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Sherida E. Paulson, former chair of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (2001-03), wrote an Op Ed in July 30's New York Times on the fate of 2 Columbus Circle, the vaguely Moorish-looking monolith designed by Edward Durrell Stone which is in danger of having its facade ripped off and replaced by a modernistic response to the Time Warner Center.

Ms. Paulson, who refers to Stone's controversial masterpiece in the Op Ed as "the black hole of Columbus Circle," said that " ... preservationists have pressed with new urgency to have the the building designated a landmark. But 2 Columbus Circle simply doesn't qualify. That is the professional judgment of the 19 people, myself included, who have served on the New York Landmarks Commission since 1996."

But--oh damn--one of those 19 people, current L.P.C. commissioner Roberta Brandes Gratz, wrote back to The Times on Aug. 6, saying, "Neither I as an individual commissioner nor the current commission as a whole has rendered a 'professional' judgment on whether there should be a hearing or a designation."

Snap!

Adding fuel to the fire was a letter, on the same day, from Beverly Moss Spatt. Who is Ms. Spatt, you ask? Only the chair of the L.P.C. from 1974 to 1978!! She wrote that she "find[s] it difficult to believe that the 19 commission members since 1996 could have reached an absolute consensus that the building is unworthy of even a public hearing to weigh its merits."

"If such overwhelming consensus is indeed the case, where is the public record of this decision? The failure to hold a hearing is a distressing sign of how out of touch the current commission is with the public it serves."

Double snap! - Matthew Grace

Board 5 O.K.'s Facelift For

Columbus Circle's 'Lollipop Building'

Reviled by some and revered by others, 2 Columbus-known as the "Lollipop building" because of its quirky, candy-shaped columns-has just edged a bit closer to a major, and controversial, renovation.

On Wednesday, May 8, Community Board 5 voted to approve the disposition of the building from the city to the Museum of Arts and Design, largely on the strength of the architectural renderings for a façade renovation presented to the board by the museum's architect, Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture. The emotionally charged meeting was attended by many who were distraught over the planned renovation, and nearly a dozen people testified during the public session to protest the plan, hoping to influence the board's vote.

Designed by Edward Durell Stone and built in 1964 to house the Huntington Hartford Gallery of Modern Art, 2 Columbus Circle was immediately assailed for its unconventional design. Its stark, monolithic face, nearly windowless except for the loggia on the uppermost floors, eventually was declared an architectural asset because of its fierce statement of modernity and its mélange of different styles.

Commissioned by the Museum of Arts and Design (formerly the American Craft Museum), which plans on moving to the building from its West 53rd Street location in spring 2006, the new design will dramatically change the face of 2 Columbus Circle. The plan features several glass columns running from the top to the bottom of the 10-story building which, along with "woven terra cotta panels," will allow filtered sunlight into the building during the day and create a glowing effect at night.

While most opponents of the renovation are pleased that a cultural organization such as the Museum of Arts and Design will call the building its home, they're displeased that the museum insists on tearing down the distinctive façade, citing 2 Columbus Circle as an integral component of the city's architectural history. Columbus Circle resident Sue Mellon spoke of her attachment to the building and its powerful presence, saying that "the whiteness and the grillwork of the building are out of this world." John Stuart Gordon, a design historian and another opponent of the renovation, referred to the building's distinctive design, saying: "Great art like this building makes people stop; it makes people think. New York is an encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture, and this building [as it stands today] belongs in it."

Also addressing the board was Olive Freud, vice president of the Committee for Environmentally Sound Development, a West Side building-preservation and watchdog organization. "What is particularly heartbreaking in this circumstance," she said, "is that a museum whose mission is the appreciation, collection and display of art is the proponent of destroying what is probably the most precious object in their collection."

Others were not so kind. Jeffrey Osborne, a design consultant who endorses the façade renovation, called the building's original architect a "C-minus fashionable gentleman architect," and expressed dismay that people were opposed to the new scheme.

Architect Bart Voorsanger, who also supports the renovation, told the board that the current structure "is aesthetically wrong," and that the popularity of its current façade is a case of "the emperor's new clothes."

Speaking to The Observer , Kate Wood, executive director of the landmark-conservancy organization Landmark West, called 2 Columbus Circle a "rare and courageous" building built in an expressive modern style that avoided the cold sterility of both corporate modernism and the International Style. She quoted a 1963 New York Times article published after the destruction of the old Penn Station ("We will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed") and says she has implored the museum to maintain the building's current design. When reached by The Observer , a spokesman for the Museum of Arts and Design declined to comment on criticisms of the façade redesign.

The public hearing at times resembled an architectural-quality commission considering the relative aesthetic merits of the building (or lack thereof) and its importance in the city's architectural landscape. After hearing the public testimony and having a heated discussion among its members, the board passed the resolution to approve the renovation with a vote of 18 to 8.

In order to proceed with its purchase of the building, the museum must now gain the approval of the City Council. Community Board 5's vote, while nonbinding, has considerable influence with the City Council.

Opponents of the redesign have stated that they will continue their campaign to save the stylistically unique façade by lobbying the Manhattan borough president and the City Planning Commission, which are both due to consider the issue before sending their recommendations to the City Council.

-Matthew Ian Grace

May 21: Board 8, New York Blood Center, 310 East 67th Street, auditorium, 7 p.m., 212-758-4340.

May 22: Board 2, N.Y.U. Law School, Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Washington Square South, Room 110, 6:30 p.m., 212-979-2272.

May 27: Board 3, P.S. 20, 166 Essex Street, 6:30 p.m., 212-533-5300; Board 12, P.S./I.S. 176, 4862 Broadway, 7 p.m., 212-568-8500.

Stepping off of an escalator recently, I found myself in a refulgent summer garden-snapdragons, carnations, dahlias, daffodils and enough varieties of roses to furnish a sizable senior prom. It's a lovely touch, especially for a supermarket. Then again, this is not your conventional urban supermarket.

Now that Whole Foods Market, the country's largest organic food store, has thrown roots on the lower level of the spanking new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle-all 59,000 square feet of shopping turf-I decided to make a little walkabout to take the pulse of the place.

Being a New Yorker, I was struck first by the profligate width of the aisles and walkways: Some are as much as 12 feet wide. I was tempted to scamper down the cereal section performing figure "S's" with my cart. At my woebegone local grocery, where the aisles are roughly the width of a size-11 shoe, encountering another shopper coming your way can be so confrontational that I retain a lawyer just for this purpose.

