The Kingdom of New York: Knights, Knaves, Billionaires, and Beauties in the City of Big Shots
Page 32
Illustrated by Drew Friedman
NOVEMBER 16, 1998 BY FRANK DIGIACOMO
THE TRANSOM: Puff Daddy’s Black and White Ball
SEAN (PUFFY) COMBS WAS ON the phone from a yacht in the Bahamas, and he was laughing.
“When Penny Marshall comes to my joints, she gets buck wild!” Mr. Combs said with admiration in his polite voice. “Every time she comes to one of my parties, she gets…” he paused, then continued excitedly, “Penny Marshall stopped the music and sang ‘Happy Birthday.’ I love her, man. I love her energy. You know, when I’m old, when I’m 60, I’m gonna remember that.”
Lord knows if, three decades from now, anyone else will remember Ms. Marshall’s nasal serenade of Mr. Combs, but for the next few months, they will be talking about the party where it happened.
Get past the confusion at the door and the white noise thrown up by the publicists of the celebrities who didn’t get inside. Instead, talk to the people who attended the 29th-birthday party of Mr. Combs at Cipriani Wall Street on Nov. 4, and many of them will agree that it marked a moment in New York’s social history.
While Truman Capote’s “Black and White Ball” at the Plaza Hotel in 1966 honored the crème de la crème of society, Mr. Combs was celebrating the kind of high-profile commercial success and notoriety that knows no racial or class bounds. On the night of his party, Mr. Combs attracted and presided over a group of local, national and international celebrities such as Donald Trump, Martha Stewart, Ronald Perelman, Sarah Ferguson, Kevin Costner and Ms. Marshall, who either have that kind of success, are trying to regain it, or are yearning for their first taste of it. And for at least this evening, as the television cameras caught them partying with Puffy, they caught a bit of the buzz that Mr. Combs has worked so hard to generate.
NOVEMBER 23, 1998 BY GEORGE GURLEY
What’s New, Pussycat? 90’s Women Adopt Sleek New Look Down Below
IT’S NOT YOUR MOTHER’S VULVA ANYMORE.
In a town house on West 57th Street, six Brazilian sisters are helping to bring about a private fashion revolution among stylish Manhattan women. Where once there was hair, now there is none, except for perhaps a tiny decorative strip on the mons pubis. The women at the J. Sisters International salon call it the “Brazilian bikini wax,” but it’s also known as the “thong wax” or “Playboy wax.” It has long been the norm for strippers and porn actresses. Now this painful process is increasingly part of the regular beauty regimen for the Prada set.
The J. sisters, whose first names all begin with the letter J, perform the service for roughly 100 women a day. They do haircuts, manicures and pedicures, and they’ve been offering the special wax for the last five years. Brazilian bikini wax appointments for the week before Valentine’s Day are already booked solid at J. Sisters.
“It makes you sexy,” said Jonice Padilha, the youngest J. sister. She was wearing oval glasses and a black Donna Karan suit as she talked about it in the town house the other day. “Makes you fashion. When I don’t have my bikini wax, I don’t feel like to have sex with my husband. I feel dirty. And even himself say, ‘Try a bikini wax!’ I feel free. I feel clean. I feel sensuous even when I take a shower. I feel like I’ve been taken care of.”
As Gold as It Gets! Jack Nicholson and Oscar
Illustrated by Drew Friedman
“Oh, Monica…”: Bill Clinton, bodice-ripper?
Illustrated by Drew Friedman
DECEMBER 21, 1998 BY GEORGE GURLEY
New Yorkers, Meet Your Media Elite
IT WAS BIG. AND, THE POST’S Richard Johnson, Liz Smith and Cindy Adams told GEORGE GURLEY, it was a year in which the dogs wagged and so did their tongues.
NYO: Why write so much about only a few people?
Ms. Smith: I can’t go back over a year’s worth of columns to tell you exactly why we wrote about such and such. For one reason or another, these people were on our minds or in the news. I mean, can you even question Bill, Hillary and Monica? Madonna is a perennial—the most famous woman in the world-—and not just for us, we just don’t trash her. Sinatra died, Elizabeth Taylor endures, no matter what, Leo and Brad and Matt are hot young stars, Cher is having a comeback, Rosie’s still very big, and she’s done so much for Broadway, Sharon has incredible glamour and attitude, Anne Heche is hot and gay! Barbra got married. Come on, why do I have to explain this?
NYO: Which boldfaced names are you most sick of?
Mr. Johnson: Puff Daddy.
