—they looked like black Ferragamo pumps—were on the floor in front of her. A reed-thin woman in a red skirt suit and piles of jewelry came over.

“I just want to tell you—that was a fantastic speech! I can’t wait to read the book, and I want to learn everything you have to impart!” the woman said. “I never thought of it back then. It’s hard to be as successful as you were, when you were so young, and to suddenly come back. It’s incredibly difficult.”

“It’s hard to survive it,” Ms. Jong said.

Next, the comely literary agent Nina Collins approached and sidled up to Ms. Jong on the couch.

“You were my agent, a million years ago,” said Ms. Jong.

“I was a scout,” Ms. Collins said. “Now I’m an agent.”

“Oh, right,” said Ms. Jong. She turned toward another departing fan. “Bye, sweetie! It’s lovely to see you.”

“Do you remember, we had drinks in L.A., at the Beverly Hills whatever?” Ms. Collins said.

“I know,” said Ms. Jong.

“Anyway, I can’t wait to read your new book,” Ms. Collins said. “I’ve always really loved your work, since I was a teenager.”

“Thank you!” said Ms. Jong.

The two did an awkward dance and then shared a smack on the lips.

Ms. Jong reiterated the speech she’d made earlier. “I talked about what it’s like to have a first novel”—Fear of Flying—“that sells 18 million copies around the world. And how hard it is to go on after that,” she said. “Because, you know, I was very young. Half the people wanted my underwear to sniff—men who wrote to me—and the other people wanted to hold me responsible for all the terrible things that were happening to women in the world. That they were leaving their husbands. But it was the times—Hello, Karen, how are you? You look beautiful!”

Had Ms. Jong noticed the eight million articles about “choice feminism” that had recently surfaced in every press outlet from Good Morning America to the Yale Alumni Magazine, each of them urging women to just give up on ever being able to both procreate and have a career?

“I’ve been reading them,” Ms. Jong said. She sighed. “I really think we’re gonna have to lose choice. I think we’re going to have to lose Roe to get it back.”

For many of the women at the party—of a certain age and an upper tax bracket—the choice had seemed to involve copious amounts of plastic surgery. Ms. Jong looked refreshingly normal, despite her own well-publicized dabblings with the knife, in the ocean of Botoxed foreheads and poking cheekbones and big white teeth.

“I think there’s a great blitheness about choice,” Ms. Jong continued. “I’m not saying the younger generation doesn’t appreciate it—but the wingnuts are so strong and so well organized, whereas the left is always attacking each other. We’re up against Mormons and Christian fundamentalists, the Christian Right—they’re not right, and they’re not Christians! If Jesus came back to earth and were here, he would be appalled by the people who call themselves Christians. They’re so unkind, they’re so mean, they’re so bigoted.”

Ms. Jong’s husband, Ken Burrows, came over and handed her the shoes. She slipped them onto her feet. Was it harder to be a successful woman writer than a male one?

“Are you kidding?” Ms. Jong said. “Harder? We never get the respect we deserve, we never get paid as much as men—we’re essentially treated like chattel.”

And did Ms. Jong count the number of women’s bylines among the sea of men’s names in prominent magazines?

“If I went on counting them,” Ms. Jong said, “I’d be so depressed I’d throw myself out the window.”

—Sheelah Kolhatkar

The Arcane Model

Last week, The Transom stood in line at the all-night post office on Eighth Avenue, thumbing through a glossy magazine. A pointed finger came from behind and a gravelly voice said, “That’s me.”

The magazine was open to an ad for Diesel, the clothing company. In the ad, a young, khaki-clad man yanked his brightly outfitted damsel from a leprous backdrop of camouflage print.

“This is the first time I’ve seen someone looking at that picture in public—I mean, someone that I don’t know,” said Jorge (pronounced “George”) Valdes, 26. He stands 6-foot-1 and has tousled brown hair, hazel eyes and a quick smile.