The cynosure of the Whole Foods store is the magnificent organic-produce section. Frequently, at farmers' markets and health-food stores, organic produce is spotted, smudged and irregularly shaped, which has nothing to do with flavor. From grapefruits to deep red tomatoes, the produce at Whole Foods are runway models, all flatteringly illuminated by overhead track lighting. Most impressive perhaps is a chest-high wall of verdant vegetables-carrots, kale, leeks, lettuces-each arranged in tight, woven overlapping patterns, as if some freelance beavers had been brought in to help out. As for prices, I have not conducted a survey, but considering the quality, they seemed reasonable: organic broccoli at $1.98 a pound, a five-pound bag of organic carrots for $3.98 a pound, conventional hothouse tomatoes for $2.98.

From the produce section, I ambled over to a deli counter which, while attractive, holds little that you could not find at other quality shops around town like Fairway and Dean and DeLuca. The seafood department, however, is first-rate, with everything firmly packed on ice; whole fish, a good benchmark for freshness, are glistening, not dry, and with clear, bright eyes.

There is a sizable olive-oil selection, not all of them organic. Aside from the familiar brands of extra virgin oil like Colavita ($6.99 for 17 ounces) and Badia a Coltibuono ($12.49 for 8.45 ounces), there's a house brand for $3.99. It was recommended to me by an avid cook as similar to the pricier ones. (All house brands carry the logo "365.")

It takes some 400 employees to keep this place humming, and there is no shortage of "team members" on the sales floor. For such a classy operation, though, I was surprised that many of the young employees looked as if they had just arrived from a softball game, wearing loose jeans, pullover shirts, sneakers, even construction boots. If it weren't for the aprons, you'd never guess they worked there. I chatted with a half-dozen well-mannered twentysomethings who were patrolling the aisles. Only two had grocery experience-Whole Foods has its own week-long training program-and all appeared to be upbeat about their jobs, which, given my experience, is reason enough to shop there. Whole Foods Market repeatedly shows up in Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For," which is based on employee ratings of their own company.

About 50 to 75 percent of the store's produce is certified organic-meaning no harmful chemicals, a sustainable method of soil conservation and official designation as an organic product.

Little of the store's meat and poultry are organic. For one, organic meat and poultry are very expensive to produce; moreover, a spokesman for the store said, Americans are not yet familiar with it. Instead, all meats and poultry in the market are "naturally raised," which, as Whole Foods defines the term, means "humanely raised and slaughtered, and with no hormones, antibiotics, or animal byproducts," a culprit in mad-cow disease. (To brush up on this terminology, you can consult www.wholefoods.com.)

There is no question that eating organic fruits and vegetables is safer, more nutritious and better-tasting; and while most naturally raised meats and poultry are leaner and less fatty, flavors can be more pronounced as well. Will the average New Yorker care? And hand over 10 to 20 percent or more for a clean conscience? Whole Foods preaches to a choir that considers grocery shopping an act of self-affirmation and sustenance in equal measure. This is commonplace in other American cities. Curiously, it took Whole Foods to bring it here.

As in most "green" efforts, there are amusing excesses. I wasn't tempted to pick up a bottle of "earth friendly" furniture polish (with olive oil)-maybe it's for bark-covered Adirondack furnishings; and there was something called "Seventh Generation Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaner," which carries a quote on the label, allegedly from the Iroquois Nation-which, it is little known, had fashioned a somewhat jagged-edged but functional commode back when the Mohawks were still scurrying around in the woods.

On one side of the store is a small wine shop with bottles from major wine-producing countries around the world, but pretty thin pickings. Inventory is still coming in, a Whole Foods rep said. Take note that the wine shop is closed on Wednesday in order to remain open on Sunday (one of those loopy New York State laws).

Now, a little caviling.

The store has an enticing little bakery with cakes and mousses and cookies. But if you want to buy a treat and eat it right away, this is not so simple. One afternoon I bought a cannolli, which the methodical clerk spent several minutes gift-wrapping. I then had to queue up at the busy checkout line to pay for it. After that I trundled over to a crowded café, searched for a seat, opened the plastic container (not very earth-friendly) and ate my cannoli (which was just O.K.). I decided to fetch a coffee. Mistake. That consumed another 10 minutes.

Normally, I would not eat prepackaged deli sushi at gunpoint. But Whole Foods has a sparkling sushi bar with five davening chefs, who, when I arrived the next day at noon, were not in sushi-making mode. Hungry, I picked up an attractive-looking plastic container of salmon sushi and tuna maki rolls and parked at the sushi bar to eat it. Momentarily, I was shooed away and told politely to get in line at one of the 40-plus registers (which, I have to say, move along at a good pace). Then it was off to the café, which was just filling up with the lunchtime crowd.

After two days of investigative strolling, I was curious to know how the store was doing, it being nearly a month old. Rather than put myself in the hands of corporate spokespeople, I went right to the source to uncover the unvarnished truth-the kids working in the aisles.

"It's crankin'," said a tall, friendly fellow standing near the meat case. A co-worker nearby nodded in agreement.

Excellent. On to the last question.

It was something I had been pondering for weeks: Considering the store's location, and serious shortage of on-street parking, how do people get all of this stuff home?

I approached another employee, Dean Desantis, who described himself as a shift manager.

"How do people get all of this stuff home?" I asked.

"Look over there," he said, pointing to the dairy section, where a middle-aged woman with a small handheld basket was buying one small container of ricotta cheese.

"That's a typical New York shopper-a little bit at a time." he said. "Of course, we deliver." They will go from 42nd to 125th streets, river to river.

Before leaving, I stationed myself near the exit escalator along with Ms. Petran. Over the next three minutes, a procession of shoppers paraded by. Of the first 10, nine carried one small plastic bag, large enough for a container of milk, some green vegetables, maybe a small chicken, a few cans of cat food-and that was it. The 10th shopper clutched two such bags.

"This is fascinating," I said to Ms. Petran. "How is the store going to pay the gazillion dollars' rent this way?"

"The company understands the market," she replied confidently. "And if they're little bags or big bags, it's all about getting them in and getting them out."

Tom Wolfe’s preservationist friends are taking their “Save 2 Columbus Circle” campaign to the street this Thursday. A lunchtime demonstration is planned to take place outside the Center for Architecture, at 536 LaGuardia Place. The Center for Architecture/AIA New York Chapter will be gathering for a private reception in support of the new Museum of Arts and Design. The protest begins at 11:45, and those who attend get fed. So, even if you have no qualms with changes to the building’s modernist facade, the brown bag lunch should be more than enough reason to drop by. And maybe the man in the white suit will make an appearance.

