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

by The New York Observer

  What happened in Far Rockaway and Co-op City? Shelters were proposed in two largely white neighborhoods with political clout, neighborhoods where many residents did not want shelters. City Council President Andrew Stein, who voted with the mayor, opposed both these sites. Now, a shelter is being constructed in neither location. They ended up in Harlem; in Bushwick; in East New York; in the South Bronx—in other words, largely in minority neighborhoods with very little political clout. A coincidence?

  Some action is being taken for the homeless—11 shelters will be built. And Mayor Koch may have won his political victory. But temporary shelters provide only a temporary solution. A real solution requires compassion and commitment and cannot be hurriedly bartered by Board of Estimate members the day before the vote.

  Intent of the Framers? Broadcasting’s “fairness doctrine”—the federal regulation that required radio and television stations to offer airtime to groups or persons with dissenting views—has worked as its name implies. It has helped those with a different viewpoint gain access to the airwaves. It has helped promote public debate and the exchange of views vital to democracy. The Federal Communications Commission’s decision to abolish this protection is a mistake.

  Some have praised the F.C.C. decision as, among other things, a victory for free speech. Government should not, they argue, dictate to broadcasters what views they must put on air. In so dictating, the government, they say, violates the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press.

  Writers of the Constitution were familiar with the printing press and with newspapers. They did not, however, foresee radio and television, each of which is strictly licensed by government. They did not foresee the creations of huge broadcasting empires controlled by such companies as General Electric and Westinghouse. The framers of the Constitution envisioned a living document. As such, it must be continually construed to guarantee the right to dissent and freedom of speech in today’s high-tech, electronic age.

  Access to the major networks and stations only for those who can afford to buy airtime is a distorted kind of freedom. The freedom represented by the fairness doctrine is, by contrast, something that the framers of the Constitution would have understood very well indeed. It helps ensure that others will have the power to make their voices heard. It is a freedom consistent with the spirit and intent of 1787.

  OCTOBER 12, 1987 BY JEAN NATHAN

  HEALTH WORRIES LEAD TO REMOVAL OF SAND FROM PUBLIC PLAYGROUNDS

  OF THE 143 PLAYGROUNDS IN MANHATTAN, 101 HAVE SANDBOXES. OF these, only 52 have sand in them. They are used as shooting galleries, outdoor ashtrays, garbage pits and toilets for people and animals. Razorblades, glass fragments and fleas also defile them. The days of an occasional sand-encrusted popsicle stick being the only debris there are long gone.

  The Parks Department, overwhelmed by such problems, has reacted by quietly phasing out the sandbox. Of the 20 projects now on the boards to design new and renovate existing playgrounds, only one includes a sandbox. Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern acknowledges the problem, saying “It crept up like tooth decay.”

  The question of what to be done with Manhattan’s remaining public sandboxes is very much on the minds of Parks Department officials, parents and doctors, many of whom have affectionate memories of times they and their children have spent there.

  The Parks Department policy for the future of the city’s sandboxes is not a blanket one. “Our sandbox policy is empirical,” said Mr. Stern. “We judge by experience. If in any community it works, and the people and animals keep it clean, then fine, we like the sandbox. There is a different chemistry in each area.” “The sandbox requires a higher level of social responsibility than some of our citizens possess at this time,” said Mr. Stern. “We don’t want to expose children to disease and injury.”

  OCTOBER 12, 1987 BY BELLA ABZUG

  Why Must Women be Perfect?

  A MALE DEMOCRATIC CONSULTANT WAS QUOTED LAST week on the occasion of Congresswoman Pat Schroeder’s withdrawal from the presidential race, “Women in politics have to be perfect—that’s just a nasty fact of life.”

  He was, of course, referring to the fact that Ms. Schroeder cried when she made her statement, and his observation was echoed by more than one commentator.

  Who says that women politicians have to be perfect? Moreover, who says that crying makes you imperfect?

  What human is perfect?

  It’s to cry, all right baby, as well as a nasty fact of life that politics has slipped more and more away from reality and humanity. Every day we are robbed of the opportunity to expect real and honest emotions which, after all, we all initially possess whether we are politicians or not.

