By George Gurley 1/13/09 4:50pm

My Survival Kit for When the Evildoers Strike Next

So the evildoers are gonna get us again. I can feel it; they’re getting ready. Leon Panetta for C.I.A. head? Were Warren Christopher and Richard Simmons both unavailable? Not to worry, I’m sure the incoming secretary of state will have the terrorists quaking in their boots, postponing plans to make kaboomies. I’ve been watching the Read More

By Joe Pompeo 1/06/09 1:46pm

Elephant Polo, Anyone?

There were five seconds left in the World Elephant Polo Association’s amateur division championship in southern Nepal, and the New York Blue Elephant Polo Club was up 5-4 over the Tiger Tops Tuskers. It was a stifling Friday afternoon in December, and the New York Blue was moments away from becoming the first American elephant Read More

By Jason Horowitz 12/16/08 5:28pm

The Tuesday the President-Elect Wore a New Hat

Barack Obama gives stirring speeches, outmaneuvers political competition and makes history as the first black president of the United States, prepared to govern with a bold agenda in a time of great national and international peril. He also works out, changes clothes, rides in cars and goes home.

It is those Read More

By George Gurley 12/09/08 5:20pm

Sex and Food Face Off at Le Cirque

Last week, I was at a party at the sophisticated Le Cirque restaurant on East 58th Street street for the HBO documentary Le Cirque: A Table in Heaven. I asked fabled Le Cirque owner Sirio Maccioni, a very elegant man who smelled great, what happens when his beautiful wife of 38 years, Egidiana, sees hot Read More

By Hillary Frey 12/02/08 4:34pm

Dinner Parties Are for Suckers

If you’re looking to save money during this recession, you may have considered quitting those date night cocktails-that-turn-into-meals at Craftbar ($100-plus) or those Saturday meat-extravaganzas with pals at Employees Only ($200-plus) or the special occasion (I didn’t get laid off!) tasting menu events at WD-50 (with drinks, $300-plus). (All numbers cited here, by the way, Read More

By Sara Vilkomerson 12/02/08 4:32pm

Hair-d Times

The recession wasn’t officially declared until Monday, Dec. 1 (tell us something we don’t know, fellas!), but the city has been gripped by an epidemic of financial anxiety and belt-tightening since at least September. Beyond the ambiguous if constant dread of will-I-lose-my-job-and-my-apartment-and-be-forced-to-eat-baked-beans-out-of-a-can, most New Yorkers have begun to assess what really constitute the essentials: For Read More

By George Gurley 11/25/08 4:59pm

How to Be Broke and Not Be a Sucker

So I’m broke. I have a negative balance. Minus $9.44.

Nothing to do, nowhere to go, imprisoned here on Roosevelt Island. Back in ’99 I bought a $400 bottle of wine at Raoul’s to impress what I thought was my girlfriend. Turned out I was merely one of three dudes she Read More

By Glenna Goldis 11/18/08 4:41pm

Meet the Email-Retentives

“I would not be friends with someone who didn’t feel comfortable sending me offensive things,” wrote a Democratic political staffer, 23, who asked not to be named. In the next email he begged to strike that from the record because it sounded “abrasive,” even though he was being quoted anonymously: “I would be simply embarrassed Read More

By Raphael Kohan 11/11/08 4:54pm

The New York World

Raging Belle

On the day after Halloween, a Saturday, dusk settled over the city like a mask. On a side street in Murray Hill, a procession of Orthodox Jews filed past a low-rise building to a nearby synagogue.

As one man, wearing a black hat and trench coat, headed in for evening services, Maxine T. whispered, “This guy looks like a wrestling client.” He wasn’t overly impressive physically, but she suggested he could be unexpectedly tough, or “farm strong,” as they say in Iowa.

“Young guys burn themselves out really early,” she said. “Old guys know to pace themselves. They wrestle smarter, not harder.”

Maxine would know. Read More