-Michael Calderone

Dining at Per Se is a euphoric, dizzying experience. By the time I stepped out into the street, after a dinner that lasted an entire evening, I realized that I couldn’t judge this restaurant on the same basis that I judge any other establishment. It exists in a category all its own.

Per Se has very little to do with eating food in the normal sense of the word. Nor is it anything like dining out in haute cuisine restaurants such as Alain Ducasse, Jean Georges or Daniel. It’s an audience-participation show, scripted and directed by Thomas Keller and his executive chef, Jonathan Benno. As one dazzling dish after another emerges from the kitchen, you can’t talk or even think about anything other than what’s on the plate set down before you.

We ordered the tasting menu ($175). It began with Mr. Keller’s famous canapé, salmon tartare, served like a scoop of ice cream in miniature cones flecked with black sesame seeds and filled with crème fraîche. Two vivid soups, sweet pea and melon, arrived at the bottom of deep, oversized white bowls. We sipped a few mouthfuls from chilled silver spoons and followed up with palate-clearing sorbets—beet with apple brunoise and a cucumber sorbet the color of white jade. The flavors were astonishing, more intense than the original fruits or vegetables with which they were concocted: This is often the key to what makes Mr. Keller’s food so extraordinary.

“Oysters and pearls,” announced the waiter, setting down a tiny portion of Caraquet oysters and tapioca topped with a scoop of sevruga caviar, a Keller signature that elicited sighs of rapture. Mini-agnolotti were showered with summer truffles, and a butter-poached lobster exhibited a sweetness that defied the imagination. No wonder the young couple at a nearby table (a young Phil Spector look-alike with a shapely blonde in a spangly tank top) remained speechless throughout their dinner.

And it’s a long dinner, too—especially if you have the tasting menu, which lasted the same length of time as a performance of Wagner’s Siegfried. It was 6 p.m. when four of us sat down on a Friday night (the only time we could get—as is routine for the restaurant, we booked our table two months in advance), and we staggered to our feet shortly after 11 o’clock.

There are just 16 tables at Per Se, which is in the Time Warner Center overlooking Central Park and Columbus Circle. The setting is a far cry from the bucolic reaches of Napa Valley, which is home to the French Laundry, Mr. Keller’s other much-praised restaurant, where he spends two weeks out of every month. While the French Laundry is in a 19th-century house surrounded by vineyards, Per Se is on the fourth floor of a dull shopping mall.

The décor is sleek and corporate-looking, as befits Manhattan, designed by Adam Tihany in hues of gray and brown, with polished metal and glass surfaces and stained wood. Every detail has been seen to, from the little boudoir lamps moving on wire stalks like flowers, their shades discreetly stamped with laundry symbols, to the thick white linen napkins the size of square pillow shams, the huge floral arrangements in impossibly small vases, and the all-white crockery by Raynaud in fanciful shapes designed by Mr. Keller himself.

The efficient staff wears dark suits and blue Armani ties, and they’re so numerous that it seemed as if a different person showed up with every course to tell us about the special “blue leg” chicken from the Summer Hill farms in California, or the cauliflower panna cotta topped with an oyster gelée, or the Wagyu beef that’s flown in from Australia and served with squares of crisp bone marrow.

The dishes are presented like exhibits in a jewelry shop. Curved white plates are painted with minimalist splashes of sauce; vermillion piquillo pepper decorates a purple-skinned square inch of rouget; a daub of brilliant orange sets off a tender turbot cheek.

About three hours into the meal, I felt like one of those charity thermometers with a red line of “mercury” that rises inch by inch as money is raised. All of these tiny, impeccable dishes, three or four mouthfuls apiece, were starting to add up to a pretty filling sum.

Around 10 dishes along, the waiter set down a silver tray on the table. “Here we have four kinds of salt: Malden, Hawaii volcanic salt (it gets its red color from copper pots), Jurassic salt from Montana (over 30 million years old) and, in the wooden box, there’s a Japanese salt.”

The salts were accompaniments for two different preparations of foie gras, one of which was a terrine, a strip about six inches long and an inch wide, topped with a dark veneer of aspic that looked like a piece of varnished mahogany. “Those are poached Burlat cherries, those are pickled ramps, and that’s a pistachio crumble,” the waiter added, pointing to little piles on the plate. I have never tasted a foie gras terrine that was even close to as good as this.

Meanwhile, across Central Park, the buildings were glowing a pinkish-white in the reflection of the sunset. Below, a neon ring around Columbus Circle lit up the skateboarders twirling around. And we pressed on with one new dish after another.

Mr. Keller challenges the conservatives in his audience with a crispy croquette of sweetbread, a sliver of lamb tongue with sweet corn and a scrambled pheasant’s egg topped with a truffle coulis. After we’d had these and many other dishes too numerous to name (although I must mention the incredible pompano with madras curry and almonds), a waiter brought a whole roast chicken to the table. I was stunned. The red on my thermometer had reached the top. But summer truffles had been placed under the skin of this fabulous bird, of which we only got a couple of sublime, heavily perfumed inches, with onions and peas.

Then, merciful heaven, there was more! Saddle of lamb with potato purée and Swiss chard and Wagyu beef, so good that it nearly reduced one of my friends to tears. He called me first thing the next day to ask where he could buy some more of that beef and confessed to me that he’d lain awake that night (“like a turtle turned on its back”) thinking about it.

After a cheese course came a crescendo of desserts, beginning with “liquid pain perdu” with passion caramel served in a spoon. A small chocolate egg with a hard shell cracked open to reveal melting chocolate with green mint sorbet inside. A “Snickers bar” was made with milk chocolate, salted caramel and peanuts.

After dinner, my friends and I stood for a while on Columbus Circle in a daze. Per Se gets four stars, of course. As I said before, though, food this wonderful defies comparison and exhibits greatness in and of itself. This restaurant stands alone—but that’s the meaning of the expression per se, isn’t it?

The Time Warner Center's "expensive sheen" is still glittery, pushing the asking price of neighborhood apartments into posh new levels. S. Jhoanna Robledo has a precise list of Columbus Circle sheen. [New York]

"Big Old East Village Book Party" sounds like fun, especially to people who live in expensive, but punky downtown apartments. [L Magazine]

DUMBO has hit that coveted way-over-supersaturation point. First the 'hood popped up in Vanity Fair and Vogue; now it's in Ford Edge ads and Men's Health. [DUMBO NYC]

Eagle-eye commenters on Brownstoner were right about the Brooklyn birthplace of New York rap uber-legend The Notorious B.I.G.: according to his biography, young Christopher Wallace grew up in "a spacious apartment" on St. James Street. (Photo above, and more at Clinton Hill Blog). [Brooklyn Vegan]

- Max Abelson

Hearst has added yet one more building to its growing arsenal around Columbus Circle.

