Craigslist fanatics trolling for cheap bookcases and used lamps over Memorial Day weekend found themselves in the potential company of Benihana founder Rocky Aoki. An ad for a “moving sale” listed his “luxury furniture”—including wooden candlesticks ($120 to $180) and marble-topped plant stands ($420 and $500)—as up for grabs. When reached by e-mail, a woman who claimed to be brokering the sale said prices were negotiable and that they could be viewed at Aoki’s apartment by “appointment only.” A day later, however, the same woman said it had all been a mistake. The restaurateur, father of model Devon Aoki, recently swapped his East 63rd Street apartment for one on Fifth Avenue, but a spokeswoman at his office dismisses the posting as nothing but an overeager seller’s hoping that Aoki’s fame would help her move her pricey castoffs. “A friend of his wife’s used his name erroneously and without permission to sell her furniture,” she says. The ad has since been “deleted by its author.”

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by S.Jhoanna Robledo
• Table of Contents: Jun 12, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!