What does a model wear to the post office? “The pants that I’m wearing are Armani jeans. My shoes are Prada combat boots. And my boxers are Perry Ellis boxers. What I’m wearing under the jacket is a cashmere scarf, cashmere sweater and a normal black T-shirt. I try to keep it simple—all solid colors.” Cast over the entire ensemble was a red bomber jacket. “I think it’s European,” he said. “I bought it in a European store down in Soho—not really too sure of the name of that. As far as brand names, I’m not a junkie for brand names.”

He was there, he said, to get a money order to pay his rent.

Mr. Valdes is of Cuban and Dominican heritage and was raised in Miami. He came to New York two years ago. “I have an apartment in Greenpoint, but I live with my girlfriend over in Hell’s Kitchen. She used to be a model, and she was Miss France at one point. She was 16 at the time; now she’s 32.”

In 2004, following a thwarted attempt at finding work in Milan, Mr. Valdes said he “got fed up” with modeling and threw in the towel. A meandering path through odd jobs in different cities eventually led him back to New York. Last fall his modeling agency, DNA, sent him on a cattle call of male mannequins vying for the chance to “represent Diesel clothing.” The casting was on a Monday or a Tuesday, Mr. Valdes recalled. By that Friday, it looked like he was being given the nod.

“This was around Octoberish, like Oct. 18 or 17—I’m not too sure what the exact date was,” he said. “That weekend, my agent ended up calling me, and he ended up giving me the good news that I was going to be flying out Monday morning, out to Los Angeles, where we did the shoot.”

Now the ad has hit magazine pages, and it’s up to Mr. Valdes, or rather his likeness, to show his worth in clothing sales.

Dan Barton is the communications director of Diesel USA. He wrote in an e-mail that “the campaign is running from February to June. It is being used predominantly in female fashion books, such as Elle, Teen Vogue and Glamour.”

“I’m trying to creep up into Manhattan,” said Mr. Valdes. “This is la crème de la crème—that’s what they say. It’s the city that never sleeps. Hence, we’re at the post office at what time? At 9:25 on a Thursday night.”

