Spencer Morgan | The New York Observer

The Last Crack Hipster

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:50:40 -0400

On my way to meet the Last Crack Hipster, I bought a soda at a bodega around the corner from where he lives in Brooklyn. I must have missed him by a minute. The bodega sells crack pipes, too. Most bodegas in the city do. The pipes used to be disguised as glass tubes, corked at both ends, containing tiny roses. No one bought them for the roses. Now they come in the form...

Gilroy's Big Gamble at East Side Social Club

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:30:23 -0400

As a boy, growing up in the leafy enclave of Kent, Conn., Devon Gilroy exhibited all the signs of an obsessive-compulsive destined for a lonesome adulthood fraught with daily battles trying to control the uncontrollable. Ketchup was a big thing, early on—the mere sight of it was cause for alarm. Furthermore, everything had to be cooked all the way through. Different food groups could not be touching, not even a little. He was,...

You Haven't Heard the Last From Doug Biviano!

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:46:09 -0400

Meet Doug Biviano: Brooklyn-born, just like his father and his father before him; a Brooklyn Heights resident, a P.S. 8 proud parent, as in his three kids with wife Lee are actually enrolled in the public school system; he’s a Girl Scout Dad, too. A Cornell-trained civil engineer (his consultants had to keep reminding him to mention the Ivy League bit), Biv didn’t like working for the machine as a professional any more than...

Surf's Still Up for Jamie Mulholland

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:16:32 -0400

Fifteen years ago, Jamie Mulholland hopped on a sailboat departing St. Martin, where he’d been working as a bartender and dreaming about what he would say during his Academy Award acceptance speech. The rogue yacht let him off at a dock in Connecticut. Special delivery! He was 25, armed with a backpack, a few nights’ worth of tips in his pocket, a South African accent and a head full of vague notions about breaking...

Fisher Stevens Reels 'Em In

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:02:55 -0400

On a recent evening, Fisher Stevens, actor, producer and tireless organizer of dinner parties, had rallied a crew to the chichi vegan paradise Pure Food & Wine.

“Fisher’s like a good-time guy,” said Gina Gershon, who’s been to more Fisher Stevens get-togethers than she cares to count. “He’s like the catalyst for a lot of stuff that happens.”

Mr. Stevens, now 45, no longer eats meat after a pilot he...

Nacho! Polo!

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:19:18 -0400

Pucho is a sorrel-colored gelding with a white stripe down his face, big haunches and bulging leg muscles. He’s all power.

Brasita is small, dark and feminine. Notice her well-formed knees and fetlocks as she coyly paws the shavings on the floor. The mare’s got great moves.

“With her, you try get a little more sneaky,” polo sensation Nacho Figueras explained on a recent sunny afternoon in Bridgehampton. He was giving...

Dark Material

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:58:01 -0400

Lately, the actor Josh Lucas has been questioning his tendency to gravitate toward dark, tortured characters.

“I feel it’s not indicative of my soul or who I am,” the 38-year-old told me on recent sunny afternoon on a shaded bench in a tucked-away park in the East Village. He’s embodied some pretty grizzly characters: There was Craig McDermott, the misogynist, money-hungry banker in American Psycho; Martin Hansen, the competitive jerk who eventually...

Beware! Bungalow Bungler is Back

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:27:17 -0400

We were a tad disturbed the other day when we picked up the phone at the old headquarters and heard a menacing, vaguely familiar voice on the other end.
“It’s Giovanni Luciano,” said the legendary Bungalow Bungler, whom I visited in prison upstate last year. “Yeah, I read the article you wrote about me. Yeah. I got out. I’m just down the block from The New York Observer.”

I...

Michael Thomas Finds It Again

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:55:49 -0400

Last month, Michael Thomas went to see his doctor for a routine checkup. At the end, he joked that the biggest problem he was having these days was finding the damn thing.

“It’s actually a real problem,” he explained, on a recent afternoon at his loft in Dumbo.

He had made himself comfortable in a leather chair, one leg flopped over an armrest, the other pushed up against his thigh. He was wearing...

The Sultan of Stains

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:42:08 -0400

John Mahdessian prefers not to be called a dry cleaner.

“That’s a fuckin’ insult,” he said, between pulls off a Marlboro Light on a recent Sunday morning. “That’s like calling a world-renowned surgeon a doctor.”