  It’s to cry, baby, and a nasty fact of life that Pat Schroeder, a Class A act as qualified or more so than most of the men running, decided not to run. She served 15 years in Congress trying to reverse the arms race. She spent 15 years moving to preserve the environment, 15 years embracing the concerns of family and the nurturing of children, and as co-chair of Congress’ caucus on issues promoting human rights.

  It’s to cry, baby, and a nasty fact of life that she started to test the presidential waters late. She was held back until Gary Hart pulled out, because as a loyal political colleague from the same state, she served as co-chair of his campaign committee. She was also held back by the doubting political Thomases and Thomasinas because deep down they are still irrevocably connected to the lures of a male power structure by tradition and cooptation.

  It’s to cry, baby, and a nasty fact of life that at this moment of 200 years of constitutional celebration we continue a government supplied by man alone. In the words of Frederick Douglass, a government supplied by man alone is a government only half supplied and like a bird with one wing unable to soar to the highest and the best.

  You’re a proud woman, serious member of Congress, terrific wife and mother and a person of deep feelings. Suddenly your dream is shattered. The frustration is overwhelming. You know you are needed but are forced to withdraw. You let it honestly happen. You let it all hang out. You share your feelings with your family, your friends, your supporters—and the people.

  No—it’s not to grin and bear it or to smile—it’s a nasty fact of life and—IT’S to cry.

  OCTOBER 19, 1987 BY MOIRA HODGSON

  A CRITIC’S VIEW: DINING AT WINDOWS ON THE WORLD: TOO BAD YOU CAN’T EAT THE VIEW

  A RESTAURANT THAT OFFERS both good food and a view is as rare as a clean subway. But when Windows on the World opened on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center in 1976, it seemed that such a restaurant might finally have arrived in Manhattan. At the time, it received favorable—even ecstatic—reviews. But restaurants change. Visitors from all over are still pouring into Windows on the World, which seats 350 and has the best view in New York City. But recent experiences here have been more reminiscent of eating on an airplane than in a good restaurant.

  Nothing beats the experience at dinner of looking out over inky rivers and twinkling lights, to the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings, all the way up the George Washington Bridge, with the Brooklyn Bridge on your right. But if you have dinner at Windows on the World, make sure it’s on a clear night.

  NOVEMBER 23, 1987 BY FRANCINE DU PLESSIX GRAY

  A CRITIC’S VIEW: WOLFE’S NEW NOVEL: RICH PROSE, THIN CHARACTERS

  AT THE AGE OF 38, HE LIVES IN A 14-room, $2.5 million Park Avenue apartment purchased with a $1.8 million bank loan; his mortgage alone costs him 21,000 a month. This patrician graduate of Buckley, St. Paul’s and Yale wears $650 British shoes and $2,000 custom-made suits from Savile Row.

  Sherman McCoy is the hero of Tom Wolfe’s first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and he may become our decade’s most memorable emblem for a generation of yuppie tycoons who were flaunting their wealth with an exhibitionism unprecedented in the history of New York City…until a few weeks ago. Few contemporary novels have been so uncannily recursive. The blow dealt by Wall Street’s Black Monday collaps
e to the fortunes of McCoy’s real life counterparts might well parallel McCoy’s landslide into penury.

  Tom Wolfe’s satiric, pitiless black comedy is a classical fable of high hubris. Beyond crass insensitivity and an astounding lack of self-knowledge, his hero’s fatal character flaw is his belief that he is a “Master of the Universe,” entitled to “the simple pleasures due all mighty warriors.”

  Yet there is a curiously disturbing aspect to this gifted book: It is populated by sumptuously described material possessions rather than by fully fleshed people. Apart from McCoy’s love for his little daughter (expressed by cloying bathos), no emotion inhabits these individuals beyond occasional lust, ethnic paranoia, and greed for still more status-laden objects. A neat summing up of the ethos of the late 1980’s: tone deafness to the reality of pain, passive resignation to inequities.

  FEBRUARY 1, 1988 BY MARK J. PENN AND DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN

  Observer Poll: In New York, Marriage Satisfies, Beckons

  A KEY TO HAPPINESS FOR NEW Yorkers appears to be having A successful marriage, according to The New York Observer Poll.

