The Kingdom of New York: Knights, Knaves, Billionaires, and Beauties in the City of Big Shots

by The New York Observer

  Chester ran out of the building and jumped on his bike, but there was a problem. His legs were so shaky from having sex they started cramping up just as he was going down Murray Hill and he crashed over the curb and slid across the pavement. “It really hurt,” he said. “When your skin is scraped off like that, it’s like a first-degree burn.” Luckily, his nipple did eventually grow back.

  * * *

  The image of Mr. New Yorker, stealing through the night in his tweedy jacket, pumping like mad on his three-speed bike (with fenders to keep his pants from getting dirty), haunted me. I pictured him pulling up to an Upper East Side walk-up—or maybe a loft building in Soho—leaning against the buzzer, and then, panting slightly, wheeling his bike up the stairs.

  * * *

  MARCH 11, 1995 BY CANDACE BUSHNELL

  SEX AND THE CITY: A Portrait of a Bulgy Calvin Klein Hunk: Bergin Pops Out of His Giant Billboard

  THE FIRST TIME YOU MEET MICHAEL, AT BOWERY BAR WITH CLIFFORD at his side, you want to hate him. He’s 25. A model. Et cetera. You pretty much sense that he wants to hate you, too. Is he going to be really stupid? Besides, you don’t think sex symbols are ever really sexy in person. The last one you met reminded you of a worm. Literally.

  But not this one. He’s not exactly what he appears to be.

  “I have different personalities with different people,” he says.

  Then you lose him in the crowd.

  About two months later, you’re at that model Amber Valletta’s birthday party at Barocco and you run into Michael. He’s standing across the room, leaning against the bar, and he’s smiling at you. He waves. You go over. He keeps hugging you, and photographers keep taking your picture. Then, you somehow end up sitting across the table from him. You and your friend are having this huge, never-ending, heated argument.

  Michael keeps leaning over and asking you if you’re O.K. And you say yes, thinking he doesn’t understand that you and your friend always talk to each other that way.

  Michael lives in a tiny studio that has white everything: white curtains, white sheets, white comforter, white chaise. He has 31 pairs of Calvin Klein underwear. He says he’s given away hundreds. When you’re in the bathroom, you look to see if he uses special cosmetics. He doesn’t.

  Michael grew up in Naugatuck, Conn. His father was a homicide and narcotics detective with the Connecticut State Police. His father let him do whatever he wanted—except drugs. “Are you kidding?” Michael says. So, when Michael was in high school, he couldn’t hang out with the cool kids. He hung out with the benchwarmers on the football team. They looked up to Michael.

  Every morning, Michael goes to the Bagel Buffet in the West Village for breakfast. You and Michael are hungry, so you go there at 6 in the evening on a Sunday. Two female cops sit in the corner smoking. People are wearing dirty sweat clothes. Michael eats half of your ham and cheese sandwich. “I could eat four of these sandwiches,” he says, “but I won’t. If I eat a hamburger, I feel so guilty afterwards.”

  Michael cares about the way he looks. “I change my clothes about five times a day,” he says. “Who doesn’t look in the mirror about a hundred times before they go out? I go back and forth between the two mirrors in my apartment like I’m going to look different in each one. It’s like, yeah, I look good in the mirror, let me see if I look as good in the other. Doesn’t everyone do that?”

  MARCH 20, 1995 BY PETER STEVENSON

  PLAYING RUDY’S STONEWALLING GIRL FRIDAY, LATEGANO DRIVES ROOM 9 REPORTERS NUTS

  WHILE A STUDENT AT RUTGERS University in the mid-1980’s, Cristyne Lategano, who is now Mayor Giuliani’s press secretary, was a coxswain on the male crew team. That meant she sat in the bow of the boat and told the men how to row. Now, as Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s press secretary, she is sitting in the bow of the City Hall pressroom. But she’s stopped calling strokes, and the press corps is certainly not rowing in her direction.

  “Cristyne,” said WNBC’s Gabe Pressman, “is a distillation of the mayor’s emotions—both his benign moments and his angry, hostile moments.”