We were outside the nail salon next door to the Madame Paulette flagship, first opened by Mr. Mahdessian’s great-uncle Andy as a mom-and-pop dry cleaner in 1958, when it was named for Andy’s wife, a French gal who...

Meet Mr. Pitt and the Missus!

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:52:33 -0400

"So he's supposed to be some kind of a movie star?” a skinny girl with braids asked her friend as they watched Michael Pitt walk out the door of the Tilden Family Center in Highland Park, Brooklyn, on a recent Friday. The center, which provides community outreach programs for kids, was buzzing with the rumor of a celebrity visit. The other girl confirmed that, yes, he was the movie star. “She wants to know...

The Hopeful He-Man of Madison Square Park

Tue, 19 May 2009 19:00:00 -0400

To sit next to Mike Nelson in a sunlit park is to be in the presence of celebrity. Nobody misses him. He’s 6-foot-4, with a 50-inch chest, a 34-inch waist and 19-and-a-half-inch biceps attached to shoulders the size of bowling balls. His dark brown hair is shoulder-length. Typical dress is a tight-fitting undershirt with a deeply stretched-out collar tucked into cargos. The urban gladiator effect is further enhanced by a choker necklace: leather strap,...

Busy Derek Blasberg, Beautiful People’s Latest Walker

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:55:39 -0400

At 4 p.m. on Friday, April 24, rising fashion writer and high-society magnet Derek Blasberg was basking on a bench outside the Mercer hotel. He wore a canary yellow Ralph Lauren wool sweater dotted with white terriers, a red-and-black-checked dress shirt, Earnest Sewn designer jeans and Burberry spats, whose chocolate brown patent leather tips twinkled in the sun. Beside him rested a blue-gray Prada bag made of crocodile skin, containing a black MacBook, from...

Clay McBride’s Wild Ride

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:15:15 -0400

"Beautiful, beautiful! … Show me some love! … Chin up a little bit … Perfect, perfect … Fire woman! You’re a fire woman.”

Clay McBride’s rapid-fire words were punctuated by the pops and cranks of his camera and lighting equipment. Crouched behind his 4x5 view camera, the 40-year-old lensman, who over the past 15 years has shot the big names in music and sports, shifted nimbly from one squat or kneel to the next,...

Want to Quit Smoking? Call Buffalo!

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:54:47 -0400

Most New Yorkers know you can dial 311 to make a complaint about noise or a bad pothole or whatever might be ticking you off that you think Mayor Bloomberg can solve in a jiffy.

But it turns out you can also dial 311 to quit smoking!

If you do, you’ll be connected to one of about 50 people sitting in a well-lit room at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute up in Buffalo, NY. They’re waiting...

Andy Spade Is a Giant in New York

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:39:46 -0400

The Spades started out just outside Detroit. It was the 1960s and Sam Spade was an ad man for the Big Three automakers while his beautiful wife, Judy, cared for their three boys. Sam liked to disappear. One day he didn’t come home for six months, so Judy put the house on the market. The day the house sold, Sam reappeared and begged for another chance. He’d found a job in Phoenix, he said.

The Story of E.

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:45:22 -0400

Last week, our wife’s friend E., a vivacious 33-year-old Texas blonde living in Manhattan who works in women’s rights, explained her fondness for big balls. On men. Many readers were stirred by E. Herewith, great loves of E., grades 7-12.

By age 12, E. had found and lost the love of her life, Marco, a half Italian boy she met at sports camp. He'd ride his bike to her house and they would make...

Big Ball Fan: A Rabelaisian Discourse on the Male Form. Reader Discretion Advised.

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 10:18:04 -0400

When our wife mentioned her good friend—whom we’ll call E., a vivacious 33-year-old Texas blonde with a penchant for high heels and skimpy skirts who works in the women’s rights field— had a deep and abiding fondness for big balls, and wasn’t that weird – we told her to hold it right there.

We immediately dialed E. in her Manhattan apartment.

Tell us about your appreciation for big balls.
E: I’m surprised that anyone...

Lock Up Your Daughters! Is the World Ready for Taki Jr.?

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:11:08 -0400

"He's the only man I know,” said international playboy and Greek shipping heir–slash–journalist Taki Theodoracopulos of his 28-year-old son, J.T., “who is a painter who refuses any kind of publicity, when completely talentless people, like Basquiat and all the rest of these—”

“No, not Basquiat,” J.T. said. “He painted a lot, he painted a lot.”