  The poll showed that marital bliss is somewhat related to frequency of sexual intercourse. People who reported having sex at least once every two weeks reported the same levels of happiness as those who said they have sex several times a week. But once sex dropped to once a month or less, marital satisfaction declined precipitously.

  Surprisingly, frequency of sexual intercourse in a marriage did not appear to rule out affairs. On the contrary, 21 percent of married men who said they were having intercourse with their wives more than once a week said they also had an affair.

  Indeed, the poll found that the happiest people were those who are married, followed by those who are close to it—living with someone. And people who date just one person are happier than those dating a range of people.

  Among the tenth of the sample who said they are divorced, 92 percent said they had made the right decision while only 8 percent regretted it. But not nearly as many of those going through separations and divorces said they were “very happy” with their lives as married New Yorkers.

  APRIL 30, 1990 BY MICHAEL M. THOMAS

  MILKEN’S GREEDY GAME IS FINISHED, THE BIG BEETLE GOT STOMPED FLAT

  “I’VE HAD THIS TERRIBLE dream that Diane Sawyer was interviewing Marla Maples.”

  “That was no dream, you jackass! Why…”

  Delicacy forbids me to transcribe the further deliriums of a woman whose perceptions are obviously still clouded by Morpheus.

  As I skulk downstairs to deal with my chores, it all comes back. Aye, so t’was: I wasn’t dreaming. Indeed, indeed there on my set, before my very eyes, the blond goddess of ABC had in fact “interviewed” the Prince of Swine’s alleged squeeze.

  Now what, I wondered, could have made her do that? Not Ms. Maples, that plays itself. Too much hair, major gazongas and strong into the leg division. I’m too much a gentleman to draw I.Q. conclusions from what I heard on the tube.

  My lament is: “Say it ain’t so, Diane.” I can understand she had good reasons for chucking CBS and 60 Minutes for ABC, like three big ones a year and never having to airkiss Larry Tisch again, but somewhere must have lurked the notion that real journalistic options were hers for the seizing, and now this! Simper City! Give me a break! Maybe it would have been better if Primetime Live had brought in a ringer for this one-shot special, someone like Alec Baldwin, say, or Kevin Costner, and no holds barred. Then we might have been given a true zinger, none of this “I have to get on with my life” bullbleep, but Miss M. strutting her best stuff.

  MAY 21, 1990 BY HELEN THORPE

  Observer Poll: Most Fear Streets At Night; Mixed Grades for Police

  MOST NEW YORKERS FEEL EITHER uncomfortable or afraid walking alone in their own neighborhoods at night and almost one-fifth feel uncomfortable or afraid doing so in daytime, according to The New York Observer Poll. At the same time, many members of the public seem dissatisfied with the NYPD.

  A clear majority of New Yorkers say the police force acts in a biased manner, according to The Observer Poll. Only 17 percent of respondents said the police treat all groups of people the same, while 68 percent thought the police treat some better or worse. And while most city residents consider the police to be both friendly and helpful, one-fourth consider New York City police in general to be corrupt.

  FEBRUARY 8, 1988 BY JEFF SHEAR

  Felker Still Pursues Publishing Power After 20 Years and 7 Publications

  THE WRITER GAY TALESE TELLS a story about magazine editor Clay Felker.

  “We were arriving home in a taxi in the East 50’s one evening,” he says. “It was sometime during the mid-60’s. It was winter. We had been drinking at some forgotten restaurant downtown, Clay still had an empty glass in his hand.

  “It was the only time I ever saw him do something dramatic,” he said. “Usually you would see him loping through the Four Seasons, not taking anything around him very seriously or paying much attention. Of course, he was, he never missed anything.

  “But now, unexpectedly, he took a hook shot with the glass, a skyhook in the pre-Abdul Jabbar style, casually, slowly, looping the glass over the avenue.”

  Before it crashed against the curb, the two men had walked on, without so much as a word about the toss. “He gave no impression of his feelings,” Mr. Talese said, although he was left with the sense that there was something to be understood in Mr. Felker’s gesture, an odd aplomb, a signature perhaps, or an augury.