The publishing behemoth recently closed on 811 Ninth Avenue for $17.1 million, according to city records. Lightning quick would be appropriate terminology for how rapidly this deal went down: Hearst went to contract and closed on the 21,500-square-foot property on the same day, July 19.

Hearst certainly has an affinity for real estate in the Columbus Circle area. The Observer reported in May when the company purchased an 8,000-square-foot building at 304 West 56th Street for $7.6 million directly across the street from the Hearst headquarters at 300 West 57th Street. The newly acquired property at 811 Ninth Avenue sits just two blocks southwest of the Hearst tower.

Calls to Hearst regarding what is planned for the property were not immediately returned.

The large glass panels are working their way up the skeleton of the AOL Time Warner Center, the mixed-use pair of obelisks stretching 80 stories into the sky over Columbus Circle. The progress is measurable daily. In fact, the massive mountain of commerce-now at its full height-stands confidently astride the street grid, as if it predated all the structures that have risen on the West Side since the grid was established in 1811.

At $1.8 billion, it's the most expensive single-building construction project in U.S. history. The center's completion date is staggeringly close-sometime this fall-especially in light of the 17 years it has taken to redevelop the old Coliseum site once it was rendered useless by the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

But things are hardly lively at the company that has given the building its name, and plans to make it the centerpiece of its new branding initiatives. Steve Case, once the chief executive of America's gloriously bright economic future, is now a figure from the recent past. Gerald Levin is "seeking the poetry in [his] life" from a demoted second-floor office in AOL Time Warner's Rockefeller Plaza headquarters and is selling off his personal property. AOL Time Warner, the company they formed by merging the Dulles, Va., Internet company and the Manhattan-based media giant, is now $26 billion in debt, and is facing shareholder lawsuits emerging from federal criminal and civil investigations into AOL's pre-merger bookkeeping practices. Credit-rating agencies are urging the company to pare down its debt, lest it be downgraded. Nor have the shareholders been universally supportive of the company's decision to build itself a grandiose new home on Columbus Circle. At a May 2002 shareholders' meeting at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, one person lashed into management for wasting scarce resources on "replicating the Taj Mahal."

The practitioners of corporate synergy at the helm of AOL Time Warner may be in disarray, but synergy itself is still popular with the marketing executives pushing the building that will be the company's new headquarters, as well as home to 191 condominiums, a Mandarin Oriental Hotel, three theaters for Jazz at Lincoln Center, a small amount of office space available for lease, a half-million square feet of retail space and a two-floor deck of five-star restaurants. A recent promotional brochure for the building promised that the "synergy among Jazz at Lincoln Center, the shops, and the restaurants will create an environment that delivers excitement from early morning until late into the night."

As in most such instances, the synergy is simply asserted-a gloss over what appears to be simply an amalgam, however complementary its parts. When the building is opened this fall, the commitment to synergy that was meant to enrich both "old media" giant Time Warner and "new media" colossus AOL may or may not have survived the budget hard-liners and old-economy chieftains that will save the company-if it is to be saved-or deliver it into a future that Mr. Case may not recognize. Either way, the building at Columbus Circle will surely become a signature for whatever phoenix emerges from the wreckage at AOL Time Warner-offering, with its views of Central Park, an eminently sellable backdrop for news reports coming out of CNN and a corporate symbol for the company. The question of whether the center will hold-whether by redeeming corporate synergy between new and old media at AOL Time Warner, or simply by reverting to a business plan that gets the company out of its staggering debt-now appears to be a question for the building that would serve as American media's public face around the world.

Granted, the Rande Gerber cocktail lounge and restaurants by Gray Kunz (homeless for the last five years since leaving Lespinasse at the St. Regis hotel), the ubiquitous Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Napa Valley's gourmet godchild, Thomas Keller, are likely to draw crowds with tickets to Jazz at Lincoln Center events. And both will be a stone's throw away from a five-story retail complex that will house high-end stores (think one step below the Mall at Short Hills, one step above Manhattan Mall at Herald Square), from Williams-Sonoma to Hugo Boss to J. Crew to a supermarket and food concourse by Texas-based Whole Foods Market. But that seems like a development strategy that long precedes the breathless newspeak which accompanied the Internet revolution. In fact, when Stephen Ross, chairman and chief executive of the Related Companies, introduced the public to the building for the first time last March, he said it would replace the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center as symbols of the city. Richard Parsons, Time Warner's original party to the deal with Mr. Ross' Related Companies, recently echoed him, calling the building "the Rockefeller Center of the 21st century."

He may not wish to pursue the analogy very far.

On December 27, 1932, morning papers carried an advertisement for "The Greatest Show in the World in the World's Greatest Theater"-the debut of Radio City Music Hall. The place had taken its name from the infant industry that would become synonymous with Rockefeller Center before and during World War II: radio. The economy was still reeling from the stock-market crash of 1929, but RCA was a new corporation poised for a new economy. It was not a wealthy company; its stock was valued highly, but the company had not yet paid a dividend. Lease negotiations for RCA, its four theaters and large portions of two office buildings reflected the downward spiral of RCA's finances and its indebtedness to a parent company of "wireless" firms that were spinning off the company. Its subsidiary, the National Broadcasting Company, was gearing up for the television business in 1930, when the business originated, but NBC couldn't promise any real revenue from the sale of advertising on television when nobody yet had a set in their home. Its rent payments, too, were slashed.

As if to say that architecture in public space trumped the overriding corporate "meaning" of any building, when Radio City Music Hall first opened, it produced a show that spoke not to the promise of radio, but to the entertainment form it would kill off: vaudeville. The Music Hall's new manager, Samuel Lionel (Roxy) Rothafel, produced his opening show with veteran performer DeWolf Hopper as its centerpiece. The man who had made "Casey at the Bat" known worldwide seemed to many an odd choice. He shuffled about onstage with an act that was as passé as a silent movie, his 53 years on the stage showing little to his advantage.

But that evening also brought a response that should give Mr. Ross and his partners some hope. Apparently, Hopper's soft-shoe routine was only an excuse to give the public an opportunity to marvel at the building. Never mind the aging vaudevillian-the audience was awestruck by the 60-foot-high proscenium arch in high Art Deco style, the gilt ceilings and red velvet seat cushions, the statues echoing the great mythic stories that arguably still form the backdrop for all important theater, and the 43-foot revolving stage in the middle of the proscenium, with its hydraulic-powered pistons that could move several portions of the stage to different heights at once.

