Phillips Nets $86.9 M. at Contemporary Art Sale, Buoyed by Record $16.3 M. Basquiat
Lichtenstein and Bacon Lead $266 M. Sale of Contemporary Art at Sotheby's
Roundup: You Don't Have Jesus Running Against Someone Else. You Have Obama Running Against Romney
Secret Sunday Salon at the McKittrick Hotel Launches Jay McInerney's "Solace" and New Literary Series
JP Morgan Uberflack (and Jamie Dimon's Spokesperson) Joseph Evangelisti Just Became $6.7M Richer With Apartment Sale
12 Pictures of Politicians In Graduation Robes
Soho Is the New Times Square
6½th Avenue Gets Greenlight: Pedestrian Passageway Approved by Community Board, Installation in June
Cuomo Hails Espada Conviction
Roundup: You Don’t Have Jesus Running Against Someone Else. You Have Obama Running Against Romney
After lunching with Ray Kelly, Guy Molinari said that the police commissioner will not be a candidate for mayor.
Retiring Rep. Gary Ackerman formed a PAC, possibly to help him distribute his leftover campaign funds.
Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn made their endorsements.
Hamodia headline: “Rory Lancman: Congressional Race All About Read More
Secret Sunday Salon at the McKittrick Hotel Launches Jay McInerney’s “Solace” and New Literary Series
The first sign that something strange was going on at The Forgotten, a new salon series literary doyenne Brooke Geahan kicked off Sunday night, was the ratio of hostesses to attendees.
We had come to hear a reading of “Solace,” a new short story by Jay McInerney put out by Ms. Geahan’s soundtrack-augmented Read More
JP Morgan Uberflack (and Jamie Dimon’s Spokesperson) Joseph Evangelisti Just Became $6.7M Richer With Apartment Sale
It’s always a good time to make money and unload some property, right? Maybe not for J.P. Morgan uberflack Joseph Evangelisti (who also has the unenviable task of being Jamie Dimon’s spokesperson). Then again, the value of his stock did just take a pretty significant hit, so the money he made off of selling his beautiful West Village pad—not exactly a small sum to most Not-Moneyed Folks—could come in handy. Read More
12 Pictures of Politicians In Graduation Robes
It’s college graduation season, which means we get to enjoy the sight of politicians are donning robes to make speeches at commencement ceremonies across the country. In the past few days, President Barack Obama, his wife, Michelle, Mitt Romney and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have all suited up for commencement speeches. Read on to see our Read More
Soho Is the New Times Square
It’s only a matter of time before the flashing signs and statue impersonators arrive. Soho is now so overrun with tourists, food carts, Mr. Softee trucks and promoters pushing everything from hair gel to dating websites that it is virtually uninhabitable, reports the New York Post, warning, “SoHo has become NoGo.”
Residents are so angered by the impossible crowds that violence is flaring up. Last Thursday, a middle-aged New Jersey man in flip-flops bumped into two women walking the opposite way. The enraged women punched him in the face, knocked him to the ground and started kicking him. Read More
6½th Avenue Gets Greenlight: Pedestrian Passageway Approved by Community Board, Installation in June
“I think this is a very important opportunity for this community to back this avenue, which was given to the developers decades ago,” Nancy Goshow said last Thursday night, during a meeting of Community Board 5. “The developers have gotten all the benefits for too long, and it is time we as a community take back these spaces and really push them to be improved and made as nice as possible.”
Ms. Goshow was one of a majority of board members who declared her support for what has come to be known as 6½th Avenue, a Department of Transportation proposal to link a series of arcades and public plazas running from 51st to 57th streets between Sixth and Seventh avenues. The spaces were created through a special zoning district in the 1980s and early ’90s, and are made up of Zuccotti-like privately owned public space, or POPS. In exchange for building the spaces, developers got the opportunity to build bigger buildings.
