Archive for the 'GripeBox' Category
Sibling Revelry II
Oh, sister! Jane Gross, who is mine, has just launched her new blog, The New Old Age, at nytimes.com. You can teach a print dog new tricks!
R.I.P. Clay Felker
Clay Felker, the inventor of the modern city magazine and spiritual father of New Journalism, died today. One of the smaller publications referred to in his Times obit was the East Side Express, where I was lucky enough to start my career in journalism, working for Clay for fifteen weeks I will never forget. He was–and will remain–an inspiration to anyone who believes in the power of truth in words, medium notwithstanding.
In the Belly of the Beast
I got to this late but can’t resist. Last week’s Home section of the Times had a very funny story about a real estate marketing party at the Park Avenue maisonette of the late William F. and Pat Buckley, which has just come on the market. The Times captioned the photo above saying only that they were “guests” at the affair. That caption is worthy of expansion, for the two swells pictured are Michael and Eleanor Kennedy. He is the one-time radical lawyer who defended the likes of Huey Newton, Tim Leary, and the Weathermen. His presence in the apartment of the late great voice of conservatism is enough to make one’s head spin. The question is, left to right, or right to left??? (photo from nytimes.com)
Model Life (and death)
The death of fashion model Ruslana Korshunova set my phone ringing. This is what I had to say on the subject to The Telegraph in London. “People generalise about fashion models to their own peril. We can’t draw conclusions about one from the last. The occupational hazards of modelling are well known - there are substance abuse, body issues and self-esteem issues. But we don’t know why this girl jumped out of a window. It could be it had nothing to do with modelling.” I also pointed out that when sad, poor, normal un-beautiful people kill themselves, they don’t appear on tabloid covers or inspire public hand-wringing about their inner pain, impoverished souls (or bad eating habits). RIP Ruslana.
Tasty Trump
Town & Country with Ivanka Trump on the cover: $4.95
Its mention of 740 Park as the book at her bedside: Priceless
Karma, Served Cold?
Five years ago, an apartment my wife and I owned was flooded, and my co-op’s insurance company, a subsidiary of AIG, offered us seven cents back for every dollar we’d lost, even though we had what’s called a “replacement” policy that should have paid to repair the damages entirely. When we kicked up a fuss, AIG sent a team of people to eyeball the place, led by a man who looked very much like Martin Sullivan, the chief executive AIG canned yesterday. I can’t be sure it was him because I was seeing red after the beefy, white-haired dude walked in, looked around, and muttered, “What a s**thole.” Doh. A gorgeous, 1840s top-nailed quarter sewn oak floor had been destroyed, Greek Revival moldings had melted, and the ceiling was buckling. So I cheered when Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, Sullivan’s predecessor, was kicked to the curb a few years back. I’d like to believe that today’s news means Mr. S**thole has gotten his just desserts, too. Yeah, karma’s a bitch, ain’t it, Marty?
The Next Big Brown?
The press continues to speculate who will replace the Metropolitan Museum’s longest-serving director, Philippe de Montebello. Today’s New York Sun has the latest state-of-the-arts list, which drops Met president Emily Rafferty and the British Museum’s Neal MacGregor but adds the Met curator and Havemeyer descendent Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen and includes two Timothys: Timothy Potts of Scotland by way of the Kimball and Cleveland’s Timothy Rub. Funny how no one mentions that Montebello’s longevity is the exception for Met directors. The job has killed several of his predecessors. Ay, there’s the Rub. Stick that in your Potts and smoke it.
Eat it!
The summer issue of Bergdorf Goodman Magazine will be out next week, featuring my conversation with Alain Ducasse and Daniel Boulud, whose new restaurants Bar Boulud, Benoit and Adour have recently brightened the dining scene in the neighborhood I call Vuitton (which is somewhere between uptown and downtown). Say those three words with a broad, fake French accent and it will make more sense. Read it here: Boulud-Ducasse
All is Vanity
Vanity Fair has a Madonna slideshow on its web site that includes the photos the late Herb Ritts shot for her very first VF cover story, penned by yours truly.
R.I.P. YSL
Yves Saint Laurent died in France today. Twenty years ago, I interviewed him just before his company went public and asked how he felt about sharing ownership of his name. In response, he pulled a framed quotation from Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, off the wall of his Paris office. Slowly, a tremulous finger tracing the words, he read it aloud in French. ‘’The magnificent and lamentable family of the nervous is the salt of the earth,'’ it read in part. ‘’They are the ones - and not others - who founded religions and created masterpieces. The world will never know all that it owes them, nor especially how much they suffered.'’ (photo by Michael Gross)
Is it Supes Yet?
Women’s Wear Daily should know. Last week, it announced the return of the supermodel. Welcome back, Christy, Claudia and Linda. You’re a sight for sore eyes and as welcome as miniskirts in spring.
Model Movie
Page Six announced this morning that Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, my 1995 book on the fashion modeling industry, has been optioned by KDX Productions to be made into a ten-part documentary. Given that today’s papers also bring news that the film of my pal Steven M.L. Aronson’s fantastic book on a society murder, Savage Grace, published ten years before that in 1985, has finally made it to the screen and is coming out next week, it probably bears repeating that good things are well worth waiting for.
Fifth Avenue Freezeout
Galleycat has some fun with the fact that the powers-that-be at the Metropolitan Museum of Art don’t like the book I’m writing—and don’t need to read it to know that! The book blog has issued a call for photos of the building (which the Met doesn’t want me to have) and they’re already arriving. Here’s the best so far (above), taken by Gilbert King.
Sheik Philippe
Philippe de Montebello is going to work for New York University, where, according to Carol Vogel in todays’ Times, he will lecture on the history of collecting and connoisseurship and the evolution of museums, and serve as a special advisor–whatever that means–to NYU’s new Abu Dhabi campus. Curiously, when the Louvre announced plans to open a branch museum in Abu Dhabi, Montebello condemned the move as commercializing art. Some NYU students I know think the new campus is all about the Benjamins, too.
First (Amendment) on Fifth
Liz Smith has it first: the title of my next book on the Metropolitan Museum of Art will be Rogues’ Gallery. La Liz gets a few more things right, too. The Met is “remarkable, incredibly valuable and super-important,” and so is its incredibly rich story, which is why I chose to write it. The Met has refused to let a photo archive “sell photos of the building for the book jacket. (Even though the museum is owned by the city and sits on public land.)” And the Met “will survive” my daring to look at its history without its blessing. If all goes according to plan, Rogues’ Gallery will be published next year by Broadway Books, despite the museum’s attempts to stop it. Meantime, you can read Gripebox on the museum’s relationship to a free press here, hereand here.
The Birth of St. Barth
My slightly unserious timeline of the history of St. Barthelemy, my favorite island, is in the new June 2008 issue of Travel + Leisure.
Can’t Buy Me Love
Steve Schwarzman is likely channeling Rodney Dangerfield today. He can’t get no respect. A very snarky article on B-1 of the Times takes pot-shots at the Blackstone Group biggie and the New York Public Library for its plan to plaster his name all over the library’s facade in thanks for his recently announced gift of $100,000,000 to kick-start the library’s modernization. Schwarzman’s spotty track record in philanthropy is well known. Less known, perhaps, is his relationship to books and authors. When I approached him for an interview for 740 Park, his contempt was as clear as it was clarifying. So I wasn’t entirely surprised to learn that he’d filled the bookshelves in his trophy apartment with books by the yard, bought at the Strand Bookstore. But hey, better books he hasn’t read than no books at all!
UPDATE: Galleycat on Gripebox on Schwarzman
Vacancy at 740 Park
Hear ye, hear ye, hedge fund honchos: There’s about to be a rare apartment for sale in the quiet half of 740 Park Avenue, the anti-chic “back of the bus” apartments that use 71 East 71st Street for their address. June Speight, widow of a former co-op board president (and one of the last of the old breed WASPS in the building), died this past weekend, which means that apartment 4/5 C (you can see an equivalent floor plan here) should be on the market soon, priced somewhere around $30 million. The last sale in the building, of the somewhat larger apartment 4/5A facing Park Avenue and using the front entrance, to David and Tamara Winn, fetched $32 million.
Good Morning, Vienna
In the new issue of Travel & Leisure, your faithful correspondent takes a look at the magic that is Vienna.
(Photo by Adam Friedberg)
A Shark Story
Marty Peretz has a slightly grumpy take on the Metropolitan Museum’s latest offerings on his blog, The Spine, focused on its upcoming Jeff Koons-on-the-roof exhibit. But the best line belongs to a commenter, commenting on a comment referencing Damien Hirst. “‘Does this mean that the Met has jumped the shark?’ Nah. Just installed it. ”
Model Walks Again
Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women is being rereleased on mp3 audio later this month. You can order it here.
Once, Bitten
The news arrived today that Bitten Knudsen, a Danish-born fashion model, darling of the disco era, best buddy of the famous train wreck Gia Carangi, and one of my favorite models of all time died in her sleep on March 22 in Denmark. Bitten, who was featured in my book, Model, was an unapologetic bad girl who called herself The Kid and the multitude of men who chased her dogs. “As bad as you are, that’s how good you can be at your job,” she said. She was good bad, not evil. R.I.P., beauty.
Sibling Revelry
Jim Romenesko of poynter.org’s medianews has just broken the news that my sister, Jane Gross, is one of the reporters taking the latest buyout from the New York Times. I’ve known about it, of course, but couldn’t say so until she did, and now she has. What she didn’t say, and I’m happy to say it for her, is that she was the first woman reporter ever in an NBA locker room while she was at Newsday; broke the story of the existence of crack; was one of the earliest reporters on the AIDS beat, and in that capacity was the first person to use the term anal sex in the Times (now there’s something to be be proud of); was the Times San Francisco bureau chief for seven years, a Knight Fellow at Stanford, and has six Pulitzer Prize nominations under her belt that I know of (for stories on crack, AIDS, the last San Fran earthquake; and autism and for the “children of shadows'’ series) and has been a pioneer in writing about elder care and the elderly for the last year. Makes me wonder what I’m doing with MY life!!! CORRECTION: As the New York Observer’s John Koblin points out the family legend crossed out above about Jane’s pioneering use of language doesn’t hold up to fact-checking. As far back as 1973, the term was employed by Nora Sayre in an article called, amusingly enough, “Ahh!!” on the book The Joy of Sex. I don’t want to dig further back than that. Mea culpa.
Co-ops Keep the Faith
According to the New York Observer, New York’s best buildings are the last bastion of standards in a condo kind of anything-goes world about to be shaken to its foundations by recession. They also call 740 Park–the book not the building–”colossol.” And it only costs $16.95.
Self-Knowledge is a Wonderful Thing
The truly deeply awesomely despicable lawyer-couple who threatened costly litigation against a neighbor for smoking in her own apartment (“As you may not be aware, we are both lawyers and both litigators, for whom the usual barriers to litigation are minimal,” they wrote) are concerned that people won’t like them. So let the word go forth: it is legal for co-ops and condos to reject lawyers who behave like that: “Although a 1977 court decision upheld a landlord’s right to refuse to rent to a lawyer, the city’s human rights law was amended in 1986 to bar discrimination in housing on the basis of a lawful occupation” the Times reported in a February correction to their initial story on the affair. “Co-op and condominium boards may, however, reject lawyers and other applicants based on specific actions — for instance, a pattern of filing lawsuits against neighbors.” Alas, lawyer-cide is not an option.
Temporarily Like Hercules
In last week’s New York Observer package on the future of magazines, there’s an interesting quote from The New Yorker’s editor David Remnick: “Let’s say God forbid something awful happened on a Monday. And someone Herculean could write a 5,000-word piece by Wednesday. Could I put that online? I could imagine it. But we are very, very, very rigorously edited and fact-checked. … So can I imagine it? It would be very, very exceptional. It wouldn’t be part of the routine in the near future.” It wasn’t routine then either, but on a Monday in 1992, when word circulated that Remnick’s predecessor, Tina Brown, had just been given the job Remnick now holds, Ed Kosner, then-editor of New York magazine, summoned me to lunch and ordered me to produce a cover story on the subject, to close three days later. Yes, it took a day longer than Remnick’s imagined scenario, but the resulting piece, “Tina’s Turn: The New Yorker’s Head Transplant,” published six-and-a-half days after that lunch, was 9,000 words long, very, very, very rigorously edited and fact-checked, and was of high enough quality that the Sunday Times of London later ran it as the cover story of its magazine, too. I didn’t consider it Herculean or exceptional. I thought it was my job. And had there been the internets then, it could have gone online the moment we shipped it to the printer, i.e. on Thursday night. What I find inexpressably sad is that such things are now considered impossible, or at least that’s what another editor at New York told me (”We can’t do that anymore”) shortly before I quit in 2000 to take his advice: “You like writing long. You should write books.” In fact, I like to write short, too; hence this blog. But jeez Louise, the biggest difference in periodical print media between then and now isn’t the advent of online, it’s the loss of editorial spine. If they don’t write ‘em and run ‘em like that anymore, it’s not because the writers’ skills or ambitions have gotten smaller. To paraphrase Norma Desmond, we’re still big. It’s the magazines that got small.
Back to the Islands
Travel + Leisure has just published the book Unexpected Italy, including my story on three islands in the Mediterranean mostly known only by Italians : Lampedusa, Ponza and Giglio. There’s a review today on Popmatters.
Meet the Neighbors
What’s the difference between living next to Washington Square (as I did for years) and living next to Central Park (as I do now)?
There are lots of them. On the one hand, consider rattus norvegicus, or Norway Rat, a typical downtown denizen. On the other, a recent midtown west newborn, spotted last night just inside Artisan’s Gate. I wouldn’t want either one as a pet but Rocky Raccoon’s awfully cute.
vs. 
(Raccoon photo taken 4/1/08 by Paul Grayson of photeinos.com)
Good Carriage II
The New York Sun likes the horse carriages in Central Park, too.
Veronica Uncovered
As promised a week ago, to whet your appetite for Vanity Fair’s take on Veronica Hearst, here is my 1991 profile of her, The Intriguing Mrs. Hearst. One of these days, I’ll figure out how to post a nine-page article so it’s easily readable (or find the time to run my OCR program), but for now, with apologies, you’ll have to take it page by page.
Page 1
Good Carriage
Sometimes you just have to be politically incorrect and the current carriage-horse kerfluffle is as good a place to start as any. A Queens city councilman named Tony Avella wants to ban the carriage horses that work in and around Central Park, one of New York’s most charming and evocative tourist attractions, claiming they are abused and unhealthy. Today’s New York Sun begs to differ, citing a new study by a Cornell University veterinarian that says the horses are just fine, thanks. What I want to know is, why doesn’t Councilman Avella grandstand in his own neighborhood? Oh wait! He’s about to be tossed from office due to term limits–and he wants to run for mayor. Could that possibly explain it?
Shabby Chic
The late Brooke Astor’s Park Avenue pad is heading to market, says the New York Observer. Got $46 million?
Brother, Can You Spare an Elevator?
New York Magazine reports that mortgage and co-op lenders now look askance at things like fourth-floor walk-up apartments in four-unit brownstone co-ops . “Walk-ups are considered slums,” says the mag. At least they’re good for leg muscles! Now, if we could only get banks to refuse loans to club-footed upstairs neighbors and litigious lawyers.
Thrill Bill
Check out this photo essay by and narrated by the great Bill Cunningham of the New York Times. While watching, consider that he has no cell phone or computer, refuses to use a digital camera, and travels everywhere on a bicycle.
Arianna On Top
The latest Bergdorf Goodman Conversation , starring Arianna Huffington and Harry Shearer, couldn’t come at a better time, with the news just in from Portfolio.com that The Huffington Post has passed Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report in traffic. It’s a pdf and will take a minute to load.
I Love New York
(Thanks, Wendy!)
Reading is Fundamental
I guess Blackstone Group chairman and 740 Park resident Steve Schwarzman has been reading his press after all. Today’s Times announced that he was entering the philanthropic pantheon at the very top, donating $100 million to the New York Public Library to totally transform the 42nd Street main library into a modern facility that will be renamed (albeit discretely) the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. The gift instantly catapults Schwarzman into the ranks of America’s most generous, alongside Andrew Carnegie, who financed much of New York’s branch library system, and John D. Rockefeller Jr., who used to own Schwarzman’s apartment. And takes off the focus off of Blackstone Group’s falling profits and stock price. But for one day at least, let’s accentuate the positive. Well done, Steve!
We Are #37???
How the mighty have fallen. The richest New Yorker, per Forbes Magazine, is 740 Park resident David Koch, #37 on the just-released lost of the world’s billionaires (and the tenth richest American)–and profiled in today’s New York Post.
The Intriguing Mrs. Hearst
I just read on New York Social Diary that Vanity Fair has an article in the works on Veronica Hearst, the window of Randolph Hearst, who is now embroiled in a big money mess. Check back here later this week, since I was the first writer ever to profile her, back in the days when dead trees were the only means of written communication, and as soon I can find a copy and digitize it, I will post it here, both as a research aid to my chums at VF (I found out all about her mysterious background) and as a teaser of the further titillations that they are sure to deliver. Meantime, check out the latest news on Mrs. Hearst here.
Hole in the Heart
A view from above the rationalization of Washington Square Park.
(Photo: Ryan Hagen)
Steve-a-rino
Someone else is picking on Steve Schwarzman for a change.
Dem Bones
The Villager has pictures of the human remains unearthed in the renovation that has closed most of Washington Square Park. A commenter on curbed.com asks if “in a few weeks we should be on the look out for half a dozen or so crazy old people carrying signs around the park acting like it’s 1968 all over again?”
New York Post
I saw Keith Kelly’s piece on New York magazine’s circulation coup with nekkid LiLo and Serena Torrey, the New York spokesman’s addendum, and wrote an addendum of my own. Thereby losing my virginity as a Poynter sister…er, commenter. Coincidentally, I’m selling a vintage New York magazine jean jacket on ebay Bid ‘em up, Bruce.
“They like me. They really like me!”
A commenter on Cathy Horyn’s runway blog at nytimes.com just called me one of “the most inflammatory, disliked and therefore valuable writers in the business.” Awwwwww……
White Man Can’t Jump
With thanks to Radar Online for pointing it out, a priceless moment from the Democratic primary campaign:
UPDATE: Texas state senator Kirk Watson finds the mind he lost night….sort of. Again, my thanks to Radar.
I’m Not Goin’ To China/I Say ‘No No No’
Valentine’s Day is battered Blackstone Group Chairman and 740 Park resident Stephen Schwarzman’s 61st Birthday. 
In his honor (and certainly not to remind anyone of his fab 60th Birthday blowout), today’s New York Post has an online poll (scroll down, on the right side of the page) about how he should spend the night. Unfortunately, going to China to soothe that nation’s jangled nerves over its underwater investment in his company isn’t on the ballot. Also in today’s Post, Liz Smith says The New Yorker’s James Stewart gave Schwarzman “a fairly free ride” in its profile last week. Tough love, Liz.
Closed at $32 million!
The New York Post’s Braden Keil reveals that the late Janet Mosler Coleman’s apartment at 740 Park has closed almost instantaneously for the price first reported here: $32 million. The lucky new owners? David and Tamara Winn. She’s a daughter of uber-rich guy Ira Rennert. A sidelight: When David Ganek bought from Rand Araskog several years back, the building became more than 51% Jewish. When John Thain, now with Merrill Lynch, bought the late Enid Annenberg Haupt’s penthouse, the scales tipped back the other way: advantage gentiles. Now, the Winns have tipped the see-saw back, appropriately enough, by buying what was once the building’s first “Jewish apartment.”
Department of Factual Hyperbole (cont’d)
Finally read all the way through James Stewart’s New Yorker profile of Steve Schwarzman last night and my fact quibbles notwithstanding, must say it’s pretty good. As Andrew Ross Sorkin points out on Dealbook, Stewart has nailed down longstanding rumors of Schwarzman’s rift with his partner Pete Peterson, and done a more-than-respectable job of eliciting revealing quotes from the man who will probably henceforth be known by the subhead’s description of him as “private equity’s designated villain,” but he lets Schwarzman off easy on his poor showing in the realm of philanthropy. Turns out Schwarzman did buy a house once owned by the late Carter Burden–though as pointed out below, it was not his 740 Park apartment.
Speaking of which, I got an email last night about yesterday’s post on the Stewart piece. It said: “Dear M. Gross, I don’t think your previous post contains any verifiable information about the recent James Stewart article in the New Yorker. Is an anonymous quote from a member of the coop board necessarily a more accurate source than the one used by James Stewart? From your posted plans, it looks like there are three floors to me, unless that servant’s mezz. is a crawlspace. Isn’t that a triplex? This seems like a sorry attempt at generating drama for your own self promotion.”
My response? “The anonymous quote from a member of the co-op board is certainly better than the totally unsourced newspaper clips Stewart depended upon. Misinformation does not gain credibility from repetition. And I am 100% sure of both the credibility of my cited source and a second source who confirmed that the $37 million figure is dead wrong. If you think using anonymous quotes makes a story suspect and self-promotional, what does that say about The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh, whose brilliant reporting on the Iraq war depends upon them? And if you look at the floor plans you will see that the lower floor is #15 and the upper floor is #16. Though not a crawlspace, the servant’s mezzanine is not a floor by any standard EXCEPT that of hyperbole.” Only after sending that response did I remember that Stewart uses anonymous sources, too. Are they more reliable when they’re in The New Yorker?
Department of Factual Hyperbole
How the mighty have stumbled! No, I’m not talking about the Pats, or Blackstone Group’s stock price (see item just below), but rather, the fabled fact-checkers at The New Yorker, who e-mailed me last week while checking James Stewart’s just-published profile of Blackstone chairman Steve Schwarzman. The fact-checker wanted to know if it was true that Schwarzman bought his apartment at 740 Park in 2001 from the late Vanderbilt heir Carter Burden, who’d died five years earlier. I called back and explained that Carter Burden had never lived at 740 and that Schwarzman bought the place from Saul Steinberg in 2000, not 2001. The fact-checker later e-mailed to say the Burden reference was her mistake, not Stewart’s–and they seem to have fixed the sale date. Story over. Well…not quite.
I’m not quibbling with the take on Schwarzman presented by the Pulitzer-winning author of 1991’s Den of Thieves. You can find that elsewhere. Just the facts, ma’ams and sirs. Stewart writes, “In May, 2000, Schwarzman paid $37 million—reportedly a record sum at the time for a Manhattan co-op—for a thirty-five-room triplex on Park Avenue that was once owned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. ” Sorry, but per the member of the co-op board who was my source for the details, the sale price was “just under $30 million”–not the $37 million that was widely reported at the time. Now granted, absent official records, you can quibble with that…as you can with room counts (do foyers and bathrooms count?). But it’s a duplex with a low-ceilinged servant’s mezzanine, not a triplex (or a quadruplex, as one newspaper once claimed)–as you can see from the floorplans, which are here and also below. Nexis is all well and good, Mr. Tilley, but next time, maybe you should check the book.
Black-eye-stone
With nothing else to post this morning (Britney? Gag. Hillary vs. Barack? Not soup yet), it seems a good time to check in on Blackstone Group, run by 740 Park’s most famous resident, Steve Schwarzman. It’s trading at 18.25 a share, a full dollar above its all-time low. Yay! But more than 50% below its all-time high of 38. Boo! At least his apartment is holding its value.