In fact, Rockefeller Center's identity was not made even by John D. Rockefeller himself-who envisioned the project, after all, as a new home for the Metropolitan Opera, not for a Taj Mahal of broadcast media. Even during the construction of the complex, RCA and RKO were quiet about the future, trading instead on the slow, careful accumulation of properties that was, in part, a function of the vast economic depression in which their industries were born. The Internet, the great promise of the 1990's, rather appeared to trade on the same kinds of speculation and recklessness that presaged the 1929 crash. The fulfillment of AOL's promise-to shareholders, to Time Warner and to the public-seems long overdue.

As in Rockefeller's case, what this building means will be largely out of the control of the building's developers. The future of AOL Time Warner will play a part; so will the future of the retail, restaurant and hotel industries in New York, by no means secure; the health and stability of the high-end real-estate market, itself a question mark; the success of the gamble the developers are making in a district not previously known as a shopping mecca; and the reaction of the public itself. This is a development that cuts vertiginously through many of the important economic questions about the city's future. It does not, as once might have been hoped, answer those questions.

A New 'New Urbanism'

Whether or not synergy really demands this mix of uses, the prospect of many different kinds of businesses and residences on a single site is a dictum of the New Urbanism that disdains the dark, windswept canyons of lower Manhattan after closing time. Indeed, having a massive shopping complex, restaurants, a hotel, apartments and three jazz stages would seem to guarantee a flow of foot traffic from 8 a.m. well into the nighttime hours and throughout the weekends.

If they will come. Businesses that are hanging up their shingles at the AOL Time Warner Center are betting that their very size as an amalgam will make the development the center of gravity on the West Side. The building conveys that feel by its very design. Though David Childs, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, scratched an earlier design that relied on stone cladding to give the building a sense of lightness, with eight-millimeter-thick glass all over the two towers, the base of the building still seems like a giant electromagnet. Whether it will exert its pull strongly enough on a people who have historically had an aversion to doing their shopping at malls is another question, though.

Will the same people willing to buy a steak from Jean-Georges Vongerichten be willing to buy a pair of shoes at J. Crew in the shopping concourse below? Will data administrators who buy lunch at the hot-dog stands alongside the park buy their dress shirts at Thomas Pink? Once Ricky Martin and Wynton Marsalis have plunked down their cash for apartments in the upper stories of the complex, what business will they have in the Mandarin Oriental hotel? Will the filming of NewsNight with Aaron Brown attract the kinds of gawking spectators that flood the outside of The Today Show studios at Rockefeller Center or the MTV studios at Times Square? Will the simple fact of allowing viewers to catch a glimpse of Central Park over the shoulder of Lou Dobbs make Moneyline a hit?

Mr. Marsalis may have the magic piece of the puzzle that gives the building meaning and draws its purposes together: a performing arts center that is the first-ever venue built specifically for jazz. Mr. Marsalis has said that jazz "does not rely on being popular to be significant." But it may indeed rely on being popular to serve as the centerpiece of the AOL Time Warner Center.

With its "jewel-box" theater atop the public entrance-among the most visible elements of the design from the street- popular New York architect Rafael Viñoly's plans for the site have pleased critics. But some funding sources for the project have fallen short by about $32 million, and the $128 million piece of the AOL Time Warner Center recently had to take $10 million from the Coca-Cola Company to erect its Frederick P. Rose Hall. Also, the 100,000-square-foot facility won't open this fall with the rest of the building, and in the year before its three performance spaces open, the rest of the building's tenants will not be able to rely on Lincoln Center to generate interest in the building.

An Expensive Bauble?

Mr. Ross and other principals in the deal assume a calm demeanor when questions about the building are asked. But they shun what has so far been the narrative pursued by the media: that this building, when it opens in the fall, will be like an expensive bauble the city bought on its giddy tour through the 1990's that now, as the valise is being unpacked, seems like a monstrous miscalculation.

In fact, Mr. Ross has made the New New Building according to the oldest principles of real-estate development. Reporters are eager to show the complex poised on the precipice of danger, with AOL Time Warner's misfortunes leading the list of hobgoblins. In fact, these questions will confront each of the constituents in the building independently. That's because, upon completion of construction, all of the organizations with pieces of the puzzle will each take a separate deed for their chunk of the building. Whatever skepticism AOL Time Warner faced when it agreed to buy its part, the deal is sealed. Mr. Ross won't have to worry-as Rockefeller did-about bailing out his tenants.

That doesn't mean they'll be happy there. CNN employees reportedly resisted the move. According to one source, HBO made it a condition of its contract renewal by AOL Time Warner that the company not be required to move. In the end, the marketing department for TBS, the top AOL Time Warner corporate brass, all of CNN's office operations and two studios will take up the whole space.

The resistance to the building was at first attributed to its iconic design. The two towers rising from the top of the building seemed nice when they mirrored the shape of Central Park West landmarks like the Majestic and the San Remo, even if the design was really mandated by the public outcry to restore the sight line of the 59th Street corridor westward and give Columbus Circle a bit of the sky. But the design seemed less fortunate after Sept. 11, 2001, when twin towers became an emblem of war and remembrance rather than speed and progress.

(Time has mitigated that difficulty somewhat, as have increased security measures in the construction plans. A futuristic communications system inside the building will boost radio signals and keep cell phones from blacking out even in stairwells and corridors, answering a major safety problem in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. And the structural columns holding the building up were reinforced with extra concrete.)

Recently, the company admitted that it might lease out one or two floors of the building-which would put its on-the-market space in competition with Related's own offerings in the building. But to make good on the massive mortgage of which they're a part, the partners in the building must find businesses that profit-avoiding the fate of the Empire State Building, which became iconic in the city's skyscape but could attract few tenants after it opened, earning it the nickname "The Empty State Building." To save these co-owners from such a fate, people will have to come to the building-and not just the employees of AOL Time Warner. It remains to be seen whether New Yorkers will be as impressed with the building's debut as they were with Radio City. Indeed, the marketing campaign for the AOL Time Warner Center does not intend to leave that to chance. Its promotional materials appear aimed as much at selling the building to New Yorkers at large, reassuring its many tenants that theirs was a risk worth taking.

New Yorkers, after futzing for a year and a half with Ground Zero, are looking for something that will inspire. Will it matter to New Yorkers what the building means, or how AOL Time Warner is structured, when they enter the five-story glass atrium off Columbus Circle this fall?