“Well, he did it by sucking Andy Warhol’s dick,”...

March, The Cruelest Month

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:54:01 -0400

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
--T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”

We can’t remember the last time poetry bubbled up from the dark, mossy pool of our mind. But there it was, last Thursday night as we stood under...

Trance in Your Pants

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:00:00 -0400

Neil S. has felt the pinch of the recession. Last month, he began advertising his services as an erotic hypnotist for $150 an hour. On offer is “the chance to experience erotic sensations and to live out sexual fantasies through hypnosis.” So reads the rather hastily created Web site, erotichypno.blogspot.com, that Neil has begun posting links to, most recently on Craigslist. “I’ve had guys believe they’re robots, strippers, dumb jocks, superheroes and more,” goes...

Hanuk of the North

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:37:00 -0400

Hanuk Kim spent the better part of two decades trying to make the cut as a fashion designer. A series of minor successes, along with the generosity of a certain heiress who gave him a floor in her Chelsea loft rent-free for 10 years, allowed him to orbit the fashion world long enough to discover he had a talent for hanging out and taking pictures of his friends at various fashion functions. He...

Armin Amiri’s Dad Questioned By Iranian Authorities for His Son’s Role in The Wrestler

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:48:25 -0400

On Sunday, March 8, former Socialista proprietor Armin Amiri got a call from his mom in Tehran. She was hysterical. His father, Ali, had been taken into custody by the Iranian police for questioning.

“They came and picked him up at 7:30 in the morning, and basically they were asking about me because of my role in The Wrestler,” Mr. Amiri said; he played the doctor of Mickey Rourke’s character,...

Beautiful Banker Yields Interest: Life After Goldman Is a Catwalk!

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:10:56 -0500

Jesse, a 27-year-old former New York City investment banker, moved to Buenos Aires 11 months ago. In the last few months, he says the trickle has turned into a full spray: On average he meets two new arrivals a week. “There is a huge global migration of newly unemployed bankers to Buenos Aires,” he said. “The funny thing is that most of them claim that they left voluntarily, but none of them can...

Miles of Smiles! Hearst Sisters Heading to Egypt to Help the Children

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:05:58 -0500

At 1:10 p.m. on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 3, the 24-year-old model and socialite Lydia Hearst was racing around her apartment, making sure she had everything she needed for her big trip to Egypt. The car to the airport was coming in 20 minutes.

“I’m just doing a final double-check of my luggage,” she told the Transom. Ms. Hearst and her sister, Gillian Hearst Simonds, will be spending a week in Cairo...

My Night At The Oscars

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:16:07 -0500

On Friday night, Feb. 20, in Los Angeles, Mark, a friendly expert in the art of mixology, tore up a few more bits of oregano at Cecconi’s, a sprawling Italian bistro that sits atop the hallowed Melrose Avenue dirt that was home to longtime industry staple Morton’s. The restaurant, which is owned by the folks who operate SoHo House in New York, was playing host to the Oscar crowd. Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman and...

Fore! The Skin Game

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:06:19 -0500

She just dated a guy who was uncircumcised,” said Sam, a sassy 23-year-old brunette, pointing at her friend Lauren.

“Oh, thanks a lot,” said Lauren, a pretty 24-year-old blonde who works in advertising and whose hair was stylishly parted to one side, her neck swallowed by the enormous collar of her black pea coat. They were in line to see He’s Just Not That Into You at the AMC Loews theater on 19th Street...

New York's Priapic Prince of Ping-Pong

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:08:35 -0500

The Prince of Madagascar lives in a penthouse apartment at the National Arts Club, overlooking the barren trees and locked gates of Gramercy Park. The Prince loves Ping-Pong. His mission is to properly introduce Ping-Pong to Manhattan; he’s plotting Ping-Pong establishments all over the city.

So went the tale around a recent party at the National Arts Club for Argentine artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, whose works include a...

The Last Flight of Martin Schaedel

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:00:57 -0500

At 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 28, Martin Schaedel, a 23-year-old Gatsby-like Internet entrepreneur, had a 20-minute meeting in Los Angeles with venture capitalist Derek Norton. It was their first meeting, and by the end of it, Mr. Norton was insisting that Martin stay in his pool house, as his guest, the next time he was in town. Martin had another meeting scheduled at 7 p.m.—with Michael Montgomery, president of the investment bank Montgomery...