NYO: But you’ve written about him more than anyone did!
Mr. Johnson: Right.
NYO: Brad Pitt told Oprah Winfrey that he didn’t know how gossip columnists could look their kids in the eye and tell them what they do for a living.
Ms. Adams: Well, I don’t have a kid. And that’s one of the reasons. But what I would say is…I write short stories. As short as possible. I write about what everybody wants to read. It’s not Shakespeare, but then Shakespeare couldn’t do what I do. Possibly Brad Pitt has had too many mentions. But with more pictures like Meet Joe Black, he won’t have to worry about that anymore.
Mr. Johnson: I think my kid already has a fine appreciation for what I do since I’ve been able to take him to, like, Broadway openings and took him on a junket to the Bahamas. And he likes stretch limos already.
NYO: So, what would you tell your kid that you are?
Mr. Drudge: A reporter who toils away on these wonder wires and who is not afraid to take on authority.
DECEMBER 21, 1998 BY FRANK DIGIACOMO
THE GOVERNMENT GOES GOSSIP-CRAZY
How would you like to be Bill Clinton, closed in on by the fervent gossipocracy? Well, writes FRANK DiGIACOMO, here they are, the 500 most noted people in New York, as calculated by appearances in the very media that make them what they are today: trapped
YOU THINK YOU KNOW WHAT happened in 1998: You remember January and the explosion, the wagging finger, the near immolation of a president, the long siege that followed; you think you’re tired of this terrible series of unanticipated events; you just want them to end.
But it was done for you. It was custom-made for you, voracious American consumer. The Starr Report was a government document tailored to this cybertabloid age. It was a referral with a sexy narrative that had been co-written by Stephen Bates, a lawyer who had studied fiction at Harvard and had written nonfiction features for The Nation and Playboy.
Just as in the 1930’s, when the argument was made that the federal government shouldn’t be building dams and providing electrical power because that was something best done by private industry, this year the federal government usurped the celebrity culture and the press.
This was the year the Government became the Gossips.
Illustrated by Robert Grossman
1999
Book business hops into bed with “that woman,” Ms. Lewinsky
Talk editor Tina Brown, latest Miramax starlet, throws party on Liberty Island
The billionaire and the sex bomb: Ron Perelman courts Ellen Barkin
Swipe again, suckers: Straphangers toss tokens for Metrocards
Internet stock trades are new sanctioned narcotic of upper middle class
John F. Kennedy Jr. dies in self-piloted plane at age 39
Women warriors Williams, Kournikova, Hingis invade U.S. Open
Hello, possums! Dame Edna Everage spreads gladness
Hej-Hej, Gap: Swedes invade with cheap-chic H&M
1999
JANUARY 18, 1999 BY DINI VON MUEFFLING
Bloomingdale’s or Bust! The Rise of Shoshanna Lonstein (Jerry’s Ex)
JERRY SEINFELD’S EX-GIRLFRIEND, Shoshanna Lonstein, now 23, who became a household name as the teenage girlfriend of America’s most famous TV funnyman, is about to get the last laugh.
While many New Yorkers have some inkling that Ms. Lonstein has branched into the fashion business, few are aware that her clothes—which are smart and cute, like cotton dresses in gingham and Liberty prints with matching bags (matching thon
g tucked inside)—are moving. The clothes—which Stefani Greenfeld, owner of the hot East Side boutique Scoop, calls “lingerie-inspired sportswear”–are extremely well priced (the dresses go for about $130) and geared toward large-breasted young women. Women who, like Ms. Lonstein, have a hard time finding flattering clothes to fit their physiques. After Ms. Lonstein’s initial splash at Bloomingdale’s, Kal Ruttenstein, the sneaker-clad fashion director, has reordered her resort line, placed a large order for spring, and asked Ms. Lonstein to design a line exclusively for the store.
But will Ms. Lonstein ever be able to avoid having her name in the same sentence as Jerry Seinfeld? If there’s one place she might be able to do it, it’s back home in her city, not the one Mr. Seinfeld created on a stage set in Hollywood. It is here that Ms. Lonstein has won the respect of Mr. Ruttenstein and other high-end fashion buyers, evolving from the gossip columns’ “bosomy Shoshanna” to president of a company with three full-time employees and which she predicts will have sales of $1 million in 1999. And who strikes those who meet her as much more beautiful than her grainy tabloid pictures and who is, by all accounts, disarmingly…nice.