—Nicholas Boston

The Media Mob: Know what yesterday was?
The Daily Transom: The day the last of my important brain cells died, right here in my office? Sort of apropos: today our fantabulous receptionist presented the theory to me that the older a man gets, the more his brain dies, solely because of his cumulative lifetime total of erections. You see?
The Media Mob: Yes! Also, apparently there is a new trend: women are buying expensive pocketbooks.
The Daily Transom: Oh god. I didn't even read Thursday Styles.
The Media Mob: "'How did this happen?' Nina Collins asked as she settled down to a lunch of miso soup and salad in downtown Manhattan. 'When did we get to this place where we spend $1,000 on a bag?'"
The Media Mob: And how did we get to this place where the non-revelatory lunch-menu celebrity profile "scene" lead is now used to open a piece that is not a profile and does not deal with a celebrity?
The Daily Transom: You're going to make me read this aren't you? You're a horrible awful man. Also, for the record, Nina Collins is totally, utterly fabulous. The woman lives large. And I'm not just saying that because she's my agents' boss.
The Media Mob: Well ain't you the Peach Festival Queen.
The Daily Transom: But, all my disclosable ties aside—and here let me reiterate my deep, luscious, and not at all fulsome appreciation of Ms. Collins—your point is well taken. This miso soup? It is filled with red herring.
The Media Mob: Like, where else are they going to start doing the celebrity-style lunch lead?
The Daily Transom: Baghdad, I hope.
The Media Mob: "It's tough when you let a team like the Angels hang around," Joe Torre said, picking at a plate of chicken fingers and a cup of chili from the clubhouse buffet table after seeing the Yankees slip into a 1-1 tie in the American League Divisional Series.
The Media Mob: "The boat looked completely normal, and all of a sudden it was upside-down in the water," said Gladys DuBois, 75, nibbling on a cheese danish and sipping Maxwell House from a styrofoam cup as she stood on the shore of Lake George, wrapped in an emergency blanket.
The Daily Transom: Or the logical progression: "Oh, it's the hardest choice in a woman's life," said the actress Shirley Maclaine. The New Age visionary and comeback queen let her fingers trace the stiff tablecloth at The Ivy. Meanwhile, across town, Dolores Mierda was preparing for her first abortion.
The Daily Transom: I blame Capote.
The Media Mob: The man or the movie?
The Daily Transom: Well, I'm not sure anyone but me saw that movie...
The Media Mob: How was it?
The Daily Transom: Essentially, it made being a nonfiction writer something comparable to, oh, being a shipper of empty eBay packages, or perhaps a grifter, or a White House employee.
The Media Mob: So it's a documentary. Speaking of Truman Capote, Guy Trebay is unhappy that models look like Kate Moss.
The Daily Transom: But Russians are the new Canadians who are the new Belgians who are the new Brazilians!
The Media Mob: Where was mean, stomping Carmen Kass from?
The Daily Transom: Carmen Kass, the chess-playing Estonian?? Who went from being Miss Paide to being Miss Jrvamma??
The Media Mob: I thought maybe she was Brazilian, because her last name sounds German. Where's Karolina Kurkova from?
The Daily Transom: Oh I'm sure she's Czech. She's my people.
The Media Mob: We strolled past her on Broadway a couple of weeks ago. She was saying "Ciao!" into her cell phone. Much better model sighting than that time we saw Giselle Bundchen down on Union Square with her bare, emaciated, lumpy skeleton back and her distinctly unerotic buttcrack showing. Weren't we reading a newspaper or something?
The Daily Transom: I miss Linda Evangelista. So does Gay Trebuy, to his credit.
The Media Mob: Yes. Her "haughty demanding beauty." As she stalked the runways with twitching human arteries dangling from the corner of her broad, elegant mouth.
The Media Mob: Meanwhile, the "Online Shopper" column spent 30-odd words EXPLAINING WHAT CRAIGSLIST--sorry, "Craigslist dot org"--is? "Craigslist.org, an online bulletin board where local buyers and sellers meet in communities--from Beijing to Boise--all around the world, listed 117,977 items for sale in the San Francisco area, where I live, with 20 described as phonographs and 155 described as record players, including . . . " So that means that 117,802 of those items have NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR PIECE.
The Media Mob: "I turned on my modem--short for 'modulator / demodulator,' a piece of equipment which allows one computer to communicate with other computers--and proceeded to 'log on' to a network of computers all over the globe, which is fittingly referred to as the 'World Wide Web.'"
The Daily Transom: Also? I don't have any joke for this, but really, really, this piece has THE WORST KICKER EVER. Her daughter didn't know record players had needles. SO SHE OF COURSE ALSO DOES NOT KNOW WHAT A 78 RPM RECORD IS. THE END.
The Media Mob: My old housemate used to have a 78 of calypso by The Charmer. Before the Charmer decided his name should be Louis Farrakhan. I read profiles of Colin Powell sometimes, about how he was such a deeply dedicated calypso fan in his youth, and I picture him going off to see the Charmer.
The Daily Transom: Well, ta da! You're in luck: The Charmer sound files.

[Calypso plays throughout the office.]

The Media Mob: So now Alex K., that critical shopper, is venturing to New Jersey. "I tossed a scarf around my neck and thought, 'Hmm, not as soft as that Hermès cashmere scarf someone left in my apartment a few years ago and that I neglected to return.' (You know who you are, and you still have my Burberry umbrella, so there.)"
The Media Mob: Seems like Alex K. is maybe trying to get her Joyce Wadler on.
The Media Mob: Nobody beats Auntie Joyce, as she demonstrated oh-so-well this week, in that piece buried at the back of House & Home, AKA the "Wait, I Thought WE Were Thursday Styles" section.
The Daily Transom: Oh, were we still talking? I was outside smoking. Much as Auntie Joyce probably is. That piece was totally amazing, no matter how nuts she is.
The Media Mob: No wonder they dumped her in the back of the paper. She'll always be a boldface name in our book. Like this: Joyce Wadler.
The Daily Transom: Not that we'd ever want God's gift, Campbell Robertson, to leave that post. Especially after today's absolute evisceration of Tim Robbins. Anyway. Jesus. Are we done?
The Media Mob: --30--