Dan Stevens

After an all-too-brief West Coast jaunt to Palm Springs and La Jolla for spicy juice cleanses and grueling workouts, Shindigger returned to the New York scene just in time for what one exhausted publicist called “official gala week,” which happened to coincide with the social-calendar assault that is the Tribeca Film Festival.

“It’s going to be a schizophrenic monster,” another publicist griped

The mere thought ruined any lingering benefits of Shindigger’s detox. Nonetheless, the highbrow and jam-packed show must go on.

On Monday night, we toasted Mandy Patinkin at the National Dance Institute’s annual gala and sipped Qui libations beside 50 Cent at the Cinema Society’s screening of Pain and Gain. On Tuesday, Shindigger popped over to Pier 60, where we joined Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Yoko Ono at Riverkeeper’s Annual Fishermen’s Ball cocktail hour. But we couldn’t stop there.

“I’m starting rehearsal for Shakespeare in the Park next week,” actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson told Shindigger inside the Calvin Klein Collection boutique at a cocktail event benefiting the Human Rights Campaign’s “Americans for Marriage Equality” effort. The Modern Family star explained that he and his fiancé, Justin Mikita, were also busy planning the wedding.

“I am getting married in July,” he said. “We’re Californians right now, but we’re doing the wedding in a state where we’re considered an equal and that’s New York.”

Will you be wearing Calvin Klein Collection? Shindigger wondered.

“We just had our tuxedos made by a great designer. Band of Outsiders,” he said.

We milled about the event along with Christine Quinn, Lloyd Blankfein, Uma Thurman, Neil Patrick Harris, David Burtka, Allison Sarofim, Alan Cumming and model Carolyn Murphy, before striking up a conversation with Downton Abbey leading man Dan Stevens.

“Who’s this?” Mr. Stevens said grabbing Shindigger’s three-piece suit.

“Ted Baker and Armani. Are you in Calvin Klein?”

“I am in Calvin Klein tonight,” he laughed. “I’ve been working with them for a little bit, and I’m thrilled that they were behind HRC. I was involved in Human Rights Watch back in London. It’s nice to continue that involvement now that we’re living here.”

The dashing Englishman went on to explain that, since he began acting in Broadway’s The Heiress and filming a new movie in the city, he and his family have settled nicely into life in Brooklyn.

“We’re sort of New Yorkers now,” he said. “It’s very nice to be out with my wife tonight, without the kids, but I’ve been working pretty hard. It’s that type of place.”

Indeed it is.

By Friday, Shindigger was desperate for a poolside nap in Malibu. Alas, we had Bomb Magazine’s 32nd anniversary gala auction to attend at Capitale. There we spotted art world star Kyle DeWoody, who was being honored along with her mother, Beth Rudin DeWoody. Like us, the lanky social bee yearned for a moment to recharge.

“Tomorrow I leave for L.A.,” she said. “But not for relaxation—for work.”

Sigh.

“There’s a lot competing events between the art and the film worlds,” Ms. DeWoody went on, describing how she was trying to navigate her regular VIP agenda with the added wrinkle of Tribeca. The night before, for instance, we had bumped into her at the premiere of Nicholas Wrathall’s Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia.

“Nicholas was always talking about this project, and we all thought it was a joke—a made-up thing. It just never came to fruition,” Ms. DeWoody said of the documentary, which seemed especially relevant in these trying times of troubled political leadership and terrorism. “I had no idea what an interesting man Gore Vidal was. I was blown away.”

But not everyone was in an educational mood by week’s end.

It became clear that some of the genteel folk were getting exhausted at Youth America Grand Prix’s “Stars of Today Meet the Stars of Tomorrow” gala, which took place at the David H. Koch Theater, as the commentary from some of the city’s social set had sharpened.

“She holds a grudge worse than an Armenian and a Turk,” sneered one diva in an Oscar de la Renta gown to another doyenne about some other attendee.

Thankfully, at the table of co-chair Heather Georges, decorated by the likes of Darren Henault, Michael Bassett and Adelina Wong Ettelson, things were considerably more upbeat and witty. The coterie was quite impressed by ballerina Svetlana Lunkina, who recently fled the Bolshoi in fear for her life. On this night, to the joy of ballet aficionados, she was dancing for one of the first times since.