And while her ex seems caught in terminal romantic adolescence—witness his brazen, tabloid-ready swiping of newlywed Jessica Sklar from her husband of three months—Ms. Lonstein waves away her Seinfeld past with, “That’s a part of my life that’s so over. I really don’t think about it. It was a relationship, that’s all.”
Ms. Lonstein said she didn’t exactly miss all the attention. “I couldn’t imagine some of the past criticism of my life. I never felt like I did anything wrong, so it never bothered me.” Still, she admitted, she found relentless hounding, and the media obsession with her chest, trying. “Rather than ‘Shoshanna,’” she said, “It’s always ‘shapely Shoshanna.’ To have it be a sexual part of your body is very difficult. It’s different if it’s long legs.”
MARCH 1, 1999 BY ALEXANDRA JACOBS
THE NEW YORK WORLD: THE METROCARD BLESSING
YOU HAVE YOUR LUDDITES, WHO still refuse to buy it because they like the “tactility,” or whatever, of tokens. You have your paranoids, who think Big Brother is using its magnetic strip to monitor their every move. And then…and then you have your addicts, whose lives will never be the same because of those little gold passes to freedom.
“I am obsessed with my unlimited Metrocard,” said Jake Kreilkamp, 25, who lives in Washington Heights and works for PEN American Center. He happily fronts $63 for his monthly card. “It makes you feel like the train is working with you to lower your transportation costs. Which is so not New York, you know? New York is all about, you know, ‘Yer gonna pay.’”
James Tupper has a recurring role on As the World Turns—and lots of auditions. “I used to walk everywhere, it’s true,” he said. “Now I just jump on the subway.”
The swipe, the dip, the beep-acceptance.
“Oh, my God. There’s a moment there, definitely,” said Mr. Tupper. “I feel accepted. I do. It’s like a green light. Like, I feel that all is well. No, really, I do. For a tiny moment there, all is well.”
MARCH 29, 1999 BY FRANK DIGIACOMO
HARVEY WINS IN HOSTILE HOLLYWOOD
HARVEY WEINSTEIN, THE CO-CHAIRMAN OF MIRAMAX FILMS, rested his pale, meaty hand at the base of the burnished gold statuette on the table before him. It was 1:30 a.m., and Miramax’s Oscar party at the Beverly Hills Hotel was standing-room-only, save for the small strip of guarded V.I.P. territory where Mr. Weinstein, his wife, Eve, and a small group of well-wishers sat. It was time for the annual post-mortem. The moment when, after a neck roll or two, Mr. Weinstein defined Hollywood’s high holy night in New York terms and Queens English. But in the early hours of March 22, he smiled at this Observer reporter and said simply, “It’s good to be alive.”
Maybe it was. But Mr. Weinstein had the look more of one of Steven Spielberg’s soldiers in the picture he had defeated, Saving Private Ryan. Yes, he had made a successful landing on a foreign shore. But, oh, those mortars!
Harvey Weinstein, the New Yorker, they said, had broken the rules; he had spent tens of millions; he had thrown the wrong kind of party, mixing movie people, press and civilians. But mostly, they were mad because, like Yankee soldiers in Atlanta, like Bill Clinton in the Congress, Miramax had come and beaten them on their home field.
Illustrated by Drew Friedman
APRIL 5, 1999 BY ALEXANDRA ZISSU
THE OBSERVATORY: Hey, Barneys…Remember Me?
Jeffrey Kalinsky Sets Up Shop on 14th
PETITE RETAILER JEFFREY Kalinsky stuck an Hermès dingo boot out of his lady-chauffeured Lincoln Town Car onto far West 14th Street on a recent sunny Saturday afternoon. A few men in white, blood-stained aprons and a couple in errand wear were the only other living beings on the carcass-filled street in the meatpacking district. The air smelled of dried blood and guts. Mr. Kalinsky emerged, dressed in head-to-toe Madison Avenue: cream-colored Helmut Lang jeans, a white Yves Saint Laurent belt (with a mother-of-pearl buckle), a fitted, black Gucci T-shirt, a sky blue Yves Saint Laurent cashmere cardigan and a navy leather Hermès jacket. He stared out from behind Katharine Hamnett sunglasses.
On Aug. 2 (his 37th birthday), Mr. Kalinsky, a former shoe buyer for Barneys, will open Jeffrey New York, a 12,000-square-foot former warehouse on the corner of 10th Avenue packed with expensive garments, reminiscent—in inventory, at least—of his former employer.