  This April, as New York magazine celebrates its 20th anniversary, Clay Felker will mark his eighth month as editor of Manhattan, inc., a magazine that had begun four years ago as the hot new magazine in town but has grown, as it says in its latest direct-mail subscription campaign, into “a relatively new magazine.”

  It is also a publication that has been reeling from a dispute that left it without an editor for a month last June and prompted a raft of departures from its masthead.

  The crippling dispute occurred when the magazine’s founding editor, Jane Amsterdam, quit after a power struggle with publisher D. Herbert Lipson. The issue was reportedly the degree of influence that advertising interests could exert on the editorial staff. Ironically, it is the sort of power struggle that has dogged Mr. Felker’s career. Mr. Lipson was vacationing in Caneel Bay, St. John, and could not be reached for comment.

  He has said in the past that he has complete confidence in Mr. Felker’s judgment. Still, the seeds of contention are there, and wherever Mr. Felker goes, drama follows. Power may drive him, but conflict stalks him and ultimately undoes him. The shattering of the glass against the curbs of publisher Herbert Lipson’s power seems only to be a matter of time.

  MARCH 14, 1988 BY MARILYN HARDING AND MARJORIE S. DEANE

  FOR NEW FASHION ROEHM, IT’S A LONG WAY FROM ST. LOUIS

  CAN CAROLYNE ROEHM, THE DAUGHTER OF A SCHOOL PRINCIPAL, have it all? Can a little girl from the Midwest grow up to be a slick Seventh Avenue designer? Can a cheerleader from St. Louis wed one of New York’s wealthiest businessmen?

  Nan Kempner, a matron of New York society by virtue of her marriage to broker and financier Thomas Kempner, an international representative for Christie’s auction house, said: “Have you ever seen anyone as handsome as Henry Kravis? I would kill to sit next to him at a dinner party.” But however Mrs. Kempner may position herself at a charity banquet, Carolyne Roehm is the one Mr. Kravis takes home.

  Married for some five years, after both had divorced previous spouses, the Kravises have taken New York by storm. He, as the noted founder and partner of the firm Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts, specializing in leveraged buy-outs. These are the guys who pulled off the big acquisition of Beatrice Foods and are now buying Stop and Shop. And she, launching her own designer label in 1985, one of the first to offer European tailoring and attitude geared to the moneyed American women. This is the very same couple who, within the past six months, have found their lavish lifestyle—a 17
-room apartment on Park Avenue, a house in Connecticut and a gateway ski retreat in Vail; a major art collection; private Lear jet travel, and an assortment of the richest, most attractive friends—swept up by an avalanche of media hype that follows them.

  It’s high-profile country when Women’s Wear Daily coins the very frivolous phrase “Nouvelle Society” and tacks it to your persona.

  MARCH 14, 1988 BY NANCY JONES

  TRANSFORMING AEROBICS INTO A FITNESS EMPIRE

  CALIFORNIA’S PRINCESS OF FITNESS, GILDA MARX, BREEZED INTO town in September 1980 with a new program of aerobic exercise, and very nearly blew the competition away. Exercising in those days meant calisthenics at Lotte Berk, killer runs around the reservoir at 7 A.M., swinging from a trapeze at Alex and Wlater’s or, at the very least, staring into a full-length mirror for a 15-minute workout with two Campbell soup cans.

  Today Gilda Marx owns three studios in Manhattan, with others in Washington, D.C., and Stamford, Conn., and every six weeks she jets back and forth from the West Coast to oversee details of what has become a multimillion dollar operation. Privately held Gilda Marx Industries projects revenues of $40 million for 1988, up from half a million in 1976.

  Ms. Marx, who said she was born in Pittsburgh some 50-odd years ago, started exercising back in the 60’s, moving around to music with her friends in her California living room. By 1975 she had opened her first Body Design by Gilda studio in Century City, and movie stars started to drop by. In the 70’s, Ms. Marx and her husband, Robert, son of the least known Marx Brother, Gummo, created Flexatard Bodywear, a line of exercise clothing that they say is currently the country’s best-selling exercise line.

  MAY 9, 1988 BY VALERIE BLOCK