But even at our table, the good cheer soon gave way to snippiness.

“Is that Woody Allen?” Shindigger asked.

“Yes! Isn’t his wife Soon-Yi [Previn] on some board?” came a whisper from across the table.

“Why are there so many cameras swarmed around Karen LeFrak?” someone else wanted to know.

“She composed the music for tonight’s program,” another guest replied, unimpressed.

“Well, she does have an M.A. in music history from Hunter,” Shindigger said in her defense.

“She must have had help,” snapped a gentleman to our left with an eye-roll and a snicker.

Thank goodness everyone could retreat to their corners—if not Palm Springs—for the weekend.

The Hat Shop

On a recent warm, sunny morning, Linda Pagan was in full Kentucky Derby mode weeks ahead of the race, shuffling hurriedly about The Hat Shop, the charming Soho boutique she has owned and operated for nearly 20 years.

Every April for the past decade or so, Ms. Pagan has seen hat sales skyrocket in the lead-up to the Derby, and this month has been no exception. Women—and it is almost always women—race to her store to pick out the perfect fascinator or wide-brimmed hat, which run from $200 to $500. Ms. Pagan told the Transom that last year Cyndi Lauper found her Derby headgear at The Hat Shop, joining a long list of notable clients like Madonna, Bette Midler and Yoko Ono.

“It gets bigger and bigger every year,” she continued over a cup of tea, taking a short break from her busy schedule.

Whether you’re watching from New York—where city-dwellers can find any number of viewing parties—or from Churchill Downs, a nice hat is the sine qua non of Derby culture, according to Ms. Pagan. She noted that some customers fly in all the way from Louisville, where the race takes place, to find the perfect fit.

On the one hand, that seems an awfully long way to travel for a hat, especially when you consider that the sporting event lasts only two minutes. But on the other hand: “I don’t believe you can buy a hat over the Internet,” said Ms. Pagan.

Evidently her customers don’t, either. And soon enough, they came filing in.

The first Derby customer of the day, Marianne Ferriola, goes to the race every other year. She arrived in search of something to match a lime green Nanette Lepore sheath dress with black trim that she bought just for the race, which takes place this year on May 4.

“It’s so exciting!” Ms. Ferriola told the Transom, seemingly overwhelmed by all the choices on display in the shop, which carries the work of up to 35 New York milliners.

Yet Ms. Ferriola wasn’t letting her enthusiasm get the best of her. Hat shopping for the Kentucky Derby is serious business.

“I didn’t know what I was getting myself into,” Ms. Ferriola said of her first experience at the Derby. “Those southern belles are really something. You have to keep up with them.”

The shop’s walls are lined with all sorts of whimsical creations, decorated with lace, feathers, flowers, ribbons, buckles and buttons.

Ms. Ferriola scanned the offerings, plucked a straw sun hat off the rack—a classic choice—and put it on. She turned to face Ms. Pagan for the verdict.

It fit perfectly.

A scene from this year's Unproducible Smackdown.

When theater producers are presented with scripts they deem too twisted, experimental, gigantic or just plain crazy to ever be put on stage, “unproducible” is the rejection-letter shorthand that they use. For playwrights, the label is discouraging at best, infuriating at worst.

But on a recent Saturday night, “unproducible” content took center stage at the annual Unproducible Smackdown, a cathartic, hilarious and ketchup-drenched event put on by Studio 42, a tiny theater company that positions itself as a theater-world version of Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern. It embraces with gusto what to others seems unpalatable.

For 2013’s Smackdown, five playwrights each wrote a 10-minute play. They were given a director, three actors and a directive to incorporate three elements chosen at random by Studio 42 (this year: dancing, evolution and Yoko Ono). The audience texts its votes for the winner.

“The Smackdown was developed as a way to challenge playwrights to work without inhibition or filter,” said Moritz von Stuelpnagel, Studio 42’s artistic director, whose name makes him sound like he should be sporting a monocle, though he hails from Connecticut. He is in his early 30s, genial and baby-faced, with a glint of mischief in his eyes. (Full disclosure: Mr. von Stuelpnagel recently directed me in a production of Nick Jones’s play TREVOR.) “We try to act like an impish devil provoking their darker, crazier ideas.”