Mr. Parsons resists proclaiming any grand corporate symbolism for the building. Previously calling it "a galvanizing concept from the point of view of the city," Mr. Parsons sounded more cautious in a recent interview.

"The headquarters is more functional for us," he said.

To many New Yorkers, the building will look anything but. Already, it's become famous for its celebrity residents, much supposed but seldom heard from, except for Ricky Martin-himself something of a vaudevillian by the lights of this new-media nirvana on Columbus Circle. ('N Sync's Lance Bass and former President Bill Clinton have reportedly also kicked the tires at the building, but neither bought; Lady Henrietta Spencer Churchill, on the other hand, is already well on her way to completing the design for her bedroom in her $8 million apartment there, with designs on view at Bergdorf Goodman for the remainder of the month.) For them, few expenses have been spared: hundreds of feet above the Whole Foods Market food court, where the local back-office workers pick at $10 salads, residents who have paid anywhere from $2 million to $45 million for the two- to four-bedroom apartments in the top floors of the building's towers will be able to punch a keypad and order up shirts from Thomas Pink downstairs, or meals from Jean-Georges Vongerichten's steakhouse. The apartments will have "broadcast capability"-an amenity that has been described by the developers by way of illustration: It will allow heads of state and celebrities who prefer to be interviewed at home to be tied directly from their apartments into the broadcast facilities below. But these elements, part of the guts and the spirit of the building, are largely designed to keep AOL Time Warner Center's leading denizens away from-not in-the "Center of Everything," as the brochures put it.

"It will be possible for the [condominium] owners' feet to literally never touch the ground, if they're so inclined," Dolly Lenz, senior vice president of Insignia Douglas Elliman, recently told the New York Post .

Bully for them. But for AOL Time Warner, and for the new colossus that bears its name, getting back down to earth will be the greatest challenge of all.

Wednesday 24th

The Time Warner behemoth on Columbus Circle burps out another event tonight , as Dom Pérignon launches its newest vintage, harvested in the summer of '96 and somewhat spookily dubbed the " Vintage of Light ," within the ice-cool walls of the Mandarin Oriental hotel. We asked our man at D.P. what he had to say about it, but after confessing that he'd already " nipped" at one of the bottles, he insisted on keeping the night's details a secret , which can be loosely translated as: "We'll be lucky if we get Jaid Barrymore to show …. " If you can nip an invitation, offer your flute to TV chef Rocco DiSpirito , who might be a bit dispirited after losing a star in The New York Times , or raise your flute to giantess club girl Amy Sacco .

[Dom Pérignon 'Vintage of Light' launch, the Residences at the Mandarin Oriental, 60th Street and Columbus Circle, 7 to 9 p.m., by invitation only.]

Thursday 25th

People who place personal ads in the back of The New York Review of Books cuddle together at the 92nd Street Y as roundtabler Charlie Rose lathers it up with Swiss-man Klaus Schwab about the World Economic Forum. Mr. Schwab may have founded the love-in of the world's smartest, richest and most powerful a few decades ago, but raise your hand and get him to admit it's those gift bags stuffed to the hilt with big-boy gadgets that keep them coming back to Davos for more. Elsewhere, Dave Eggers -he and blond, ethereal wife/fictioneuse Vendela Vida are in running to become the next Colin and Kathryn Harrison -joins quietly sexy young author Jonathan Safran Foer, Michael Cunningham, Joyce Carol Oates and Wendy Wasserstein at the Cooper Union, where the group will recite from unpublished works covering such issues as the virtues of peace and the evils of war. (Yes, the idea that Joyce Carol Oates , who publishes 59 books a year, has any "unpublished work" is truly terrifying …. ) Proceeds go to hippies (i.e., Downtown for Democracy). Meanwhile, actress Anne Heche , most likely steaming over Ellen's Emmy nomination, thrusts herself back into the spotlight by opening tonight on Broadway with Alec Baldwin in the revival of Twentieth Century ; the producers watch nervously and hope Ms. Heche hasn't wandered too far from the mothership since her well-received stage work in Proof .

[Charlie Rose speaks to Klaus Schwab, 1395 Lexington Avenue, 8 p.m., 212-415-5500; "Where's My Democracy?", the Great Hall at Cooper Union, 7 East Seventh Street, 6:30 to 10 p.m., 212-592-4647; Twentieth Century , American Airlines Theatre, 227 West 42nd Street, 8 p.m., 212-719-1300.]

Friday 26th

Paris Hilton's hamster-cheeked house couturier, Alvin Valley, holds court in his Soho showroom and tells every women who walks through the door exactly what he thinks-which is to wear them low, tight and too long. Then tuck your thong and ride your Vespa uptown ( brrrrrrrrrrrrrip !) to the Italian Cultural Institute , where Italian director Marco Bellocchio breaks biscotti with Peter Scarlet , executive director of the Tribeca Film Festival, and screens Good Morning, Night . If you'd rather stay downtown, Fresh Art is hosting a benefit at HAI Gallery in Soho for artists with special needs; you might just win a dog-grooming session if you rig the raffle properly.

[Alvin Valley Sample Sale, 632 Broadway, Suite 602, noon to 6 p.m.; Marco Bellocchio in conversation, Italian Cultural Institute, 686 Park Avenue, 6 p.m., 212-879-4242, ext. 370; "Every Picture Tells a Story," HAI Gallery, 584 Broadway, third floor, 7 to 10 p.m., 646-262-3273.]

Saturday 27th

Pour a gimlet into a thermos and head to the Small Press Book Fair (Lilith Fair for the Paris Review set) , where women wearing fashionably ratty tweed sit for publishing seminars, readings by small-press authors and an exhibit on Emily Dickinson (who's overdue to be portrayed by Jennifer Aniston wearing a prosthetic nose). Today at the fair, there's an interview with long-tressed Morgan Entrekin of Grove/Atlantic, who picks up the "Ben Award" for outstanding contributions to the field of independent publishing-though why they named it after Ben Affleck , we haven't a clue …. Weekend with the kids? Put the tykes on a leash and drag them to the Sixth Annual New York International Children's Film Festival awards ceremony. Sexy mom Susan Sarandon , naughty director Gus Van Sant , wacky director Jonathan Demme and Adam Gopnik -that guy The New Yorker pays to write (and write, and write) about Paris-are among those sprinkled on the jury's panel.