  APRIL 3, 1995 BY JIM WINDOLF

  TV DIARY: TV BOY AT THE OSCARS: DAVE GETS THE SWEATS

  “UMA…OPRAH.” YEAH, WELL, screw it. I’m out there every single night. And one tiny night out of the 3,000 nights a year I’m on the air, one night I’m not at the top of my game for the first 10 minutes of the show. And I have to be exiled because of it. Well, screw it. Yeah, buddy, that’s right, you try entertaining night in and night out, you try it and then you can get back to me and then we can talk. Because I’m telling you, I’m serious now, I’m going to floor those people next year. I’m pointing the car at the Grand Canyon and we’re going all the way until the wheels fall off and the chassis burns and all those big-time movie-star jewelry-rattlers run screaming to the hills.

  Crystal loves those people. He can pretend he’s Catskill Boy all he wants, but he’s Hollywood to the bone. Like I’m going to go out there and sing a little song. Like I’m Mike Douglas opening the show with a number. Like I’m Merv.

  Steve Martin made the joke you should have made. ‘I think Dave’s monologue was really funny. But then again, anything would have been funny after Arthur Hiller.’ Beautiful. Well, that’s why Steve has eight months off every year and you’re TV Boy.

  Eighteen writers, and not one of them can give you an Arthur Hiller joke? Come on. Johnny made that joke on Jack Valenti for years.

  Isn’t Ovitz supposed to prevent just this kind of disaster?

  APRIL 10, 1995 BY PETER STEVENSON AND JIM WINDOLF

  THE OBSERVATORY: MAG MAX

  On April 12, magazine editors from all over town will gather in the Waldorf-Astoria Ballroom for the handing out of this year’s National Magazine Awards. The winners will take home Ellies, the Oscars of the magazine industry. PETER STEVENSON and JIM WINDOLF dope out the judging process, handicap the chances of the 75 nominees and reveal this year’s likely winners.

  THEY WILL TELL YOU OTHERWISE, THEY WILL TRY to play it cool, they will claim it means nothing. They will say “It’s a thrill just to be nominated” so often you’ll think you’re in Hollywood.

  But don’t listen to them. Because, oh, how they want it.

  It, of course, is the Ellie, the prize given at the National Magazine Awards, the Alexander Calder-designed sculpture thing that’s supposed to represent a modernist pachyderm but looks more like a sculpture of a Rorschach inkblot. The American Society of Magazine Editors has bestowed it upon grateful editors for the last 28 springs, and this year will present it to lucky winners in 14 categories over lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria on April 12.

  Editors of nominated magazines aren’t supposed to know if they’ve won until the lunch. This year, for the first time ever, an accounting firm, Price Waterhouse, was brought in to handle the ballots. “We’re trying to preserve an Oscar-like secrecy,” said Richard Stolley, founding editor of People and an ASME judge.

  Here’s how the judging process works: By Jan. 10, more than 300 magazines had submitted more than 1,300 entries. In February, a panel of 156 top and executive-level magazine editors holed up in the Hotel Macklowe in Manhattan to screen those entries. They broke up into groups of 10 to 20 to focus on a particular category, like General Excellence or Photography. Their job was to take, say, 115 entries and pare the list down to five or six finalists. It wasn’t pretty. “Every year, there is very spirited debate,” said Ms. Levine.

  When the screeners finished, the 1,300 entries had been pared down to 75 finalists. Then, on March 15 and 16, the judges—54 current and former magazine editors, art directors and journalism professors—gathered in the World Room at Columbia University’s Journalism Building to choose the 14 winners.

  For the most part, this year’s judges are the same ones who’ve judged the past few years, although, two years ago, according to Ms. Levine, “we cut out the judges we felt had lost touch.”

  Still, there are consistent complaints that the panel is weighted towa
rd graying eminences. “The judges are all elderly,” said an anonymous screener. “There may have been someone around 40, but no one younger. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

  “They’ve turned it into the Grammys,” said a 29-year-old editor who did not wish to be identified. “Safe choices are rewarded, alternative choices go home empty.”

  Up at Columbia, the judges broke up into groups of three to five, each taking a category. When they had made their choices, a member of each group rose and announced it; the selections then had to be ratified by secret ballot by a majority of the 54 judges. “This year we had a secret written ballot for the first time,” said ASME’s Ellen Levine. “Fewer people know who’s going to win than ever before.”