What’s more, the playwrights are (for once) explicitly competing with each other, which ups the ante.

Held before a packed house at the Lower East Side’s University Settlement, the Smackdown packed a wallop of high-adrenaline silliness, cynicism and a host of theater-world inside jokes about Adam Rapp, Charles Isherwood, Sloan Grants (commissions for plays about science and math), Matilda, Roundabout Underground and Ensemble Studio Theatre. The beer-and-wine-soaked crowd erupted in cheers as the hosts bragged, “These are the plays not being produced tomorrow, today!”

One of playwright Mike Lew’s characters fantasized about a Smackdown victory: “Then I’ll get a commission from Playwrights Horizons for five hundred dollars!” Also in his play: alien overlords, mutant rats, corncob shitting, “Eurotrash music” and a time-traveling Ms. Ono solemnly proclaiming, “I don’t kill people. I only kill art.”

Meghan Deans’s “poorly researched” Civil War play mocked her own sloppy process, identity politics and pandering to the audience. She was played by a man (skirt over skinny jeans). A Union soldier told a Confederate lady-spy, “I’m so charmed I’m hardly looking at these fake papers. On your way!”

Erica Saleh wrote about two actors (Adam Blodgett and Megan Hill) so desperate to win a role in a play “that lasts longer than 10 minutes” that they compete in a dance marathon to do so. The audience howled when Mr. Blodgett whipped out a kielbasa phallus. And when it fell on the floor shortly thereafter. And when he slowly stuck it back in his pants, hanging out of the zipper. And when Ms. Hill suddenly bit it off.

Yoko Ono’s underground lair was the setting of Charise Castro Smith’s play, in which a mysterious plant turns a man into an amoeba. His friend (Susan Louise O’Connor) uses Ms. Ono’s greatest invention, “Dance Dance Evolution,” to save him, but it works better than expected. He mutates into “the highest form of human evolution: Beyoncé.”

For Jason Holtham’s play, the last on the bill, the stage and front-row attendees were covered in plastic sheeting as two guys in Speedos “stabbed” each other and squirted streams of Heinz 57 into the air while Natalie Kim yelled, “THEATER ISN’T FUCKING COOL. EVER.”

After the votes were tallied, the winner was Ms. Deans’s Civil War play. The prize, according to one tipsy and ever-so-slightly
bitter runner-up: “A trophy and some medals that aren’t even real gold.” But actor Risa Sarachan was happy about her team’s victory, especially since her trash-talking boyfriend’s team was the runner-up: “I really rubbed it in his face. I wore my medal to breakfast the next day.”

Julianne Moore (Getty Images)

Julianne Moore really can do it all, can’t she? The newly minted Emmy winner and perennial Oscar nominee takes a break from her low-key West Village lifestyle to host a benefit for Positive Exposure, an arts nonprofit designed to change public perception of genetic and cognitive differences. Her fellow hosts include designer Ralph Rucci and kiddie favorite Olivia illustrator Ian Falconer ... Meanwhile, the New York Academy of Art celebrates perception-shifting imagery in its own way, with the Take Home a Nude auction and dinner. Among those potentially bidding on work by Yoko Ono and Ryan McGinness are event co-chair Mary Boone and guests Daniel Boulud and Brooke Shields.

Positive Exposure event, Metropolitan Pavilion, The Gallery, 123 West 18th Street, 6pm, tickets and information can be found at positiveexposure.org/fundraiser.html; Take Home a Nude event, Sotheby’s, 1334 York Avenue, 6pm, tickets and information can be found at nyaa.edu.

“I thank Pussy Riot for standing firmly for freedom of expression and making all women proud,” said Ms. Ono, enunciating the band’s name in her signature clipped tone. The grant is awarded every two years as a tribute Ms. Ono's late husband, John Lennon.

It was hard to see Ms. Ono under her brimmed white hat–lowered diagonally over one eye--and sunglasses. The ceremony coincided with International Day of Peace, which perhaps accounted for Ms. Ono’s peace sign-patterned scarf.

Pyotr Verzilov, the husband of band member Nadia Tolokonnikova, accepted on the band’s behalf, since the three band members are currently being held in a temporary holding center in Moscow as they await an appeal. They were sentenced to two years in prison in August after calling for an end to the presidency Vladimir Putin during an unsanctioned concert inside Moscow’s main cathedral.