[16th Annual Small Press Book Fair, General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, 20 West 44th Street, 212-764-7021; noon to 5 p.m., New York International Children's Film Festival Awards Ceremony, Directors' Guild of America Theatre, 110 West 57th Street, 212-505-2900, by invitation only.]

Sunday 28th

"Just because I was discovered just hanging out on my stoop doesn't mean every other pretty girl will," said actress Rosario Dawson , who was indeed plucked from the stoop by Kids director Larry Clark and went on to star in Josie and the Pussycats and The Adventures of Pluto Nash . "They need to get off the streets and into more creative and worthwhile activities." Tonight Ms. Dawson M.C.'s a benefit for the Lower Eastside Girls Club at the Bowery Ballroom, complete with a D.J. (one of the Ronsons -do you care which?). The club's minions will be passing out homebaked cookies shaped like tenement houses -but if that's a little too bitter for your taste, the grand raffle prize includes a year's supply of Krispy Kreme doughnuts …. Hey, they're delicious, but can we move beyond the idea that Krispy Kreme is the height of white-trash chic? Can we move beyond the whole idea of white-trash chic?

[Let's Hear It for the Girls!, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., 866-468-7619.]

Monday 29th

Uma eats a meatball! Swedish chef Marcus Samuelsson presides over a Dewar's event that features celebrity pairs cooking for each other: Mipam Thurman cooks for sister Uma (who's cooking with hotelier Andre Balazs these days); Met Costume Institute associate curator Andrew Bolton bakes for boho design queen Anna Sui; New York City Ballet dancer Charles Askegaard whisks up something saucy for his wife, Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell. "We cook a lot in Connecticut, because cooking in New York is too difficult most of the time," Mr. Askegaard said. "We cooked some lovely Southern fried chicken yesterday, actually." He added: "Don't confuse Candace with Carrie Bradshaw-she's actually a better cook than me. She's really good at making Yorkshire pudding." Meanwhile, the Hamptons can't behave themselves and wait their turn: A maddening crowd putters to Sag Harbor for Hamptons Restaurant Week -Nick and Toni's, Almond, Della Femina, blah blah blah …. Will this sandy strip survive another season's invasion of Manhattan mini-moguls and their rented wives?

[Dewar's Man with a Pan, Marquee, 289 10th Avenue, 7 to 10 p.m., by invitation only; Hamptons Restaurant Week, 631-329-0050, www.hamptonsrestaurantweek.com.]

Tuesday 30th

Her coppola runneth over: Sofia Coppola may not have been able to deliver the ring to Mordor at this year's Oscars , but she did make history as the first woman to ever wear flats on the red carpet! Tonight, the breathy Marc Jacobs muse is fêted for efforts like The Virgin Suicides , the harmless and vastly overrated Lost in Translation and her rarely seen short film, Lick the Star . In celebrity-chef news , we'd like to start a petition for all the chefs to just please get back in the kitchen and please stop foisting your "personalities" on us ; nevertheless, we couldn't resist calling Olives' frisky chef, Todd English , to see what he was up to. We found him in- where else? -Las Vegas. "Trying to keep myself somewhat out of trouble!" he said from Caesars Palace. He told us about a performance he's doing tonight at Supper Club: "It's a cooking-show class demo with theatrics wrapped around it in the form of Broadway-type theater. They've got Broadway actors working with us, and they'll be singing and dancing in between and around us." Can't a girl just have a hot dog anymore? Meanwhile, back at base camp, Van Morrison squeezes into something elegant and plays to the brown-eyed ladies at Irving Plaza.

[ A Work in Progress: An Evening with Sofia Coppola , the Gramercy Theatre, 127 East 23rd Street, 7 p.m., after-party at Metronome, for tickets call 212-708-9680; Chef's Theater: A Musical Feast , the Supper Club, 240 West 47th Street, 7:30 p.m., 212-239-6200.]

wednesday 31st

Two chances to lose the raffle tonight: the Miller Theater Spring Gala honoring Columbia University president Lee Bollinger , the needs-no-introduction Kitty Carlisle Hart and communications-empire heiress Anne Cox Chambers -or Juilliard's benefit concert , hosted by actress Christine Baranski ( Welcome to Mooseport ) and actor Keith David and serenaded by soprano Renée Fleming and jazz man Wynton Marsalis. If those don't deliver, head southwest, where former supe' Christy Turlington rises from child's pose (she had a baby last fall) to launch a new line of yoga togs . If you're not into yoga, get your smarty-pants self to a benefit for the International Neuroscience Foundation , which knows that there are two types of New Yorkers: crazy and crazier. The co-chairs are all very pretty (even if a few of them married maniacs): former model Helena Christensen, Cristina Greeven Cuomo, Lulu de Kwiatkowski, Shoshanna Gruss (née Lonstein) and the recently hyphenated Lucy Sykes-Rellie.

[Miller Theatre Spring Gala, Galt House, 10 East 62nd Street, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., by invitation only; Classified Jazz benefit, Juilliard School, 60 Lincoln Center Plaza, 7 p.m., 212-573-6933; Mahanuala launch, Spirit, 530 West 27th Street, 7 to 9 p.m., by invitation only; International Neuroscience Foundation benefit, BLVD, 199 Bowery, 7:30 to 11:30 p.m., 212-941-8282, ext. 13.]

New York's flashiest hotelier has fixed his sights on the city skyline's ugliest duckling.

Ian Schrager, the man behind the Hudson Hotel, said he's been approached by two developers looking to form a joint venture to buy and demolish 2 Columbus Circle, the windowless onetime art gallery that the city has been trying to sell for years.

"I've expressed some interest in the location," he said. Mr. Schrager recently toured the site, and came away impressed enough to consider building a hotel there.

"I like the location," he said. "I like what's going on in Columbus Circle."

What's going on is that Columbus Circle, once an inexplicably dead spot in the city's geography, is becoming a mecca for high-concept development. Anchoring it all is the AOL Time Warner Center, which is going up on the site of the old New York Coliseum. Down at 58th Street and Eighth Avenue, the Hearst Corporation has hired Lord Norman Foster, the eminent British architect, to build a glass tower atop its landmarked six-story headquarters. A bit further down Broadway, between West 55th and West 56th streets, Random House is building a new corporate headquarters.

Meanwhile, the city's efforts to capitalize on all the development by selling 2 Columbus Circle, an idiosyncratic nine-story building that stands on a plot of land roughly the size of a traffic island, seem to have stalled. Last year, 13 prospective buyers responded to a request for proposals put out by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, which is coordinating the city-owned building's redevelopment.