Slurping Down Sedgwick

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:36:04 -0500

The scene is a prewar apartment building on West 84th Street in Manhattan, around sunset. Two white dudes—rich kids, if you had to guess from their demeanor and slang—are carrying heavy parcels through the lobby, up the elevator and into a sprawling, mostly empty apartment. They’re taking the parcels from the back of a station wagon.

“My dog Tybalt, he’s getting all jumping and excited,” said Rob...

Armin Amiri Sets Sights on Hollywood After Socialista Shuts Down

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:28:24 -0500

Armin Amiri, the mastermind behind the now closed West Village nightclub Socialista, is moving on. He’s about to start work on indie flick The Imperialists Are Still Alive, in which he plays the protagonist’s “30-something scruffy, sexy, Middle Eastern ex-boyfriend.” (He also recently played Mickey Rourke’s doctor in The Wrestler.)

The club was shut down in late December for having cigarette butts on the floor and a puddle under the...

The New Math of the Male Mind: One, Zero

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:53:15 -0500

One sunny afternoon a few summers back, some dudes gathered at Guy Mellitz’ studio apartment on 21st Street and Third Avenue to bro-out.

There was Ted, an aspiring James Taylor type; Jason, an aspiring TV editor, who occasionally played fiddle to Ted’s guitar; Subieta, a friend of Jason’s from his hometown of Iowa City; and Mr. Mellitz, a film editor by training who plays lots of video games....

Rex and the City

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:48:12 -0500

On Monday night, a dozen or so New York media types gathered at Rex Sorgatz’s top-floor apartment near ground zero to watch Gossip Girl on his enormous flat-screen TV. Among those in attendance at the weekly gathering in the long narrow living room were some dudes—Dodgeball.com founder Dennis Crowley; Lockhart Steele, of the Curbed sites; Gawker video editor Richard Blakeley. The rest of the room was dominated by attractive single women, including blogger Rachel...

The Wild Purple Heart of Chuck Pfeifer

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:40:41 -0500

“I don’t want to jump off a cliff here, but the kids today didn’t go through what I went through, in terms of mode of discipline. They’re all so pampered and spoiled, the men are. They’re kind of born on the couch. They didn’t pay the price in terms of time and money,” Chuck Pfeifer was saying. The silver-haired 6-foot-3 former West Point running back and Green Beret had his feet propped up on...

Christmas at The Carlyle

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:28:44 -0500

Spend a weekend at the Carlyle Hotel on Madison Avenue and East 76th Street. You have to listen closely.

Bop, bop bop. Bop, bop bop. Around 8:30, Friday night at the Café Carlyle, home of the legendary late lounge singer Bobby Short, the five-piece band was getting the ball rolling for the room’s new star, Steve Tyrell. He waited for the right moment, then eased the mike from its...

Sweetiepies Bring Beverly Hills to Village

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:12:50 -0500

A few Saturdays ago, when Luke and Julie Janklow finally pulled down the masking paper from windows of their new restaurant Sweetiepie and unveiled its singular, almost fantastical interior—among other things, there is a human-size gold birdcage up front—passersby along Greenwich Avenue stopped in their tracks.

“It was like a scene out of Close Encounters,” said Mr. Janklow to an editor from W magazine who happened...

Handsome Brazilian Swain Waxes Eloquent on Society

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:14:26 -0500

Later this week, the fall season of society events takes its final bow, as it does every season, with the Winter Wonderland Ball at the Botanical Gardens. Luigi Tadini, the Brazilian-born 25-year-old unabashed male socialite, who for the last six years has been a fixture on the gala circuit, isn’t even going, let alone lending his name to the committee board.

“People need to choose their charities, and...

Five Card Studs: Harvey Fierstein's Poker Game

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:11:19 -0500

At 4:40 p.m. last Saturday, after the matinee of Hairspray at the Neil Simon Theatre, Harvey Fierstein was in his dressing room, shedding his role as Edna, the beloved overweight Baltimore mother he plays eight times a week.

He swiveled his chair toward the door. “Oh, there you are,” he purred in his gravel-and-molasses voice. “Now get naked.”

I had come to...

The Gallery Matador

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:06:43 -0500

Javier Peres slept on the flight from Berlin last Wednesday night and hit the tarmac running. He dropped by the Tribeca Grand hotel to check in, splashed some water on his bearded face, then grabbed a cab to Terence Koh’s art opening at a private residence uptown. Sometime around sunrise, he crashed. He woke up the following evening around 8 p.m. and went to the Phillips de Pury auction, where he attempted to buy...