“They are located in separate cells and kept in special wing of the prison. They are monitored very heavily and video-taped 24/7 and basically treated like they are very dangerous criminals,” said Mr. Verzilov when asked about their band’s current status.

Amnesty International has declared the band members official “Prisoners of Conscience,” which means the human rights organization is mobilizing politically, organizing marches and otherwise trying to put pressure on the Russian Government to secure their release. Mr. Verzilov, as a representative for the band, met with senators and congressmen in Washington, D.C. yesterday in a bid to increase international pressure.

Gera, Ms. Tolokonnikova and Mr. Verzilov’s precocious four-year-old daughter, hammed it up for the cameras as Ms. Ono and Mr. Verzilov took turns speaking. Ms. Ono handed the puzzle-shaped award, which was made of frosted glass, to the blond four-year-old. At the end of the exchange, Gera grabbed the microphone and said “Thank You.”

“It is a gigantic honor for all of us and for the girls in prison. Yoko has shown her support to politically centered important issues since the 70s and all of us live with images of Yoko and John Lennon here in New York supporting the anti-Vietnam cause,” Mr. Verzilov said. “It’s incredible to see her after all these years bring attention to Pussy Riot in prison.”

The 3-bedroom, 3-bath apartment, listed for $29.6 million with Brown Harris Stevens broker John Burger, features not only shuttered windows, hard-carved mahogany woodwork and pocket doors (swoon), but neighbors like Lauren Bacall, Yoko Ono and Roberta Flack (double swoon), who gather in the courtyard for an annual fall potluck, to which Ms. Ono is known to bring a platter of sushi (we've fainted).

Of course, all has not been well between the historic building's neighbors of late. The racial discrimination suit filed against the co-op by resident Alphonse Fletcher Jr., a well-known black investor and former president of the building's board, is still wending its way through the courts. (Mr. Fletcher, who was blocked from buying an adjacent apartment in the building for his mother, alleged that the board had discriminated against him and other minorities).

And in February of last year, Dutch courts moved to block the sale of a Dutch investor Jan-Dirk Paarlberg's first-floor apartment after he was convicted of fraud in connection with a $23.5 million extortion scheme.

The New York Post speculates that Mr. Fletcher's lawsuit may have something to do with the building's most recent vacancy. The Post reports that the seller of the beautiful six-floor space is none other than Bruce Barnes, president of the co-op board.

The Post quotes an email that Mr. Barnes allegedly sent out yesterday, giving his desire to downsize and spend more time out of the city as the reason for selling the apartment.

“As of this afternoon, I have listed my Dakota apartment for sale . . . For seventeen years, I have loved the Dakota as both a building and a community, but my apartment is very large for two people, and several of the rooms are rarely used."

And while it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to move out of this apartment, downsizing seems like the most reasonable explanation. After all, a lawsuit would be a good reason to cede a seat on the board, but it's hardly to leave the building.

Mr. Burger told the Observer that the seller was a "philanthropist and private investor" who had lived in the apartment for the past 17 years, but would not reveal his identity. Public records list Mr. Barnes address in the building, technically 1 West 72nd Street.

Regardless of why he's departing, the apartment is sure to attract many suitors (Mr. Burger told us his phone has been ringing off the hook since the listing went up).

Besides the park views and beautiful architecture, the buyer will be able to enjoy a 24-foot library adjacent to a 29-foot living room (both facing the park) as well as a bathroom with honed onyx and an open shower with five vintage shower heads.

"It's one of the biggest apartments in the building and we haven't seen an apartment like this above the tree-line in a long time," Mr. Burger said. (The last big, park-facing apartment on the market was Leonard Bernstein's old place, purchased by Milstein heir Philip Milstein and wife Cheryl for $20.5 million in 2008—a record-breaking  price for the building. But even that one didn't clear the tree-line, Mr. Bruger noted).

Of course, when it comes to the Dakota, apartments do not always go to the highest bidder. Aspiring residents must make it past the building's board, which has famously rejected the likes of Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith.

kvelsey@observer.com

Imagine... 4,000 bucks for a weekend!

Well, well, well. Look who's leaving the Dakota for Soho.