  APRIL 24, 1995 BY JIM WINDOLF

  NOW PLAYING NICK AND NORA AT THE NEWS, RUSH AND MOLLOY FEED THE GOSSIP BEAST

  WITH THEIR COLUMN SAFELY filed away for the next day’s editions of the Daily News, George Rush and Joanna Molloy tried to unwind one recent evening in their adjacent cubicles, seven floors above the grid of 42nd Street. The couple—who share not only a bed, but 25 inches of column space five days a week—were trying to impress a visitor by listing the high points in their careers as gossip writers for the News and, before that, the New York Post. Was it the item about Don Johnson’s love child, the bit concerning Harvey Keitel’s pet chicken, or the revelation that Scientologists witnessed the wedding of Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley?

  “Who cares about any of this crap,” said Ms. Molloy as she fussed her way through years of clips. “This is so goddamn depressing.”

  Mr. Rush, as usual, sounded a little more relaxed than his wife.

  “Darling,” he said in his best William Powell drawl, “we’re just feeding the beast.”

  The News tag-team Tattlers joined forces professionally on Feb. 20, when the column once known simply as George Rush became Rush and Molloy. Even their competitors had nothing but kind words for New York’s self-styled First Couple of Gossip. Post columnist Neal Travis said, “The News is a mess, but George and Joanna seem to know what they’re doing.” The usually acerbic Khoi Nguyen of the Post’s Page Six agreed: “After my own page, it’s the next thing I read every morning.” Liz Smith, who gushes about something or other each day in-her New York Newsday column, couldn’t help but gush over Rush and Molloy. “It’s nifty, lively and on the ball,” she said.

  APRIL 24, 1995 BY FRANK DIGIACOMO

  THE TRANSOM: IS FASHION CAFÉ TROIKA A FRONT?

  THE SKEPTICISM REMAINED EVEN AFTER THE THICK FUMES OF hype had dissipated from the newly opened Fashion Café at 51 Rockefeller Plaza. Supermodels Naomi Campbell, Elle Macpherson and Claudia Schiffer have been touted as partners in Manhattan’s newest theme-park restaurant ever since the first press release on Fashion Café was issued back in October.

  But even though Naomi, Elle and Claudia did their best to sound resolute about their involvement in the Rockefeller Center eatery (“It’s our baby. We make all the decisions,” Ms. Schiffer told Time), they didn’t quite seem to sell the notion of themselves as restaurateurs. And this was a trio whose repertoire of bedroom looks and runway prowling has moved millions of dollars of designer merchandise.

  Perhaps, in the end, the multinational mannequin troika didn’t believe their own hype. A check of New York State Liquor Authority records indicates that the Fashion Café is owned by an alliance consisting of general partners and brothers Tommaso and Francesco Buti, who own 28 percent of the business, and limited partner Dr. Guido Bracchetti, a Los Angeles oral surgeon who has the remaining 72 percent.

  “None of those gorgeous models are owners,” State Liquor Authority spokesman Richard Chernela told The Observer’s Daniel Green. “It’s a promotional gimmick. I’m sure those women got a few bucks, more than a few bucks, to help market Fashion Café. According to our records, the models have no interest, either direct or indirect, in the restaurant. If they did, it would indicate fraud.”

  APRIL 24, 1995 BY CANDACE BUSHNELL

  SEX AND THE CITY: NEW YORK’S LAST SEDUCTION: LOVING MR. BIG

  A 40-ISH MOVIE PRODUCER I’LL CALL “SAMANTHA JONES” walked into Bowery Bar and, as usual, we all looked up to see whom she was with. Samantha was always with at least four men, and the game was to pick out which one was her lover. Of course, it wasn’t really much of a game, because the boyfriend was too easy to spot. Invariably, he was the youngest, and good-looking in the B-Hollywood-actor kind of way—and he would sit there with a joyously stupid expression on his face (if he had just met Sam) or a bored stupid look on his face (if he had been out with her a few times). Because at that point it would be beginning to dawn on him that no one at the table was going to talk to him. Why should they, when he was going to be history in two weeks?

  We all admired Sam. First of all, it’s not that easy to get 25-year-old guys when you’re in your early 40’s. Second, Sam is a New York inspiration. Because if you’re a successful single woman in this city, you have two choices: You can beat your head against the wall trying to find a relationship, or you can say “screw it” and just go out and have sex like a man. Thus: Sam.