Old Money Ponders the New Recession

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:49:10 -0500

“I think this country should be operating the way it used to be a long time ago which was if you take a risk, then you’re going to be punished if it doesn’t work out,” said Kiliaen Van Rensselaer over drinks Saturday night at the Hotel Plaza Athenee hotel on East 64th Street.

Mr. Van Rensselaer knows something about how the country operated a long time ago:...

March of the Toy Soldiers

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:01:44 -0500

The Germans are dug in at Casa Brava, a sprawling waterfront home on the South Shore of Long Island. British infantrymen are charging at the front lines; others are recharging at a mess hall. Enemy tanks are playing a deadly game of chicken. From their respective positions, General Bernard Montgomery and Field Marshall Eugene Rommel stand at attention, each with his own funny hat and standard-issue blank stare.

Bicycle Boy Pedals Pot While Cops Shrug

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:01:29 -0400

For the past 15 years or so, Stefan Fitzgerald has made a living selling weed. Back in high school in Austin, Texas, he sold joints to classmates. He would keep them stashed in empty magic markers. Then pot helped pay the bills for six years in San Francisco. Two years ago, he moved to New York and got a job working for a marijuana bicycle delivery service.

He...

Rub-a-Dub-Dub! Maxim’s Chris Wilson’s Tall Tale Almost Makes it on Oprah

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:18:05 -0400

Two weeks ago, Maxim deputy editor Chris Wilson published a short essay on sex addiction in Page Six Magazine. “Humans are as addicted to sex as we are to biological imperatives like eating, breathing and taking long bubble baths while listening to soft jazz,” it began. A few lines down things took a turn to the dark side: “The other night I was flying on American Airlines, which recently began offering unfiltered Internet access,...

Boxer, in Brief: Welterweight Wants to Soar

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:58:19 -0400

Last month, Paul “Magic Man” Malignaggi vacated the International Boxing Federation junior welterweight champion title, which he’s held for the past year and successfully defended three times, so that he may fight the welterweight world champ, the great pug-faced hope of Britain, Ricky “The Hitman” Hatton. Nov. 22, MGM Grand, HBO. A seven-figure payday. He’s arrived.

Only Little Paulie doesn’t see that way. He wants the world to...

Boxer, in Brief: Welterweight Wants to Soar

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:58:19 -0400

Only Little Paulie doesn’t see that way. He wants the world to...

Slosh, Squish! Was Marquee's Claim of Water Main Break All Wet?

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:29:11 -0400

Call him the Teflon Don of New York nightlife!

As suspected by nightlife blog Down by the Hipster and others, nightclub impresario Noah Tepperberg’s Marquee was not shut down earlier this summer solely because of a water main break. Documents (click for .pdf) from the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control filed on July 8 charge that a months-long undercover sting yielded seven different occurrences of “storage, possession, use...

Darren the Dude Revives Mickey The Mauler

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:20:42 -0400

Darren Aronofsky was a serious young man, a nature boy. He grew up in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, where the beaches were beautiful but cluttered with trash. His interest in the environment took him to Alaska to study the behavior of seals.

“There was a moment, we were kayaking around,” he said of the trip with the School for Field Studies, a charity on whose board he now...

Darren the Dude Revives Mickey The Mauler

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:20:42 -0400

“There was a moment, we were kayaking around,” he said of the trip with the School for Field Studies, a charity on whose board he now...

Armin Amiri to Turn Shuttered Socialista Cafe into Exclusive All-Night Diner

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:48:35 -0400

Just when the era of exclusivity seemed to have peaked in this town, Socialista mastermind Armin Amiri has decided to open an all-night diner—with a guest list from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m.

“It’s gonna be upscale diner food, like Florent, but a couple notches up food-wise,” said Mr. Amiri, who is a former Bungalow 8 doorman and a working actor.

The yet-to-be-named...

No More Baked Alaska for Bristol’s Baby Daddy?

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:21:42 -0400

Imagine you are Levi Johnston. Like all 18-year-old males, you feel you own the world. Makes your mouth water. Hey—keep your tongue in your mouth! You can’t let them know what you’re up to. But they’re not going to know what hit ’em. Right now your playing field is the ice; you kick ass. But the wider world is also hungry for your tear-it-up testosterone. And you’re gonna see it all.