Last year, the community board, at the suggestion of Friends of POPS, a pro-POPS civic group, asked the Department of Transportation to study ways it might connect these spaces. They are already a popular pedestrian thoroughfare, especially during lunch time and at rush hour, providing a less hectic alternative to the avenues on either side. The board wanted to make the spaces even more inviting. Read More
Cuomo Hails Espada Conviction
Earlier today former State Senator Pedro Espada was convicted for stealing money from a nonprofit medical center that he founded.
This verdict was hailed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who had battled Mr. Espada since even before he was sworn in as governor.
“As Attorney General, I brought an action against Pedro Espada for siphoning millions Read More
John Derbyshire Thinks White Supremacy is Pretty Great, Historically Speaking
John Derbyshire, whom you might remember as the guy too blatantly racist for the much more subtly racist National Review–has found himself a new gig. Besides continuing his writing for Taki’s Mag (where his article “The Talk: The NonBlack Version” ended his tenure at the Review), the British journalist is now a columnist for VDare.com, an anti-immigration website that the Southern Poverty Law Center has described as a “hate group.”
But over at VDare, Mr. Derbyshire used his inaugural column to clarify some misconceptions. Mainly, that the term “White Supremacist” gets a really bad rap! Read More
Jay-Z Finally Refutes Nasty Jenga Rumor, Invokes The Spotted Pig in Alibi
Jay-Z is curating a new concert festival for…Philadelphia. As New Yorkers try to rationalize this inexplicable turn of events—Jay-Z, an investor in the soon-to-be-real Brooklyn Nets, who recently played Carnegie Hall, and who could probably clean sweep the next New York City mayoral election—catering to the needs of the (ahem) sixth borough (as some would have it), Beyonce’s husband recently took the time to speak to Rolling Stone about it.
Buried at the very end interview is Jay-Z, finally bringing a nasty rumor about himself to rest. Read More
Finally, Mark Zuckerberg Can Tell His Parents That He’s Dating a Doctor
About an hour ago, billionaire birthday boy Mark Zuckerberg announced–
Visiting ‘Cloud City’ With Tomás Saraceno on the Met’s Roof
We did everything wrong. We were on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art this morning wearing a skirt and heels and carrying a big bag. Before us was Tomás Saraceno’s sculpture, Cloud City, a 54-foot tall architectural structure of interconnected modules of reflective surfaces that looks at once like bubbles and bacteria, and Read More
Mitt Romney Defends His Business Record In New Ad [Video]
After President Barack Obama’s campaign released a television ad attacking Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital, Mr. Romney’s campaign shot back with an ad crediting him with helping to build a company called Steel Dynamics.
“SDI almost never got started. When others shied away, Mitt Romney’s private sector leadership team stepped in,” a narrator Read More
Marc Jacobs vs. The Street Artist, Round 3: The Mannequins Get Involved
On the night of the Met Ball, the Marc Jacobs boutique in SoHo was vandalized by a French street artist named Kidult, just like Supreme, Louis Vuitton, and Hermes had done to them. The next morning, Marc Jacobs made light of it by turning it into a canny social media (and thus: marketing) joke. After that, Marc Jacobs and Company decided to turn it into a $689 T-Shirt, and moreover, turn an indictment of capitalism into an indictment of street art.
Needless to say, Kidult is pissed. Read More
Ron Paul Ends Presidential Campaign
Texas Congressman Ron Paul acknowledged the inevitable this afternoon, announcing that he was ceasing to compete in any of the upcoming presidential primaries or caucuses.
“[W]e will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted,” Mr. Paul wrote to supporters. ” Doing so with any hope of success would take Read More
James Franco Joins Prestigious Ranks of Huffington Post Celebrity Bloggers
James Franco, the real voice of our generation, has taken time out from his busy schedule of Art and Teaching and also Learning to begin a Huffington Post diary. It’s about time!
So what important issue of our times is Mr. Franco tackling? President Obama’s stance on gay rights? The construction of Marina Abramovic‘s performance space over on the Hudson? His new album, perhaps?
Those are all great guesses, but James Franco is actually here to talk to us today about a matter close to his heart: Haunted tours in New Orleans that he took with his Nana. (Which is the name of his Japanese hairdresser, not his grandmother.) Read More