  This is a real question for women in New York these days. For the first time in Manhattan history, many women in their 30’s to early 40’s have as much money and power as men—or at least enough to feel like they don’t need a man, except for sex. While this paradox is the topic of many an analytic hour, recently my friend Carrie, a journalist in her mid-30’s, decided, as a group of us were having tea at the Mayfair hotel, to try it out in the real world. To give up on love, as it were, and throttle up on power, in order to find contentment. And, as we’ll see, it worked. Sort of.

  Meeting Mr. Big

  As part of her research, Carrie went to see The Last Seduction at 3 in the afternoon. She had heard that the movie portrayed a woman who, in pursuit of money and hot sex and absolute control, uses and abuses every man she meets—and never has a regret or one of those expected “Oh my God, what have I done?” epiphanies.

  When she came out, she kept thinking about the scene where Linda Fiorentino picks up the man in the bar and has sex with him in the parking lot, gripping a chain-link fence.

  Carrie bought two pairs of strappy sandals (there is sexual power in women’s shoes) and got her hair cut off.

  On a Sunday evening, Carrie went to a cocktail party thrown by the designer Joop. A man walked by with a cigar in his mouth, and one of the men Carrie was talking to said, “Oooooh. Who is that? He looks like a younger, better-looking Ron Perelman.”

  “I know who it is,” Carrie said.

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Big.”

  “I knew that. I always get Mr. Big and Perelman mixed up.”

  Carrie had seen Mr. Big once before, but she didn’t think he’d remember her. She was in this office where she works sometimes and Inside Edition was interviewing her about something she wrote about Chihuahuas. Mr. Big came in and started talking to the cameraman about how all Chihuahuas were in Paris.

  At the party, Mr. Big was sitting on the radiator in the living room. “Hi,” Carrie said. “Remember me?” She could tell by his eyes that he had no idea who she was, and she wondered if he was going to panic.

  He twirled the cigar around the inside of his lips and took it out of his mouth. A high-testosterone male. He looked away to flick his ash, then looked back and said, “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

  Another Mr. Big (at Elaine’s)

  Carrie didn’t run into Mr. Big again for several days. In the meantime, something was definitely happening. She bumped into a writer friend she hadn’t seen for two months and he said, “You look like Heather Locklear.”

  “Yeah? Is that a problem?”

  Then she went to a party after one of those Peggy Siegal movie openings and met a big movie producer who impulsively gave her a ride in his car to Bowery Bar. Mr. Big was there.

  Mr. Big slid into the banquette next her. Their sides were touching.

 
Mr. Big said, “So. What have you been doing lately? What do you do for work?”

  “This is my work,” Carrie said. “I’m researching a story for a friend of mine about women who have sex like men. You know, that they have sex and afterwards they feel nothing.”

  Mr. Big eyed her. “But you’re not like that,” he said.

  “Aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Not a drop. Not even half a drop,” he said.

  Carrie looked at Mr. Big. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Oh, I get it,” said Mr. Big. “You’ve never been in love.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you have?”

  “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

  MAY 8, 1995 BY ALEX KUCZYNSKI

  Incidental Information on Martin Amis: Don’t Look a Gifted Author in the Mouth

  HALF AN HOUR AFTER MARTIN AMIS’ BOOK PARTY WAS supposed to be over on May 1, he was standing in the small back room at Match on East 60th Street. Usually at a book party, the author is an afterthought, as the literati spread out and talk shop among themselves, deigning perhaps to stop by and shake the humble author’s hand; at his party Martin Amis was its collective thought.

  Mr. Amis, in a lavender shirt and subdued chalk-stripe suit, was accompanied by his American girlfriend Isabel Fonseca, also wearing lavender. There was a bottleneck at the door. The sushi bar was four deep. And when Mr. Amis’ agent Andrew Wylie arrived to chat with Mr. Amis for a few minutes, it was like watching welding sparks; the most unfazable New Yorkers stared even though they knew it was bad for their corneas. Mr. Amis, verifiably, incontestably, irritatingly, had become a celebrity. Not just a book-world celebrity. A mondo-celebrity celebrity.