What Jeffrey lacks in name recognition and square-footage compared to Barneys (and everyone is comparing his store to Barneys), Mr. Kalinsky intends to make up for in pampering and Southern charm. The son and grandson of retailers and owner of three successful Atlanta stores—Bob Ellis, Jeffrey and Jil Sander (he owns her franchise)—will offer up his Manolo Blahniks with a healthy dose of hospitality, which may prove to be a welcome antidote to Madison Avenue, where the salespeople are almost always too hip to help. If you have ever been to one of Jeffrey Kalinsky’s stores, you have probably met him, and chances are he remembers your shoe size.
Bag designer Judith Leiber calls Mr. Kalinsky her “terrific shoe man.” And when wedding-cake designer Sylvia Weinstock, who has been shopping with Mr. Kalinsky for 10 years, heard he was coming to New York, she called him to say, “I can’t wait! I have my charge card ready!”
Retailers are less giddy. In fact, Barneys is said to be ticked off. Jason Weisenfeld, vice president of public relations, tried to take the high road. “We are thrilled for Jeffrey as we are for all Barneys alumni that go on and excel in the world of retail,” he said. “In Jeffrey’s case, we are particularly flattered because he has always been very vocal about the enormous amount he learned during his tenure at Barneys.”
MAY 3, 1999 BY FRANK DIGIACOMO
HOTHEAD COMEDY GENIUS PAT COOPER OUTLASTS ALL THOSE SHOWBIZ PHONIES
IN THE LULL BETWEEN LUNCH and dinner, Pat Cooper sat in the second-floor bar room of the Friars Club. He wore an understated gray turtleneck, a black baseball cap with an embroidered Fox Movietone News logo, and gold-rimmed aviator-style glasses that evoked an earlier era of Bryl-Creem and Harvey Wallbangers. On the back of his chair hung a lush, black motorcycle-style leather jacket that Mr. Cooper had removed about 20 minutes earlier. As a waiter delivered the glass of red wine the comedian had ordered, the interviewer asked Mr. Cooper how long he had belonged to the Friars Club. “I am an honorary member. I don’t pay dues,” he replied. “I pay back with my talent.” Mr. Cooper closed his mouth around the word talent like he was sealing it in a vault. “If they need me for a roast, if they’ve got special shows, I’m here. They’re nice people. They’ve always been nice to me.”
Illustrated by Barry Blitt
JULY 12, 1999 BY FRANK DIGIACOMO
THE TRANSOM: A Word to Ellen: Watch It, Girl! Life With Perelman Is Film Noir
IF THERE WAS ANY QUESTION that things had gotten serious between billionaire Ronald Perelman and the actress Ellen Barkin, the answer lies in the hairstyle that Mr. Perelman ha
s been showing off, along with his date, at a series of public events in the city, including the 40th anniversary of the Four Seasons restaurant.
Mr. Perelman, who has always kept his male-pattern bald head remarkably well-coifed, has gotten the billionaire’s equivalent of a buzz cut. While certainly not in the stubbled league of, say, the lead singer of Rage Against the Machine, it is safe to say that Mr. Perelman has done the one thing (short of growing a goatee) that a 56-year-old bald man can do to make himself look hipper to a 45-year-old Hollywood sex bomb such as Ms. Barkin. And that says one thing: That Mr. Perelman—a man known to be a relentless seducer both in his professional and personal life—has begun his full court press for the exclusive enjoyment of Ms. Barkin’s irresistible crooked smile.
JANUARY 11, 1999 EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL: ZUCKERMAN, KOSNER AND BRILL
ALL OF THE MEDIA’S NARCISSISM CAN BE SUMMED UP IN A PHRASE: Zuckerman, Kosner and Brill. Mortimer Zuckerman, publisher of the once-great Daily News; Edward Kosner, late of Esquire, now the News’ Sunday editor; and Steven Brill, proprietor of the much-hyped Brill’s Content: These three men truly believe they are the publishing machers of the city. But with nary a drop of wit, mirth or humor among them, these three fatuous wannabes are determined to drive away all would-be readers and bore us all to tears.
Hats off to Mr. Zuckerman, who has managed the seemingly impossible: He has made a tabloid unreadable. With even politics now part of the tabloid news cycle, the Daily News, which exemplified American tabloid journalism for decades, should be in its glory. Instead, it induces in readers a permanent state of narcolepsy. Why? It certainly doesn’t help that Mr. Zuckerman has never met a tabloid reader, wouldn’t know where to find one and wouldn’t understand his or her concerns. Imagine Mr. Zuckerman stumbling across a Daily News subscriber: What would he say?