At the time, city officials talked of a quick sale. But bidders said they've heard little from the city since the bids were submitted. "We're waiting to hear what the story is," said developer Adam Hochfelder of Max Capital Management Corporation, who proposed building a 11-story luxury-condominium building on the site.

"There has been no decision made about 2 Columbus Circle at this point," said E.D.C. spokeswoman Janel Patterson. "We don't put a time frame on these things … [and] we don't discuss proposals while we evaluate them."

In March, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani reconvened a Columbus Circle advisory panel, originally formed to evaluate the architectural design of the AOL Time Warner Center, now being built next door. One of the panel's jobs will be to evaluate the proposals for 2 Columbus Circle, Ms. Patterson said.

Mr. Schrager knows how he evaluates the current structure: "It's the building that New Yorkers love to hate," he said. That's pretty much been the consensus since it opened in 1964, as the home of supermarket king Huntington Hartford's Gallery of Modern Art. Architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable famously derided architect Edward Durrell Stone's design as a "die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops."

Mr. Hartford lost the building, and the art collection, after a series of business reversals. Since then it's been passed around like the queen of spades in a real-estate game of hearts. The city ended up with it some years ago, and for a time it served as an office for the Department of Cultural Affairs. The agency moved out more than a year ago, in advance of the anticipated sale. Since then, the building has been vacant.

Lately, a small but influential cadre of defenders, including New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp, have been lobbying for the building to be landmarked. Last year, they held a rally underneath the building's eaves, calling for its preservation.

Not Mr. Schrager: "The only threshold decision I've been able to make," he said, "is that if I did get involved, I wouldn't be interested in staying with that building."

He said that two different developers, both of whom had submitted bids to the E.D.C., approached him in recent months about a joint venture to redevelop the property. He characterized his discussions with the developers, whom he would not identify, as "cocktail-party talk" at the moment. But he added: "Columbus Circle has undergone a renaissance. With the AOL Time Warner building … I think that area is going to be a new, changed area."

Mr. Schrager knows a trend when he sees one. His rise, fall and rise-from Studio 54 impresario to convicted felon to boutique-hotel magnate-has been the subject of hours of VH1 programming and a recent New York Times Magazine profile.

"Ian has tremendous expansion plans," said Insignia-ESG real-estate broker Thomas McConnell. Among them is the proposed $120 million Astor Place Hotel designed by architect Rem Koolhaas, which, with its weird, asymmetrical windows, looks a bit like a milk carton poked full of pencil holes.

But when it comes to 2 Columbus Circle's design, Mr. Schrager doesn't see what all the fuss is about. "I don't think that that building adds anything to the New York City skyline," he said. "I know it was done by a great architect, but it's not one of my favorites."

That's sure to dismay the building's advocates. Most of them would rather see the city sell it to another bidder, the Dahesh Museum. The private museum has long said that it wants to preserve the building and use it to exhibit a collection of 19th-century art once owned by a Lebanese mystic who called himself Dr. Dahesh.

"It seems to me that it's a very difficult site for a hotel, because the ingress and egress is very difficult," said Steven Simkin, a lawyer for the museum. "It's a very, very small [building] and it doesn't have much in the way of service, and I think it would be difficult to make the economics work successfully."

When word came that there was a protest in Central Park on Sunday afternoon to be carried out exclusively by naked girls, The Transom sprung into action, camera in hand.

But on arrival, there was only a huddle of shirtless old men. Some were on bicycles. Others merely stood around writing slogans on each other's backs... with permanent marker.

The demonstration, one of them explained, was being held in the name of a woman who had taken "her clothes off in protest of the Iraqi war and walked naked in the fountain." She'd been arrested, despite statute 245.01 of the penal code, which gives women the right to go topless, on account of equal rights and all. "It's pretty much a political thing," the man explained. "I'm a troublemaker."

The Transom's eyes had strayed by then, however. There were six boobs in the midst of the sausage fest.

Two of them belonged to Phoenix Feeley, a young 2k5 hippie with American flag shorts on and needles through her nipples. She'd also been arrested for exposing her chest, in a separate incident, and as far as she knew, that was the inspiration for the afternoon's protest. Phoenix wore rollerblades. She laughed sweetly as she explained the various slogans on her chest: "No War," for obvious reasons, and "I Am Art," for quite separate ones. "I think they're beautiful, don't you?" she said, looking over at the shirtless men nearby. "It is a man's right to be topless—topfree—and nobody stops him.... We're here, and we're gonna show that we can be topfree—that we can be on our bikes or on our blades and be part of traffic."

Phoenix's friend Dana, meanwhile, pictured below with her daughter, spoke to reporters and friends as the group prepared for its march around the park. "You can totally tell she was nursed as a child," Phoenix exclaimed as Dana's little girl bounded forth for a hug with arms akimbo.

"Leave people alone, you know? If we can do it, why can't they?" said one male bystander, on break from his job at a nearby bistro. "More fun for me!"

This kind of attitude seemed uncommon, weirdly enough, and to everyone's surprise, reporters from the Daily News appeared to be the only ones taking any pictures.

"I remember when I was in college, and it clearly mattered more to the people with the binoculars than it did it to me," said Chanita Baumhaft, a young fiction writer who sat happily topless on the curb with her boyfriend. "The gawker situation is not too bad."

Indeed, the protestors didn't win an audience until they started moving a little before 3 p.m. "Freeeeedddooooooom!" Phoenix cried, touching off on her rollerblades and overpowering even the massive Dominican Day Parade that was roaring wildly on Central Park West. The women moved swiftly, some of them traveling on their own wheels and others bouncing humbly in rental rickshaws. The men kept up, pedaling furiously with their helmets on and their shirts still absent.

After a few minutes, Phoenix announced that the people who could keep up would go ahead, and the rest would meet back at Columbus Circle after the journey had been made.

"This is amazing," said one teenage boy by the side of the road, as Dana bought an ice cream sandwich for her daughter. "This is better than the internet."

A pair of fully-clothed Texan women riding by in a tour buggy, however, did not find the display so amusing. "We don't have these in Texas, these naked women," one of them said. "I was like, ‘holy shit!' I was thinking that it's illegal!"

Apparently the police thought so too. As we made our way back to 67th and Central Park West to wait for the bikers to make their loop, an officer rolled by in a cruiser and said that he was looking for a protest. Needless to say, The Transom did not snitch.

The rain started to fall just as the girls rolled into Columbus Circle a half hour later, the ink on Phoenix's body starting to run a little, her nipple rings glistening. The protest dispersed as the downpour grew thicker, and before long, naked time was over. It was the best day. — Leon Neyfakh