By Eliot Brown 7/28/09 3:55pm

Manifest Density

The dramatic transformation of Manhattan’s far West Side, only two years ago, seemed shiningly imminent.

Mayor Bloomberg had been pushing the grungy, truck-filled area south of the Javits Center hard on the private sector; the city’s biggest developers started planning new hotels and apartment towers; commercial and residential rents seemed on an endless march upward; Read More

By Meredith Bryan 5/05/09 6:48pm

Models Mob the Met!

The theme of this year’s Met Costume Institute Gala—i.e., the Oscars of the East—was “the Model as Muse,” and the weedlike mannequins floating up the red carpet in weapons-grade shoes and teensy get-ups appeared only moderately more human than the “superheroes” that inspired last year’s ball.

Molly Sims called her elaborate gold Dolce & Read More

By Sara Vilkomerson 4/21/09 7:28pm

Film Tri-athalon

Overhwlemed by choices? Here are the Observer’s top nine picks at Tribeca. Click on the slideshow to see what not to miss! And check back during the week for dispatches, updates and everything else from the festival.

By Sara Vilkomerson 4/14/09 10:00pm

The Unshine Boys

“It used to be Diane Keaton with me—she always used to tell me, ‘I’m terrible, I’m awful, I can’t do it, you should get someone else.’ And she was always brilliant. Well, Larry is like this,” said Woody Allen via telephone from his Upper East Side apartment last week. The 73-year-old director was discussing his Read More

By Meredith Bryan 3/25/09 12:01pm

Will You Drop for Topshop?

Late last week, the comely blond British socialite and model Poppy Delevigne, 22, called from her Nolita apartment—several blocks from the new four-story, 40,000-square-foot Topshop behemoth lurking behind covered windows at Broadway and Broome—and described some of her favorite items from the British retail chain, like an “amazing” emerald-green, one-shouldered dress designed by the model Read More

By Allen Barra 3/10/09 11:56pm

A-Rod, Superscar

Who’s the most despised player in baseball history? Ty Cobb was a virulent racist who sharpened his spikes to slash the shins of infielders who got in his way. The 1919 Chicago Black Sox took money to throw the World Series. There’s Barry Bonds, of course, but at least Bonds wasn’t booed—much—in his own home Read More

By John Koblin 3/10/09 11:27pm

The Anti-Shea. Great.

This weekend, I made my way out to the Willets Point–Shea Stadium stop on the No. 7 train, and for the first time with my own eyes, I saw that my beloved blue dump was gone. The only things left of Shea, the home of the Mets for 45 years, were some mounds of ash, Read More