Yoko Ono has leased 10,000 square feet along the cobblestone streets where she will exhibit her late husband’s artwork for four days this weekend. 76 Wooster Street, a four-story brick building between Spring and Broome, will house Gimme Some Truth, a “visual tribute for John Lennon’s 71st birthday,” on view October 7-10.

The artwork for sale consists of lithographs, seriographs and copper etchings of the pen, pencil and Japanese sumi ink drawings of John Lennon, and each are “signed” in the Japanese tradition with Mr. Lennon’s “chop,” a personalized red stamp which in his case reads “Like a Cloud, Beautiful Sound.” Also available are lithographs of some rare Bag One drawings, the portfolio of wedding drawings and controversial erotic works (some depicting himself and his wife), which Mr. Lennon gave Ms. Ono at their wedding.

The space at 76 Wooster, formerly used for manufacturing, is often leased short-term and is sometimes donated to high-profile tenants, although in this case Ms. Ono’s Legacy Productions will pay $4,000. Owner John Pasquale, of PEP Realty, said the building and the neighborhood are full of history. The building has a pedigreed artistic past. “It formerly Grace Jones’ restaurant, and reportedly it was a reclusive hideout of Andy Warhol years ago,” Mr. Pasquale said.

gvoien@observer.com

Apparently not, as Yoko Ono bumped into a Korean tourist who had snuck into the building to snap pictures on the roof. (It is pretty picturesque up there.)

According to the Daily News, the tourist, Sungno Kim, got in through a service elevator but took the regular one down, where he ran into Ono.

The lift stopped along the the way, and the wife of the slain Beatle entered, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. "He did not recognize her. He did not engage her in conversation. There was no interaction between them," Browne said. "When they both got off on the main floor, the security people, who had already seen him from cameras on the roof, intercepted him and held him for police."

Residents are livid, according to the Post, and may toss the management company and the security guards, even though Kim appears to have been clueless.

"The whole reason they have heightened security there, more than any other building, is because of [Ono and the late Lennon]," said another building source.

Kim said he didn't mean to worry Ono, saying he went to the building at 1 W. 72nd St. after reading about it in a guidebook. Kim was intrigued to learn it was once home to Lennon, who was killed by Mark David Chapman outside the building on Dec. 8, 1980. "I'm a Beatles fan. I went to see where John Lennon lived," Kim said. He claimed he didn't recognize Ono.

If only John and Yoko had moved to the suburbs after all, there wouldn't be these kinds of problems at the Dakota.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

The more innocuous choice of drink would perhaps allow for a gentler Hitch, but by no means does the topic drain him of his standard vitriol. Naturally, Americans manage to screw up everything about the seemingly simple preparation of tea, and with this he is not pleased.

It is already virtually impossible in the United States, unless you undertake the job yourself, to get a cup or pot of tea that tastes remotely as it ought to. It's quite common to be served a cup or a pot of water, well off the boil, with the tea bags lying on an adjacent cold plate. Then comes the ridiculous business of pouring the tepid water, dunking the bag until some change in color occurs, and eventually finding some way of disposing of the resulting and dispiriting tampon surrogate.

If your intent was to get us to back off the brewed leaves then by God, Hitch, that "dispiriting tampon surrogate" line just about did the trick. Not that we would want Christopher Hitchens to follow his tea with sympathy. That just wouldn't be right.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

The article is full of reminiscence from the likes of Paul Goldberger (nobody liked Yoko), Roberta Flack (the love between John and Sean) and Leonard Bernstein's daughter (sushi at the annual potluck).

Yet the most striking revelation comes from a photographer friend who didn't live in the building. He reports that the couple, like so many others of their generation, considered moving out of the city.

Mr. Lennon's and Ms. Ono's life in the Dakota began in 1973, when they were looking to move from their loft on Bank Street. Bob Gruen, who photographed Mr. Lennon when he lived in New York City, said the couple wanted a home with better security.

He said they looked at homes in Greenwich, Conn., and on Long Island before buying the apartment at the Dakota from the actor Robert Ryan, making it past the building's notoriously picky board.

Had they made the jump to, say, New Canaan or Syossett, Lennon would never have taken the fateful trip home that ended with him being fatally shot outside the Dakota by Mark David Chapman.

Imagine that.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo