Michael Gross

Can’t Buy Me Love

Michael Gross — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:11:55 +0000

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

Michael Gross — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:34:11 +0000

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

Michael Gross — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:04:15 +0000

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

Michael Gross — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:04:43 +0000

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

Michael Gross — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:07:34 +0000

Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women is being rereleased on mp3 audio later this month. You can order it here.

Once, Bitten

Michael Gross — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:35:00 +0000

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

Michael Gross — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:49:07 +0000

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

Michael Gross — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:51:39 +0000

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

Michael Gross — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:04:08 +0000

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

Michael Gross — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 16:52:46 +0000

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.