What Congress ate during last night's financial bailout meetings, and which presidential candidate's state has better wine, from our glance at the morning headlines.
Box honcho Simon Hammerstein is accused of abusing his dog, keeping in-house prostitutes, sexual harassment, and pressuring a couple of sisters into a threesome.
Roberto Cavalli may have his own brand of vodka and chain of tacky nightclubs in the works, but he's not the only designer who knows how to shake his tail feathers. On Saturday night we spotted Donna Karan at the Box dancing up a small storm — and with a handful of good-looking young men, to boot.
Jada Yuan cornered the normally press-shy Simon Hammerstein at City Opera’s spring gala, and among other things he revealed that during his birthday party at his club the Box, he was dragged onstage to have his clothes ripped off (and you thought a shirtless Anthony Bourdain was bad…). What we really love, though, are his musings about what a reporter from the Times of London once called his “Jesus beard.”
Jerry Stiller said he had a senior moment when he exited the locker room at the Jewish Community Center on Amsterdam sans bathing suit. Peter Brant, who bought out his ex-wife's half of Interview magazine last week, is pleased to have traded Ingrid Sischy for Glenn O'Brien. On Friday, Lindsay Lohan drank vodka at the Box and at the Beatrice Inn while partying with Stavros Niarchos and Brody Jenner before returning to the Four Seasons Hotel to spend the night with Niarchos. Eli Manning and fiancée Abby McGraw ate dinner at Il Mulino in the Village (he got a standing ovation when he left). At the Plumm, Tracy Morgan ordered two bottles of Champagne, ripped off his shirt and started dancing on the banquette, seemingly lost his credit card, found it in his pocket, and then asked a waitress if he could father her baby. Sacha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher ate at Café Gray.
Ah, the tangled web of nightlife ownership. A while back, Serge Becker, part-owner of The Box and La Esquina, told us in a statement that Cordell Lochin, the young scenester who presented himself as a partner in Becker’s restaurants before being convicted of drug-conspiracy charges, was merely an “indispensable advisor.” A December 15 memo from a government attorney calls that assertion into question, pointing at an undated letter from Becker that describes Lochin as “more than just a business partner.” That letter pleads for leniency because his company is “in the design stage of our second location of ‘La Esquina’ in Miami Beach at ‘the Gale’ hotel.” Exciting news, innit?
This week’s juiciest bit of celeb-sighting gossip was, of course, the Post’s report that after a performer dumped a drink on Demi and Ashton, Box honcho Simon Hammerstein sent an e-mail to his partner and a GM saying, “I can’t stand those two” — apparently because they’re “so far up their own arses” and “don’t spend anything” — “and I applaud whoever spilt a drink on them.” We’re thinking Kid Rock got kinder treatment when he went to Southern Hospitality, or there would’ve been a Tommy Lee–style throwdown.